Dare I suggest that the "Bush doctrine" incorporates at least three of these four elements, albeit perhaps in subtler concentrations?

(1) Paranoid Conspiracy Theory — putting "similarities" aside, the Bush Administration actively cultivated the notion that Osama and Saddam were in cahoots, to the point where intelligent people that I know were convinced that Saddam backed the 9/11 attacks. This plays to the soundbite-driven portion of the electorate that views the entire Middle East uniformly as "towelheads" and thinks Iraq is as good a place as any to make a frightening demonstration of American power to "people who only understand force."

(2) Apocalyptic Fantasy — it's well-documented that Bush's millennialist brand of Christianity conceptualizes the world in good v. evil terms. Bush has gone so far as to pronounce other nations to be "evil," setting the stage for a final showdown with America at some undetermined later date. There are concerns that Bush's faith drives a worldview that will of necessity render the endgame confrontational, rather than conciliatory. Good must fight evil, and good must win.

(3) Tyrannical Plan — if you envision the the various forms of government along a continuum of government values, with stability/security interests predominant on one end and individual rights and dignities on the other, it's not hard to see that 9/11 empowered a push in the United States toward tyranny. This year will feature a showdown with the Supreme Court on how far this Administration can tread on civil liberties by simply reciting the word "security" over and again. Here's an article on what's at stake.

Remember, the best Armageddons have two fundamentally opposed armies that are ready for combat and wholly committed to black-white views of the world. Now I'm not one of those people in Harvard Square wearing a "BUSH IS A TERRORIST" T-shirt, and I'm not saying that now. I don't lightly throw around such labels to make a rhetorical point that alienates half the room and elicits huzzahs from the other half. That's not constructive argument, and I hope I'm doing better here.

I just think it's worth pointing out that the same generalities that usefully bring Saddam and Osama under the common-enemy umbrella — and which, as you noted, resonate with European fascism — could easily be applied by reasoned people to where the Bush Administration is taking us.

Now go ahead and blister me. Or better yet, tell me why I'm wrong and why I shouldn't be as scared as I am.

You forgot:

(4) A Cult of Death - George W. Bush's Texas trailed only China in executions.

And before any angry responses pour in, no, I am not trying to compare Bush to Saddam or Bin Laden. I'm merely pointing out, as was Brad A., I believe, that those four similarities do not "prove" a connection between Baathism and Islamism. Bush fits in to those four categories (OK, perhaps with a bit more forcing), but he's nothing like them and they're not a whole lot like each other.

The only thing that really connects them is that they are both bad and both muslim. You might as well just come out and say that you think all bad muslims are part of a conspiracy, if that's what you really mean. Those four categories simply look like a lot of justification to me.

They may very well have worked together at one point or another, simply because they have a common enemy. That doesn't mean they are in conspiracy together. The US worked with Iraq in the 80s against Iran - but I think you will agree there was no Baathist/American conspiracy.

The two are ideologically opposed, for the most part hate each other, and at worst may have worked together on occasion out of convenience (although I haven't seen convincing evidence of even that).

What happened was that the "parallels" or "common elements" or what have you were chosen at an unhelpfully high level of generality — an umbrella cast so wide that you could include just about anybody. You can even haul in such radically different and ideologically opposed elements as the Iraqi government and al Qaeda.

The three chosen species in this broad-ranging genus were two Arab regime/movements and European fascism, presumably to meet the writer's purposes, which are

(1) to develop a connection between Saddam and Osama, and
(2) to cast them as a threat deserving of a full-scale mobilization, as was appropriate during World War II.

Never mind what else gets caught in this net: we're to presume that the Baathists and al Qaeda will find one another and hook up. The real genus dictating this analysis is, and I agree with Mike, Arab and [at least] nominally Muslim. That is, the analysis is either artfully crafted as a pretext over conscious racism, or it's an attempt to rationalize feelings of racism that the writer actually harbors but does not recognize. I'm going to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and argue for the latter.

Though perhaps more sophisticated and subtle in its analysis, this discourse reminds me of an email forward I received a while ago entitled "Why We're in Iraq." The message contained a .jpeg of a tank with a laundry list of American casualties at the hands of Arabs stenciled on its back. It explained that we're in Iraq because Hezbollah killed 200+ Marines in the 80s, because Osama blew up the U.S.S. Cole and crashed planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

The undercurrent is, of course, that all the culprits are Arabs, they're fungible, so just pick one we can make a reasonable case against (or one we can actually find) and we'll kick 'em around for a while. That's enough to satisfy a nondiscriminating (or should I say "discriminating?") population of voters. And regrettably, I think it satisfies the intellects in this White House, who state their case more subtly, but it's conceptually the same thing.

So I'm the first to use the "r-word." But I'm surprised that in all our back-and-forths about the war and post-9/11 security issues, we've never discussed it.

Well, I disagree somewhat (surprise!). And, more importantly, you've both given great examples of why I don't put much faith with the Democrats no matter how much I disagree with Bush on some issues. Instead of examining the situation, tackling the arguments as presented, commenting thoughtfully, dealing with reality – the kneejerk reaction is to turn it into an attack on Bush.

Yes, the nets are cast wide in Berman's analysis, but we're talking orders of magnitude narrower than you both are taking it.

Without trying to be clever with the apophasis, read the points again -- and this time read beyond the first three summary words of each point.

The perpetrators of the sinister conspiracies are same: Jews, Zionists, America, the West. The sought-after paradises are different imaginings of the same long-gone Islamic Empire. The means to this end is a totalitarian state (secular or theocratic) reached through a glorious process of purges and deaths on a massive scale.

Unless you're trying to be cute, this is nothing like the Bush Administration. And by trying to boomerang the subject back into an attack on Bush, I think you risk missing the key insight that this analysis could offer.

Many people have made the argument, and I think it's one worth examining, that both modern Arab Nationalism (e.g. Baathism) and Islamist terrorism have imported many philosophical ideas from early-twentieth century European fascism and ethnic nationalism. But they lack a countervailing tradition of political liberalism to resist them. Understanding how these ideas take root (or could take root) within Arab and Muslim traditions is crucial to winning the war of ideas that I believe we are in.

There are more things to be done than just scoring points in the Shirts v. Skins game of Washington politics.