Whether you like it, or not.

Jay Nordlinger, writing Impromptu at National Review Online, offers a pointed though humorous rejoinder to that breed of liberal who object to calling our enemies any kind of “fascist.”

The specific object of Jay’s criticism was Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, and a piece that appeared over the “holiday” weekend. (Work free perhaps, but I’m not sure I know what the holiday commemorates unless it’s “work” itself. “Let’s celebrate the honest value of work, here’s a day off.”)

Robinson, in objecting to use of the word fascist and depiction of our current struggle against Islamic terrorism as in any way akin to our struggles against fascism or communism, made the following claim:

Nobody wants to appease terrorists. But some people have a different idea of how to fight them. The president is right when he says this conflict is unlike other wars, but he seems to miss the essential difference: It has to be fought in a way that doesn't create two new terrorists for each one who is killed.

Jay’s reply to this kind of thinking is worth quoting verbatim:

That’s what they always say: that, if you go after the terrorists, you are merely creating more terrorists. Even some of the best of us have said it (e.g., Naguib Mahfouz). This way, civilization’s hands are always tied — you can never act. Because if you strike at them, you are only multiplying them, you see.
Here’s an analogy that Robinson and his confreres will just love: In striking at German, Italian, and Japanese fascists, were we merely making more of them? You could have argued so. I bet that some did.
I wish that liberals and certain others would learn that terrorists don’t need a reason to attack you: It’s what they do, so to speak. It’s your very existence they hate; it is not necessarily your actions, or inaction. Democracies that could not be more accommodationist — to put it politely — are not spared.
Sooner or later, you have to confront these Islamic fascists. And that’s what Bush et al. are doing, and some people will never, ever like it. Which reminds me of the Greatest Bumper Sticker of All Time: George W. Bush: Saving Your A** Whether You Like It or Not.

There is no doubt that the Democrats very much want to take political advantage of the political and popular weakness of President Bush, in the electoral seasons of 2006 and 2008. They want to say that President Bush was too aggressive, too confrontational, war was the only tool in his tool belt. They hope to gain political points from attacking Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, hoping that voters will buy their gambit that Democrats weren’t against fighting terror aggressively, they just would have fought smarter. Because of George W. Bush, we’re not safer, and there’s more terrorism.

Everything is about what an idiot the President is, how nefarious are his advisors, how everything is a plot to keep us scared and cowed out of our rights.

They see everything through partisan and electoral tinted eyes, and absolutely nothing through the eyes of our enemies.

Reality stands. Reality towers, in fact, surely more permanently than the two towers of innocents we lost on 9/11/01. Bring the fight to them now, or wait for them to bring the fight back to us, again, and with greater savagery than anything we’ve seen yet.

Like most Democrats, Islamic terrorists have made quite clear what internal forces of mind and spirit fuel their motivations. But unlike most Democrats, these terrorists have never been motivated by displeasure with George W. Bush or any particular policy decisions he’s made. They hate America and everything we represent, whether we’re headed by an elephant, or a donkey.

I do like that bumper sticker, though.