Islamo-Fascism?

That’s what Bush, in yesterday’s speech, called the “set of beliefs” that America is currently at war with. His speech was typical in a lot of ways, from the amusingly hypocritical: “that’s the essence of democracy: making your case, debating with those who you disagree”, right to the downright misleading as he attempted to illustrate that the war in Iraq does not motivate terrorism: “Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom, and yet the militants killed more than 180 Russian schoolchildren in Beslan”.

The technique of creating and referencing an imaginary world is a trademark of Bush’s speeches – and in fact, his administration’s treatment of the public in general – but there is also a central theme here, which is the struggle to answer the question: Who is the Enemy?

As we have had pounded through our heads time after time, the enemy is Terrorism. But in this speech, Bush seeks to pinpoint this enemy more precisely than he has in the past, describing “a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane”.

So the enemy is an ideology. We must fight ideas. But this is something America – I mean, Democracy – can handle, because it’s done it before. Bush: “in many ways, this fight resembles the struggle against communism in the last century”.

So Communism is out of the way, handily defeated by Democracy and its sidekick Capitalism. The new ideology to beat is Islamo-Fascism. But what about the 1.3 billion people living in communist China, now the United States’ biggest trade partner? Will the war on Terrorism be considered a success if in 20 years 1.3 billion people are living in an Islamo-Fascist state?

The reality is that the major struggle in the last half of the 20th century was between the United States and the Soviet Union. Bush is unable to define the current struggle in the same concrete terms:

Many militants are part of global, borderless terrorist organizations like al Qaeda, which spreads propaganda, and provides financing and technical assistance to local extremists, and conducts dramatic and brutal operations like September the 11th. Other militants are found in regional groups, often associated with al Qaeda — paramilitary insurgencies and separatist movements in places like Somalia, and the Philippines, and Pakistan, and Chechnya, and Kashmir, and Algeria. Still others spring up in local cells, inspired by Islamic radicalism, but not centrally directed. Islamic radicalism is more like a loose network with many branches than an army under a single command. Yet these operatives, fighting on scattered battlefields, share a similar ideology and vision for our world.

This definition of the enemy – “global, borderless terrorist organizations”, “local extremists”, “regional groups”, “paramilitary insurgencies”, “separatist movements”, “local cells” and “operatives” – is apparently clear enough that Bush is able to simply refer to “militants” for the rest of his speech. “These militants are not just the enemies of America, or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of humanity”, “The only thing modern about the militants’ vision is the weapons they want to use against us”, “we’re disrupting militant conspiracies”, etc.

But militant simply means fighter. So who is the Enemy? Fighters. “We’re fighting fighters”, Bush seems to be proclaiming. Fighters who he openly admits aren’t part of the same organization, or even connected to each other.

This isn’t just the latest attempt to spin the war in Iraq. It also reveals practical, military problems. Know thine enemy is one of the most basic military guidelines, but the Commander in Chief of the army cannot even define the enemy in concrete terms. Worse still, if the enemy is an ideology, a group of ideas, what good is an army at all?

For the full text of Bush’s speech, click here.