Thursday, August 24, 2006

Islamo-whosit?

Matthew Yglesias on why saying Islamofascist (which the President did the other day) is dumb, dumb, dumb:
That aside, however, it's worth calling attention to the function of this rhetoric. "Fascist," in this context, just roughly means "bad." Add in the "Islamic" and what you come to is the conclusion that we're in a war and that the enemy in this war is Muslims who subscribe to bad ideologies. This has the consequence of taking a set of institutionally and ideologically distinct actors -- Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Iraq, Iran, Syria, al-Qaeda, the Mahdi Army, Iraqi insurgents, etc. -- and treating them as a single phenomenon. To do so would be a serious mistake.
Because glossing over differences among these kinds of groups has worked so well as a strategy for keeping us safe.

Idiots.

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