The Trudy Rubin Files

When last we linked to our heroine, she was waxing about the calamity that is the Bush administrations foreign policy with regard to the Israeli-Hezbollah war. Come to think of it, sh is always carping about the Bush administrations handling of whatever that weeks topic is.

She's a bit late to the party on this one however:

Are we "at war with Islamic fascists"? That's what President Bush said right after British police broke up a plot to blow up aircraft crossing the Atlantic.

The term Islamo-fascism is being used with increasing frequency in the blogosphere and in conservative journals as an all-purpose label for extremist Muslims. It's certainly a convenience for politicians - a great sound bite to rally voters by giving the enemy a concrete image.

The label provides a rallying cry for those who want to cast themselves in the mantle of Churchill fighting World War II.

But does raising the specter of "Islamic fascists" aid the antiterrorist struggle?

Ms. Rubin then goes on to explain how the president is using the term wrongly. Blah, blah, blah.

This is the part that got me to even reference the partisan hack who writes the Worlview column for the Inqy:

This blanket term confuses the American public about the nature of the struggle they are facing. This is not World War II, where an Adolf Hitler was bent on, and capable of, territorial conquest. This is not a war of standing armies seeking to capture land.

Yes it is, Trudy. They are not armies comprised of uniformed soldiers representing nation-states. Arabs are not nationalistic because nationalism was forced on them by the Brits and French. But they are regionalistic, they may not be fighting for a country, they are fighting for an ideology and that ideology is the spread of Islam to the entire world. In other words, a Caliphate.

They are armies, however and they are definitely armed. They serve as proxies and are the tip of the spear for their hopes of eventually conquering as much of the world as they can.

The West is engaged in a long-term fight against disparate radical Islamist groups that are alienated by globalization and the backwardness of their countries. In the words of Steven Cook, Mideast expert for the Council on Foreign Relations: "There are different groups with different political interpretations of Islam and different goals. There is no real address for 'Islamo-fascism.' "

Again, this line of thinking is misguided. Ms. Rubin uses words like "alienated" and "globalization" in trying to explain the root causes of the rise of radical Islam. There is no more of a root cause than exploring a bit of their history and seeing the land they once controlled as a religion. They want to reconquer that land and spread as far and wide as possible. The reasons for this are ancient. They are not new ideas. This thinking was a part of radical Islam well before we alienated them by globalizing.

Lumping all these groups under a single rubric creates the image of one worldwide and powerful jihadi movement, rather than disparate groups whose differences can be exploited. For example, Iranians hate al-Qaeda, which considers them to be infidels. And Arab Sunnis will never follow the lead of Shiite Iranians, no matter the current cockiness of Tehran's leaders.

The old Shiite's hate Sunni's canard. We have seen that al-Qaeda will work with Shiites if the cause benefits them. Hezbollah has received aid from several nations one would suspect, not just Iran and the Alawite-led Syria.

The line of thinking that these two groups would not work together is specious and will harm free nations more than any other. The Shiites and Sunni's will work together and then fight their own battles after dominating as much of the west as possible.

Iran is now planning on their control of the gulf-region and while the Saudi's may see it as bad for business, I would bet that they are supporting the Ayatollah's if they foresee it advancing the cause of jihad in the west.