| | "Islam" does not imply "fascism." I wrote about this specious portmanteau term at length on Objectivist Living, 12 July 2008:
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"Islamofascism" is as much an anti-concept as, if not more than, "extremism," against which Rand herself memorably inveighed 44 years ago in a talk and essay subtitled "The Art of Smearing." It agglomerates an emotional reaction with a supposed factual basis, in such a manner as to have the emotion overwhelm any rational examination of the factual basis.
In this case, the neoconservatives created "Islamofascism" to smuggle in a supposed motive, that of controlling governments, under a generalized (and encouraged) American revulsion to Islam. That emotive-religious cover, rarely admitted to, itself has several components: Fear of "the other," itself a dark side to religious motivations in general since this continent was settled. A long-standing revulsion in "Christendom" to Islam, extending back to before the Crusades. And partiality, along with unearned guilt, in regard to ameliorating what the Jews have suffered, especially those in 20th-Century Europe.
The covering emotive gloss is itself suspect, but the premise it hides is one that makes no historical or practical sense: That movements (if they can be called that) such as al-Qaeda want "fascism." They want nothing of the kind. The leaders have two broad political goals: Sharia law (far from universally held), and a removal of Western military forces and manipulations from their lands (emphatically universally held).
Whether those who want religious law are able to actually implement it is another story entirely. It's been historically difficult, even in Iran, and Saudi Arabia wouldn't have managed it without U.S. armaments. It's also, properly, the lookout of those who oppose it: either the Jews of Israel (who want their own theocracy, in varying degrees), or the often-forgotten Christian communities throughout the Mideast that are trying to keep their own independence of action, or the non-fundamentalist or secular-in-practice Muslims.
In any event, and this doesn't admit to being condensed to message-board length: If anything qualifies as an approach to "Islamofascism," it's what neocons such as Bolton, Kristol (father and son), and Krauthammer rarely, if ever, include in the concept. Those are the outright, admitted military-riven fascist dictatorships in such countries as Pakistan, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Yet those are given a pass, out of consuming hypocrisy, because they are "allies."
Instead, the tag is put on non-State actors that are both slippery in location and reactive in purpose. No one has demonstrated, the neocons' rhetoric included, that anyone is out to "destroy us." Al-Qaeda, itself a reactive product of our arming the Afghan resistance two decades ago, has no army or navy. It only has the armaments we've given them, in direct and indirect ways. It has neither the capability nor, frankly, the inclination to "destroy us" — whatever may be their wishes.
Its principals and those who sympathize with them want the American Empire out of their corner of the world. That grants them no virtue. It is, however, what they are entitled to insist upon. We have no proper business being there with our military or our covert operatives. We never did — practically, morally, or, as Ron Paul stresses, constitutionally.
The "threat" is ginned up, as it always has been, from the powerful on this continent wanting to secure by force what they could not have guaranteed access to in the marketplace. When we withdraw it, our business with them will be concluded, apart from doing something that is ignored in practice, whatever the bureaucracy and alleged efforts: actually defending the homeland.
(Stop any prattling about alleged suitcase nukes in Times Square or at Hollywood and Vine. The Soviets didn't manage those with a hundred times the resources and a thousand times the domestic sympathizers. Bin Laden knows that stomping on the paws of the U.S. government would only make it act more like a bear. He knows that playing with uranium hexafluoride will most likely send his true believers to Paradise prematurely. He's not stupid.)
The only danger to the tatters of this Republic is what we perpetrate on ourselves, with such atrocities as warrantless searches, shielding from prosecution, ID databases, and torture.
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"After Obama's election, I felt as close to hopelessness about this country's future as I've ever felt. But now I see a possible ray of hope. It may be that Republicans -- since at this point they have nothing to lose, and in the face of the disaster to which Obama is leading us -- will finally return to to the principles that once animated their party, and particularly to the defense of capitalism. And it might even happen that the controls Obama will establish, with their concomitant impoverishment of the country, will awaken the American voter to the fact that freedom is to his best interest, not entitlements and Big Brother. If both those things were to happen, then the long agony that faces us will have been worthwhile."
