Shotgun Wedding, by Chris Floyd

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/05/12/120.html

They say that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, but these days, fearmongering invocations of "Islamofascism" perform the same rump-covering function just as well.

Defenders of U.S. President George W. Bush's war crime in Iraq -- particularly those super-tough "liberal hawks" who have cast their lot with the crony conquistadors -- trot out the term at every opportunity. What else can they do? All the other excuses for their pet war have been exploded as bare-faced, deliberately concocted lies. So they've been reduced to the ludicrous claim that Bush's murderous plunder is actually a noble defense of civilization against black hordes of "Islamofascists." In this way, these desk-bound warriors seek to identify themselves with the sainted figures of old, like George Orwell, who actually put their bodies on the line against real fascists.

Yet it is painfully obvious that the forces which come closest to matching this ignorant propaganda term have in fact been empowered by Bush's war. Obscurantist clerics and deadly sectarian groups backed by Bush now rule in Iraq, while his war of aggression there -- and his global gulag of torture and unlawful detention -- are swelling the ranks of violent extremists around the world, as his own State Department acknowledges in its latest report on international terrorism.

Whyever not? Birds of a feather, etc.