The useful fear of Islamofascists

I ran across this idea in two places this morning.

Egypt's dissidents were upset, too. "I feel disappointed and betrayed by George Bush," former political prisoner Saad Eddin Ibrahim told journalists in Prague. "He said that he is promoting democracy, but he has been manipulated by President Hosni Mubarak, who managed to frighten him with the threat of the Islamists."

And,

"Musharraf keeps telling the United States that if he stepped aside, the terrorists would capture power in Pakistan," says Roedad Khan, author of Pakistan: A Dream Gone Sour, a critical account of the country's leadership since independence in 1947. "It's a bogey(man). … The religious groups have no chance of capturing political power at the ballot box."

The religious parties fared poorly in a spring poll by the Washington-based International Republican Institute...

•Just 8.4% of Pakistani adults favored religious parties.

• Secular democratic parties got 38.9% backing.

Now, I don't know if the "Islamists" really represent as small of a threat as presented by these governmental dissidents, but I do believe that these governments benefit from a hyped presentation of the threat.

(Probably should add Saudi Arabia and a few others to the list.)

Related, The LATimes reports on US "soft pedaling" on Sudan in exchange for information about Al Qaeda in Iraq and elsewhere.

Sudan has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the insurgency in Iraq, an example of how the U.S. has continued to cooperate with the Sudanese regime even while condemning its suspected role in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur.

President Bush has denounced the killings in Sudan's western region as genocide and has imposed sanctions on the government in Khartoum. But some critics say the administration has soft-pedaled the sanctions to preserve its extensive intelligence collaboration with Sudan.

The relationship underscores the complex realities of the post-Sept. 11 world, in which the United States has relied heavily on intelligence and military cooperation from countries, including Sudan and Uzbekistan, that are considered pariah states for their records on human rights.....

This is a long article, but it's well worth a read.