The Strange Bush Oxymoron

By James Donahue

August 11, 2006

When he said it during Thursday’s special statement, condemning the alleged terrorist plot to blow up commercial airplanes over the Atlantic, we almost fell off our chairs. President George W. Bush said the plot was precipitated by “Islamic Fascists.”

Congratulations Mr. President. You have created a new oxymoron.

For those of you who do not know the definition of an oxymoron, it is a word, or word combination that contradicts itself. Examples are: military intelligence; authentic replica; sanitary landfill; unknown knowledge and true lies. The list is almost endless.

The term “Islamic fascists” is also an oxymoron. And here is why:

Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at University of Michigan, published a recent article in which he explains: “There cannot be Islamic fascists because the Islamic religion enshrines values that are incompatible with fascism.

“Fascism is not even a very good description of the ideology of most Muslim fundamentalists. Most fascism in the Middle East has been secular in character, as with Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.”

Cole explains that “fascism involves extreme nationalism and most often racism. Muslim fundamentalist movements reject the nation-state as their primary loyalty and reject race as a basis for political action or social discrimination. Fascists exalt the state above individual rights or the rule of law. Muslim fundamentalists exalt Islamic law above the utilitarian interests of the state.

“Fascism glorifies war as an end in itself and victory as the determinant of truth and worthiness. Muslim fundamentalists view holy war as a ritual with precise conditions and laws governing its conduct. It is not considered an end in itself,” Cole writes.

Ironically, if we go back through the Cole description of fascism, it is clear to see that the United States, under the Bush Administration, had fallen dangerously close to fitting the description of a fascist nation. Since 9-11 there has been a sense of extreme nationalism and because the attack came from Middle Eastern Moslems there has also been a problem of racism in America, whether we want to admit it or not.

That we have attacked the Middle Eastern nation of Iraq without provocation suggests that we glorify war as an end in itself.

Mr. Bush should not be surprised that intelligence has uncovered a new plot by Islamic extremists to attack the United States. We have generated a lot of anger in that part of the world by our actions.

As Prophet Aaron C. Donahue has explained, every time we drop a bomb on an innocent family in Afghanistan or Iraq, or the Israelis bomb Lebanon or the Hammas Palestinians, and they see bomb fragments marked “made in USA,” we are generating a new generation of terrorists. Terrorism is a way the poor people from these parts of the world can fight back with sling shots and stones against Goliath. And like the fabled story of David, the stone goes for the third eye because they know that a spiritually blind giant can be destroyed.

Those who wish to grasp a sense of the way the people of the Middle East view America would do well to catch the Mike Wallace interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the CBS “60 Minutes” Sunday night. Wallace is already catching flack for this interview because he portrays Ahmadinejad in a warmer, more objective light than most people expect.

Remember that we have all been victims of a subtle political demonization of Ahmadinejad ever since that man won the presidential office in that country and began making waves. Wallace is an old professional journalist who has been down this road before. This interview may be his attempt at shedding some light on this mysterious personality and putting some balance back in the news of the day.