Redefining America's Islamic enemies in the Near East, President George W. Bush and his top aides now present disparate entities, such as Sunni terrorist groups like al-Qaeda; and radical Shiite and other organizations like Hezbollah and their alleged state sponsors of Iran and Syria, as a "united front" against Western civilization, an argument that may be used as part of reasoning for military action against Iran.
In a key policy speech before a friendly crowd of military veterans in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Bush formally declared America's war as "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century," only two days after his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld likened the opposition against the administration's Iraq and Middle East policies to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's appeasement before World War II.
Washington for a long time has been describing Iraq as a top front in a larger fight against terrorism, but in the wake of this summer's Lebanon conflict and amid a worsening dispute over Iran's nuclear program, Washington now for the first time publicly viewed both Sunni and Shiite adversaries in a single and unified category. |