"Many of the voices that called for, and then bungled, military intervention in Iraq are now calling for war with Iran. Why should the rest of the world think that conflict with a larger and more resolute enemy would be handled any more capably?"
This is the opening line to Neocon traitor Fukuyama. He whines about failed policy with vigor when at one time Fukuyama was a proponent of the very policy that was implemented.
The only thing that was wrong in the Iraqi invasion was not nailing down a legitimate reason to take down a Middle East de-stabilizer in genocidal Saddam Hussein and not nailing down serious military rules of engagement. The rules of engagement were based on political fallout and the stupidity of living up to being politically correct. The fight was not taken to insurgents with the same vigor as the politicians should have allowed the military to execute.
The Bush Administration worried too much how the MSM would fire words of hatred through the written and televised word.
For example: the MSM correctly exposed Abu Ghraib as an atrocity, the Left Wing news hounds used words of razors as an example of why it was wrong to be in Iraq. Abu Ghraib was wrong but associating that incident with taking down Saddam is ludicrous. Saddam was a butcher and his sons were butcher/rapist heir apparent.
Another example is the "Haditha Massacre." We really can't call it a massacre any longer, it has been proven that the so-called "Haditha Massacre" was staged by insurgents and fed to lying journalists who believed the lies of the Islamofascists rather than good American boys fighting for the Liberty of Iraq. Haditha should be labeled the Incident in which the MSM promoted the propaganda of the enemy at home and abroad.
If there is a self-defeating American hegemony, it is because the rest of the world would rather believe the lies of Islamists thinking peace will result rather than joining America in unity and take down these barbarous murderers at all costs. There should be an Allied WWII mindset: a full and complete surrender of the enemy rather it is a rogue nation or a multitude of transnational terrorists.
Norman Podhertz is a man I highly respect. He is a reason that I still lean toward being a Neocon. Podhertz perceives who the enemy is and calls for victory – the extreme prejudice kind of victory in which the rules of war is to engage the enemy to its utter destruction.
It sounds harsh however if the War on Terrorism is continued to be fought with namby pamby rules of engagement it will last for decades until someone figures out the obvious to win. Just as the Allies figured it out to win WWII against Axis Authoritarian regimes of Germany, Japan and Hitler military puppet Italy.
(This is really an anti-neocon website; however their exposition is concise and non-vindictive.)
Aside from Irving Kristol, few of the writers and ideologues associated with neoconservatism can claim as lasting an influence on the political faction as Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary magazine and an adjunct fellow at the rightist Hudson Institute. Under his editorship, which lasted from 1960 to 1995 (he is now editor at large), Commentary became the quintessential mouthpiece of the neoconservatives, serving as a soapbox from which Podhoretz and like-minded writers shaped the contours of what he called the neoconservative "tendency" as it began to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. From that platform, Podhoretz and others lambasted the anti-war movement, extolled the virtues of military power, attacked "appeasers" like George McGovern, and condemned the supposed amorality of the counterculture and of liberal social policies. Podhoretz also cofounded the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) in the mid-1970s to serve as a pressure group aimed at fighting back the politics of détente with the Soviet Union and championing a fierce anti-communism that became the central theme of the early presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Discussing Podhoretz's influence, Andrew Bacevich writes in his 2005 book The New American Militarism: "Once his own fling with sixties radicalism ended, Podhoretz launched a 'scorched-earth campaign against the New Left and counterculture.' From his editorial command post at Commentary ... Podhoretz did much to create and refine the fiercely combative neoconservative style. That style emphasized not balance (viewed as evidence of timidity) or the careful sifting of evidence (suggesting scholasticism) but the ruthless demolition of any point of view inconsistent with the neoconservative version of truth, typically portrayed as self-evident and beyond dispute" (p. 72).
In his writings, Podhoretz commonly explicated themes associated with neoconservatism, including its constant preoccupation with weakness, the centrality of the Holocaust, the belief in U.S. exceptionalism, and the view that U.S. military force is a unique arbiter of good in global affairs. For Podhoretz, the Vietnam War was the new "Munich"—"the self-evident symbol of a policy that must never be followed again." (Munich is the classic symbol of appeasement because it is where Neville Chamberlain of Britain and other leaders agreed in 1938 to allow Adolf Hitler to take control of land in Czechoslovakia, thus fostering Nazi expansion.) The debacle in Vietnam had resulted in the lessening of the possibility of the United States wielding its military power, a result that Podhoretz considered potentially catastrophic. As he wrote in 1982: "The survival not only of the United States but of free institutions everywhere in the world depends on a resurgence of American power." Thus, he and other neocons in the 1970s, including his wife Midge Decter, struggled to overcome the post-Vietnam "malaise" in U.S. culture, which they thought was expressed in the counterculture and the "appeasement" polices of both the Nixon and Carter presidencies (quotes in this paragraph cited in Bacevich, pp. 74-75).
Podhoretz gained a reputation while at Commentary for overusing Holocaust imagery to describe contemporary events. Remarking on Podhoretz's work, Peter Novick, author of The Holocaust in American Life, writes: "Once one starts using imagery from that most extreme of events, it becomes impossible to say anything moderate, balanced, or nuanced; the very language carries you along to hyperbole ... Anyone who scoffed at the idea that there were dangerous portents in American society had not learned 'the lessons of the Holocaust.'" This preoccupation also found expression in neoconservatives' views on Israel. As Decter once wrote while criticizing politicians whom she felt were not sufficiently supportive of Israel: "In a world full of ambiguities and puzzlements, one thing is absolutely easy both to define and locate: that is the Jewish interest. The continued security—and in those happy places where the term applies, well-being—of the Jews, worldwide, rests with a strong, vital, prosperous, self-confident United States" (cited in Gerson, Neoconservative Vision, p. 165).
Describing the sharp neoconservative reaction to perceived anti-Semitism in the United Nations following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the conservative scholars Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke argue that a consensus gradually emerged among key neoconservatives like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Irving Kristol, and Podhoretz that "America and Israel ... shared a common ideological struggle against common enemies. The 1970s saw the vague consensus of neoconservatism ... wrap itself tightly around the belief that America must have a self-assured and robust elite, which must be willing to employ U.S. power promptly and resolutely, if need be, and prepared to stand up to the USSR along with its anti-American and anti-Semitic allies at the UN and beyond" (Halper and Clarke, America Alone, p. 60).
For Podhoretz and his cohorts, the world is in a constant state of crisis. Living under this constant threat demands a stark choice between "surrender or war," as Podhoretz once wrote when criticizing the Carter administration (cited in Bacevich, p. 77). Near the end of the 1980s, as the Soviet Union began to crumble, Podhoretz's Commentary continued to warn of impending doom from the Soviets. In 1987, he published an article by Eugene Rostow, which argued: "The Soviet program of indefinite expansion achieved by the aggressive use of force ... [is still] the central problem ... of world politics and American national security." A year later, the French writer Jean-Francois Revel wrote in Commentary that glasnost was a ruse: "It is an instrument through which [Gorbachev] can consolidate his own power by using the press to indict and, little by little, eliminate his predecessors' men" (quotes from Ehrman, p. 175).
With the end of the Cold War, Podhoretz quickly joined forces with a second generation of neoconservatives who began championing a new U.S. interventionist policy, a notion that found preeminent expression in Charles Krauthammer's 1990 Foreign Affairs article, "The Unipolar Moment," which argued that the United States should take advantage of its position as the unique global superpower to impose its priorities across the world. Unlike some of his contemporaries, such as Robert Tucker and Irving Kristol, Podhoretz fully embraced this new campaign, which eventually coalesced around the many ideologues who created the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. Podhoretz signed PNAC's founding statement of principles, which called for a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" that would ensure "American global leadership." It added: "we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."
After 9/11, Podhoretz became one of the most prominent supporters of the view, initially dreamed up by neoconservative academic Eliot Cohen, that the United States was fighting World War IV. In a 2004 Commentary article, Podhoretz opined: "We are only in the very early stages of what promises to be a very long war, and Iraq is only the second front to have been opened in that war: the second scene, so to speak, of the first act of a five-act play. In World War II and then in World War III [the Cold War], we persisted in spite of impatience, discouragement, and opposition for as long as it took to win, and this is exactly what we have been called upon to do today in World War IV."
He added, employing that old standby of Holocaust imagery: "For today, no less than in those titanic conflicts, we are up against a truly malignant force in radical Islamism and in the states breeding, sheltering, or financing its terrorist armory. This new enemy has already attacked us on our own soil—a feat neither Nazi Germany nor Soviet Russia ever managed to pull off—and openly announces his intention to hit us again, only this time with weapons of infinitely greater and deadlier power than those used on 9/11. His objective is not merely to murder as many of us as possible and to conquer our land. Like the Nazis and Communists before him, he is dedicated to the destruction of everything good for which America stands."
In a 2002 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Podhoretz borrowed a line from George Kennan's famous 1947 article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which argued for a policy of containing and rolling back the Soviet Union, to describe the war on terror. Replacing the words "Russian-American relations" in the original with "Islamic terrorism," Podhoretz said: " The thoughtful observer of Islamic terrorism will ... experience a certain gratitude for a Providence which, by providing the American people with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear."
Podhoretz is the author of several books, including The Norman Podhoretz Reader: A Selection of his Writings from the 1950's through the 1990's (2003); The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are (2002); My Love Affair with America (2000); Ex-Friends (1999); The Bloody Crossroads: Where Literature and Politics Meet (1986); Why We Were in Vietnam (1982); Making It (1980); The Present Danger; Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir (1979); and Doings and Undoings: The Fifties and After in American Writing (1966).
Even the YouTube link/video is meant to expose how the Neocons are designing to take over the world, but again that is a misperception. The Neocon goal is to maintain American hegemony to maintain the American Way of Life.
Victor Davis Hanson is awesome! Hanson explains the reasons as to why the Democrats will be bellicose against Bush, but will do little to actually stop the troop surge.
The bottom line is the hypocritical Dems are going to wait and see which way the fortunes of war turn so they can turn with it. The Dems simply wish to continue to transform America into a socialist morally relative nation. To do so the Dems have to maintain political power. To maintain political power they have to undermine Republican, Neocon and Christian Right successes by twisting the light into darkness.
The Dem alliance with the Mainstream Media (MSM) and fringe Left Wing organizations is all about American society transformation. The Dems will not talk about this transformation because when Joe Voter hears it the Dems know they will not like it.
Thus the Dem strategy is not to put forth solutions but twist truth or blacken Conservative Republicans. In today’s case it is this mantra: “if Bush said it or thought of it, it must not be good for America.” It is a hate Bush mantra, not solve problems mantra.
This is one of Ann Coulter’s best columns. Fitzgerald is a tool of the Democratic Party to try and embarrass the Bush Administration in its handling of the war in Iraq. If there can be some court evidence discovered that Saddam Hussein had zero interest in nuke WMD, then the Democrats feel the have the ammunition to nuke Neocon and Christian Right influence and possibly the entire Republican Party.
Patrick Fitzgerald was given a Special Prosecutor’s mandate to hunt down the Neocon that must have released Valerie Plame’s name to the public as an employee for the CIA. As if Plame had any operations that could harm lives of CIA operatives in Africa. Here is the great mystery: Plame is to have sent her husband (an anti-Iraq invasion persona) to Niger to discover if Saddam Hussein was looking to buy Yellow Cake to make nukes. The Wilson adventure was so secret that he told everyone who his wife was and she sent him for the CIA.
Of Course it has been proven that anything related to what Wilson says on his Niger adventure has been proven a lie.
And yet since Plame’s name hit the Mainstream Media (MSM), someone had to fry for crossing the CIA. The data I have read is that the CIA has not gotten along with President Bush and very likely has fed the President corrupted or unusable intelligence. I am guessing that the CIA is trying to cover their butts by making a Presidential Administration they widely dislike to look bad.
I surmise this because both Plame and Wilson were hacks of nearly zero importance to the CIA or the Diplomatic Corps. Yes, they both worked their particular professions however they hardly handled life threatening or Security threatening port folios.
Fitzgerald has spent his millions of tax payer’s money on this Leftist hunt of Neocons and has NOT indicted one person for actually leaking to the MSM Plame’s name. This is the case even after every indication is that Richard Armitage initiated the LEAK.
Armitage is not a Neocon, he is just an Arab loving old school Republican that worked in the State Department (or was it Defense – who cares?).
So what is the result of Fitzgerald’s Independent Prosecutor’s investigation? It was to try to catch a Neocon in a lie and prosecute the Neocon for perjury. The Dems really want to nail Karl Rove, but they could not dig any dirt that could stick to him. Next was Vice-President Cheney’s Chief of Staff I. Scooter Libby.
The indictment on Libby was for obstruction of Justice by lying or in other words perjury. Fitzgerald’s case is the Special Prosecutor’s accusation versus Libby’s claim of an inexact memory. Memory lapses that are very plausible because of all the duties a Chief of Staff performs, recalling insignificant details are not filed in the human memory banks say like a sitting President having oral sex with a White House intern before remembering her name in an actual perjury case.
When 9/11 occurred, only the Neocons had a plan to address terrorism. The Clinton strategy was immersed in treating Islamofascist terrorists as international criminals rather than enemy combatants determined to alter America’s way of life.
Neocons influenced President Bush to take down Islamofascist regimes to introduce democracy as a way of politically combating the seed bed of terrorism. Ironically there has been more success with this in Afghanistan than in Iraq. I say ironic because Afghanistan’s people are steeped in the violent ideology of Wahhabi and Taliban interpretations of Mohammedanism. That populist is the epitome of a fundamentalist Mohammedan.
Iraq though Mohammedan; faced a quarter century of Baathist-Socialist Mohammedanism. Old Saddam Hussein attempted to enforce a degree of secularism into the Mohammedanism of Iraq. The Shi’ites hated him for it. It is in Iraq that America currently faces the greatest challenges concerning the introduction of democracy. Radical Mohammedans have flocked to Iraq to fight American soldiers as if it was a Jihad against an invading Crusader army.
This is unfortunate because America’s desire was to build a democratic rule of law under the aegis of a stable government. Iraq is so divided by Radical Mohammedanism from foreign Sunnis and Iran influenced Shi’ites, I am of the opinion that Western Democracy will not take hold as the rule of law in Iraq.
Thus there is the appearance that the Neocon strategy of transformation in the Middle East is a failed strategy. Since it was the Neocon baby, it is the Neocons that are the stigma and scapegoats of a failed nation building strategy.
Something to consider: who had a better or even an alternative plan? Answer: NO ONE!
Neocon strategists have developed another plan. I have not heard a person who identifies himself as a Neocon say the nation building democracy plan is currently a failure. There is a certain amount of political hubris as there is with all political ideologies. Do not think for a minute that Left Wing thinking is devoid of hubris. After all Left Wing utopianism is alive and strong even after the collapse of the Communist Soviet Union as a failed structure for governing people. That also is hubris.
In America the Left Wing plan for the War on Terrorism in Iraq is to cut-n-run enabling the appearance of victory to Islamofascism and radical Mohammedanism. That strategy will only allow the continued growth and eventual domination of the radical reactionary interpretations of Mohammed, the Quran, the Hadiths, the Sunna and Sharia Law and so on. The concept of a moderate Mohammedanism is shrinking daily in the Mohammedan dominated nations and Mohammedan minorities in Western lands. Clearly the cut-n-run strategy is will mess up the global future of Western Civilization.
The Neocons and (smart) Conservatives are calling for a “troop surge” to alter strategy to confront terrorists with a more root out the rodent vermin goal. Then extricate American troops. If democracy latches on in Iraq or Afghanistan, it will be a Mohammedan cultural version. Civil Rights and Liberty as we know will not exist in a Mohammedan democracy; however a better rule of law may develop that goes after radical terrorists in ways that only a Mohammedan can comprehend.
Or despotism may win the day because medieval thought patterns may be too entrenched in Mohammedan culture until a moderate transformation (hopefully) over takes the radical. Then America will back to the old fashioned client States. The Client States will receive American support for existence as long as they quell the radicals in their nation. Both versions may not be amenable to American and Western National Interests.
President Bush has assigned General Patraeus to replace General Abizaid as the Commander land troops in Iraq. He will employ the NEW military strategy and we will see where the chips fall. If the Democratic Congress interferes with Patraeus, the new strategy will certainly fail. Let us think long term and not short term. The short term will result in long term anguish for America and the West. The Short term will embolden current minority Mohammedans to embrace its radical nature, placing the so-called moderate on the shelf of insignificance.
Fred Kagan believes there is no “third way” in dealing with Iraq. Kagan lists two choices: “stay and try to win, or cut, run, and lose.” This is a fairly neoconservative black and white scenario. Kagan senses any plan to find a middle course will just muddle the situation and end up in failure.
The middle course is what finished America’s involvement with Vietnam. A middle course will make left wing comparisons to Vietnam become an actuality. I hate to say it but “stay the course” is the best plan of success in Iraq.
Staying the course is the end game. The means to the end game has to change. America is dangerously close to the failure of the middle course strategy. There are obvious reasons for this – politics at home.
The “cut and run” crowd give the appearance of expediting leaving Iraq like a partial birth abortion. Take must of the body out and kill the Iraqi option with a lethal injection to the neck, then chop the head off. Shazzam! An unpopular war is ended with only the moral implications to deal with.
The “stay the course” crowd has the correct end in mind but are allowing politics to unsettle the execution of a winning plan.
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