In the last week or so, the Bush administration has unveiled a cunning new strategy in the War on Terror, apparently conceived by a top secret PsyOp (psychological operations) group within the Department of Defense and inspired by the President himself. Initially code-named the Obfuscation Project, the program was later renamed after Mr. Bush had difficulty pronouncing “obfuscation.� Now known simply by the acronym W.H.A.T.? (Wreak Havoc Against Terrorists), the program—like its creators—is rather simple. The basic premise of W.H.A.T.? is that if you can’t stop the terrorists with guns and bombs, stop them with confusion and doubt. If you can’t shred their flesh with shrapnel, shred their sense of identity with conflicting messages. Induce an existential crisis of catastrophic proportions. Before long, Osama bin Laden himself will be curled up in a corner of some desolate cave sucking his filthy thumb.

In recent speeches, the President and his chief advisers have deployed a variety of historical analogies to describe the terrorists. In response, many here in the United States have expressed criticism, with some going so far as to categorize such as the inapt analogies of inept minds. But Mr. Bush does not seem to care a whit. Indeed, he appears whitless. Yesterday, speaking to members and guests of the Military Officers Association of America, the President offered his thoughts on the Global War on Terror, which included these comments:

History teaches that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake. In the early 1900s, an exiled lawyer in Europe published a pamphlet called “What Is To Be Done?â€? — in which he laid out his plan to launch a communist revolution in Russia. The world did not heed Lenin’s words, and paid a terrible price. The Soviet Empire he established killed tens of millions, and brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war. In the 1920s, a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews. The world ignored Hitler’s words, and paid a terrible price. His Nazi regime killed millions in the gas chambers, and set the world aflame in war, before it was finally defeated at a terrible cost in lives.

Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is: Will we listen? [full text]

The President’s analogous remarks echoed those of his Secretary of Defense a week earlier. Donald Rumsfeld, speaking at the American Legion National Convention, reflected back on the period between the two World Wars:

It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else’s problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last. There was a strange innocence about the world….

I recount that history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism. Today — another enemy, a different kind of enemy — has made clear its intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington, D.C., Bali, London, Madrid, Moscow and so many other places. But some seem not to have learned history’s lessons. [full text]

Not to be excluded, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice jumped into the fray with analogies of her own, given in an interview with Essence magazine and subsequently reported by the Associated Press:

Rice…offered a parallel between critics of the administration’s Iraq policies and “people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War (in this country) to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold.â€?

“I’m sure that there were people who said, ‘why don’t we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves.’â€?

“Just because things are difficult, it does’t mean that they are wrong or that you turn back,� Rice told the magazine, which has a large audience among African-Americans.

Rice, a former academic, said she spent the summer reading biographies of the Founding Fathers and said she was certain “there were people who thought the Declaration of Independence was a mistake,� as well. [full text]

Confused yet? Perplexed about the actual identity and character of the terrorists? Uncertain if they are more akin to fascists in Nazi Germany, communists in the Soviet Union, or racist Americans in the Confederate South? Don’t know just W.H.A.T.? to think? Well, that’s the idea! Imagine how it is for the terrorists, holed up in their satellite-dish-equipped caves watching coverage of these speeches on Al Jazeera. Their heads must be about to melt or explode, like so:

If they weren’t such amoral extremists, I’d almost feel sorry for the terrorists. Before long, the forces of good will prevail, and the evildoers won’t know W.H.A.T.? hit them. Like their gutless appeasers in the U.S., the terrorists stand little chance against the whitless Bush administration. Right?