by Victor Davis Hanson
George Bush recently declared that we are at war with "Islamic fascism." Muslim-American groups were quick to express furor at the expression. Middle Eastern autocracies complained that it was provocative and insensitive.
Critics of the term chosen by the president, however, should remember what al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist Muslim groups have said and done. Like the fascists of the 1930s, the leaders of these groups are authoritarians who brook no dissent in their efforts to impose a comprehensive system of submission upon the unwilling.
Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to kill any American they could find, and then tried to fulfill that vow on Sept. 11. Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah bragged that "the Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them" — and then started a war. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, promises to "wipe out" Israel, and is seeking the nuclear means to do so.
Sharia law and dreams of pan-Islamic global rule fuel their ambitions. Once again, they seek to fool Western liberals through voicing a litany of perpetual hurts. Like the Nazis who whined about the Versailles Treaty that ended World War I, and alleged maltreatment of Germans in the Sudetenland, for years Islamists harped about American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, the U.N. embargo of Iraq and the occupation of Gaza and Lebanon.
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©2006 Tribune Media Services