What is "Islamo-fascism"?

I don't often agree with Pat Buchanan. I don't often agree with Greorge Will, either. But these two pundits at least have a conservative integrity sorely lacking in the likes of Bush cultists like Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, and O'Reilly.

Pat Buchanan wrote an op-ed piece called "Bush should drop 'Islamo-fascism'. This is a very pertinent column and speaks to why it is a nonsense term trotted out to rile the base. You should read the whole thing here and here are a few choice snippets [all emphasis added]:

There is no consensus as to what "fascism" means...

As a concept, writes Arnold Beichman of the Hoover Institution, "faschism" ... has no intellectual basis at all...

Their goal is to have Bush stuff al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran into the same "Islamo-fascist" kill box...

But Hussein was about as devout a practitioner of Isam as his hero, Joseph Stalin, was of the Russian Orthodox faith...

And whatever "Islamo-fascism" means, Syria surely is not it. It is a secular dictatorship Bush I bribed into becoming an ally in the Gulf War. The Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed in Syria...

America faces a variety of adversaries, enemies and evils. But the Bombs-Away Caucus [Buchanan has a way with words!], as Iraq and Lebanon reveal, does not always have the right formula. Al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran all present separate challenges calling forth different responses...

And once a guerrilla-terrorist movement takes over a state, it acquires state assets and interests that are then vulnerable to U.S. military and economic power.

Why did the ayatollah let the American hostages go as Reagan raised his right hand to take the oath of office? Why did Syria not rush to the rescue of Hezbollah? What [sic] did Ahmadinejad not rocket Tel Aviv in solidarity with his embattled allies in Lebanon? Res ipse loquitor. The thing speaks for itself. They don't want war with Israel, and they don't want war with the United States...

If Bush does not want a war of civilizations, he will drop these propaganda terms that are designed to inflame passions rather than inform the public of the nature of the war we are in, and the war we are not in.