JM Book Blog
11/09/2007
Podhoretz: World War IV
Norman Podhoretz: World War IV - The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism
Hardcover: 230 pages
Publisher: Doubleday 2007
ISBN: 0385522215
Second Opinion: Michiko Kakutani /New York Times
¶ 11/09/2007 03:47:00 ip.
Norman Podhoretz: World War IV - The Long Struggle Against IslamofascismHardcover: 230 pages
Publisher: Doubleday 2007
ISBN: 0385522215
Norman Podhoretz, the former editor of the Commentary magazine, is refreshing reading. Podhoretz does not fear controversy or grand challenges: his aim to vindicate George W. Bush as one of the better US presidents is not a modest undertaking.
"Nothing, however - neither the polls nor the antiwar forces nor the cconservative defeatists - could or would weaken George W. Bushs own resolve to stay the course - not only on the Iraqi front but in World War IV as a whole. But could he, in the two years he had left as president, carry the American people with him?" p. 197
"Not, to say it again, that I for one have any doubts about the leadership of George W. Bush. In fact, I believe that on top of the ways in which he already resembles Harry Truman will come the belated recognition of him as a great president." p. 205
From this perspective George W. Bush is a solid president that is hampered only by the "domestic insurgency". Always provocative and never afraid of an open debate about the philosophical foundations of American foreign policy Podhoretz aims to construct a new historical reading that justifies the unnecessary Iraq war as part of the world-wide struggle against radical Islam that started with 9/11.
The 1st and 2nd world wars are universally accepted. 3rd world war - Cold War - not so. It would seem commonsensical that the Cold War could and maybe should be read in that way: as an ideological battle between democracy and Communism - the post-1945 version of Nazist totalitarian utopias. World War 4, especially the Iraq front of it, on the other hand seems to be a more elusive case. Saddam Hussein, of course, was not a radical religious fanatic and did not plan the 9/11. My long-term guess is that history might play a trick on us all and these little facts might just be forgotten by the common memory: there is no arguing that Iraq has become (or that it has been constructed as) a front in the battle between Iranian backed terrorists and Allied figthing for democratic Iraq.
The 1st and 2nd world wars are universally accepted. 3rd world war - Cold War - not so. It would seem commonsensical that the Cold War could and maybe should be read in that way: as an ideological battle between democracy and Communism - the post-1945 version of Nazist totalitarian utopias. World War 4, especially the Iraq front of it, on the other hand seems to be a more elusive case. Saddam Hussein, of course, was not a radical religious fanatic and did not plan the 9/11. My long-term guess is that history might play a trick on us all and these little facts might just be forgotten by the common memory: there is no arguing that Iraq has become (or that it has been constructed as) a front in the battle between Iranian backed terrorists and Allied figthing for democratic Iraq.
One group in the receiving end of Podhoretz's tirade is the so-called foreign policy realists (pp. 131-146). My reading of realism - that a nation should shun unnecessary grand foreign policy ambitions and concentrate on finessing her own affairs - is ignored by Podhoretz's idealism:
"I ask, who today either remembers or cares about Truman's domestic policies?" p. 205
