Guess who’s joining the Giuliani campaign?

Norman Podhoretz has become Rudolph Giuliani’s senior foreign policy advisor. Podhoretz is the man who in the September 2002 Commentary urged that we invade, take over, and democratize about seven Muslim countries. As I wrote at the time:

Given these formidable obstacles on the road to global democracy [namely, that Arabs celebrate when their children become suicide terrorists], Podhoretz recognizes that the transformation of the Mideast is not going to be generated from within. Therefore, going way beyond anything the President has suggested, he urges that the United States overthrow the regimes of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, and that the U.S. then “impose a new political culture on the defeated parties. This is what we did directly and unapologetically in Germany and Japan after winning World War II…. ” While Podhoretz admits, in a partial bow to reality, that these countries, even under America’s benevolent guidance, could not be expected to become democratic overnight, he nevertheless insists that there is no essential reason why Islam couldn’t become modern and democratic, just as Judaism and Christianity did before it.

To my knowledge Podhoretz has never retracted the above statements. He is a super-Bush, still convinced that Iraq is a success or can be easily made into one.

Giuliani’s choice of the 77-year-old, half-frenzied pope of the neocons, as his foreign policy advisor supports my view that Giuliani would be even worse than Bush. It also assures that the neocons will be even more madly enthusiastic for the Giuliani candidacy than before, meaning that for the purpose of having a “strong” foreign policy, they will be willing and eager to destroy the Republican party as a party of social conservatism. Everything that’s been bad about the Bush years would be worse under Giuliani.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 10, 2007 03:16 PM | Send