Anyway We Need Something Shorter, For Headlines

After President Bush's recent, rare identification of the enemy as "Islamic fascists" there's been a more public discussion about whether that's an appropriate term, something that's been debated on blogs for some time. Most of the more interesting challenges to the term--I prefer Islamofascists; it's more poetic--question whether a word based on specifically European systems can be accurately grafted onto jihadism.

But I was surprised to see columnist David Ignatius object for a different reason:

Yet I balk at the term. The notion that we are fighting "Islamic fascists" blurs the conflict, widening the enemy to many if not all Muslims. It's as if we were to call Hitler and Mussolini "Christian fascists," implying that it is their religion... that is the root cause of the problem.

Um, dude. Nazi fascism wasn't a Christian movement. Hitler despised Christianity. He didn't attack France or the Soviet Union or Great Britain to establish a Christian empire, but an Aryan one. In the years before the war, Mussolini was frankly atheist and whatever semi-compromises he later made with the Catholic Church in Italy were purely opportunistic. It's nothing as if we were to call Hitler and Mussolini Christian fascists.

In contrast, jihadists from Osama bin Laden to the late unlamented Zarqawi to radical imams and right back to the wellspring of Wahabbism are very frank about the need for non-Muslims to convert, submit or die. That's why they're killing us, and they are telling us that's why they're killing us. If anyone is "widening the enemy to many if not all Muslims," I'd look in that direction.