Things I'm Thinking About Today

I appreciated Tom Raum's AP story, which ran on Page 1 of the Jordan Times today. His lede:

President George W. Bush keeps revising his explanation for why the US is in Iraq, moving from narrow military objectives at first to history-of-civilisation stakes now.

Raum's disgust is barely disguised. He mentions Bush's references to Islamo-fascism, which caused an uproar that I missed in my preparations for leaving D.C. and traveling to the Middle East. If you missed it too, here's the part of Bush's August speech in which he refers to the new fascists.

And it takes a lot of work. This is the beginning of a long struggle against an ideology that is real and profound. It's Islamo-fascism. It comes in different forms. They share the same tactics, which is to destroy people and things in order to create chaos in the hopes that their vision of the world become predominant in the Middle East.

I think I was watching this speech but then turned it off, because I couldn't bear to hear Bush say, "It's hard work," one more time. I mention all of this, because I have had several Jordanians bring up Bush's remark in conversations with me. As much as I don't care for him, I don't think he was refering to all Muslims when he used the term Islamo-fascists. That said, I do think he's an idiot (surprise, surprise) to use such a loaded term in what seems to me more and more everyday like a global environment of Muslim persecution.

European countries are focused on the "immigration problem," which seems primarily to be a problem with Muslim immigrants, not foreigners in general. Here's this from the LA Times as well.

Fawaz A. Gerges' column in the International Herald Tribune today mentions Bush's reference to Islamo-fascism. He argues that Bush and his administration seem to have no concept of how they are radicalizing mainstream Muslim opinion.

Along the same lines, but on a more personal note, I was smoking argilleh and chatting with a friend recently, and he asked me to characterize the different priorities of the Democrats and the Republicans. I said, very generally of course, that Democrats are more interested in social issues domestically and abroad. "And Republicans want to..." I paused, trying to think of something as unbiased as possible to say. I was having trouble when he inserted, "...to destroy the world?" We laughed and laughed. I said, "Yes, of course."