Podhoretz has learned nothing

Writing at The American Thinker (the editor of which considers “neoconservative” to be an anti-Semitic code word if it is used by a non-neoconservative), Rick Richman sums up Norman Podhoretz’s World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism:

Podhoretz’s book is a sustained defense of the Bush Doctrine—which principally features a combination of (a) a pre-emptive military strategy to preclude fascist states representing threats to American security from amassing weapons of mass destruction, and (b) the promotion of a forward strategy of freedom to compete with (and ultimately replace) the anti-American fascist ideology.

Leaving aside the fact that in Richman’s treatment the “Islamo” part of the absurd term “Islamo-fascist” has disappeared entirely, leaving our Islamic adversaries being described as “fascists,” pure and simple, I’m struck by Norman Podhoretz’s refusal to recognize the now well-attested and undeniable reality that political freedom in Muslim countries only liberates more “fascism,” i.e., more hard-line Islam. Yet even as he wants America to wage a world war against “Islamofascism,” Podhoretz, of course, also believes that Muslims in America are “assimilating.”

As Cromwell said to the Long Parliament, it needs to be said to the dangerously brain-hardened Podhoretz:

“You have been here too long for any good that you have done. In the name of God, go!”

- end of initial entry -

LA continues:

Asked by Scott at Powerline to explain his book, Podhoretz said that his book sets 9/11 and its aftermath

into the context of the role the United States has played in the world since 1941. Seen in this light, the struggle against the forces of Islamofascism into which 9/11 plunged us reveals itself as the direct successor to the wars against the totalitarian challenges to our civilization posed by Nazism in World War II and Communism in World War III (as the cold war becomes in this scheme of things). [Emphasis added.] Secondly, against critics both on the Left and the Right, World War IV offers what is probably the most full-throated statement yet published of the case for the Bush Doctrine, whose effort to make the Middle East safe for America by making it safe for democracy represents the only viable strategy for fighting and winning World War IV.

So there you have it. Podhoretz comprehends the war on “Islamofascism” by seeing it as a continuation of the war against Nazi Germany and of the Cold War against the USSR. His historical context for understanding Islam is twentieth century totalitarianism, not the 1,400 year old history and doctrines of Islam. He’s interested in America’s confrontation with totalitarian ideologies, so he fits Islam into that, and doesn’t need to know anything about Islam itself.

Powerline also quotes an excerpt from Podhoretz’s book at Opinion Journal:

It is impossible at this point to predict how and when the battle of Iraq will end. But from the vitriolic debates it has unleashed we can already say for certain that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, did not do to the Vietnam syndrome what Pearl Harbor did to the old isolationism. The Vietnam syndrome is back and it means to have its way. But is it strong enough in its present incarnation to do what it did to the honor of this country in 1975? Well acquainted though I am with its malignant power, I still believe that it will ultimately be overcome by the forces opposed to it in the war at home. Even so, I cannot deny that this question still hangs ominously in the air and will not be answered before more damage is done to the long struggle against Islamofascism into which we were blasted six years ago and that I persist in calling World War IV.

So for Podhoretz, it all comes down to: (1) We’re confronting totalitarianism, and (2) Do we have the will to confront it, or Will we retreat? He looks at reality and judges everything he sees as: Strength: good, Weakness, bad. And his notion of strength manifests itself in this mad global project, which he calls World War IV, in which we are simultaneously waging war on Muslims and democratizing them. There are questions about this project that a rational person might ask. Does it make sense? Does the way we’re going about it make sense? Can Muslims be changed in the way Podhoretz imagines? And are we even fighting the war that he thinks we’re fighting? But to Podhoretz it doesn’t matter. The conceit that we are fighting World War IV against the latest incarnation of our old totalitarian enemies takes over his mind completely and erases all doubts.

Also, as Podhoretz has made clear in previous writings, it was the fights against totalitarianism in World War II and the Cold War that made him (born in 1930) feel like an American for the first time and feel that America was a good country, which he, he has written, hadn’t felt growing up. So these were the formative experiences of his intellectual and political life, of his very sense of being an American rather than a Brooklyn Jew, as he has put it; and so it’s a reasonable supposition that he is projecting those earlier experiences that made him love America into the Islamic situation, all of which adds to his fervor and dogmatism.

The neocons are supposed to be intellectuals, but in reality they don’t think. They maintain a bunch of simplified scripts, formulae, and analogies in their heads which they mechanistically apply to the world, and they call this operation “thinking.” And because the left and the neocons are the only factions recognized in mainstream politics, and because the left is insane, the neocons’ luridly distorted rationality is the only quasi-rational game in town. The same situation leads the neocons to think of themselves as the only rational people in the world, making it unnecessary for them ever to examine their premises, even as they contemptuously dismiss everyone who disagrees with them. With the left on one side of them and the paleocons on the other, they cannot imagine that there is a view different from theirs that is rational. And so they don’t have to think.

LA continues:

Podhoretz’s Opinion Journal piece is all about how the left in the war on terror is like the left in the Cold War. Since the left wants us to retreat from Iraq without honor, as it made us retreat from Vietnam without honor, what Podhoretz wants to do is fight on bravely at all costs. His policy is simply to be the opposite of the left. But since the left is insanely anti-American and surrender-minded, being conservative means being insanely pro-American and bellicose; since the left doesn’t want to fight any war on America’s behalf, the right must feverishly imagine that we are waging “World War IV”—a “war” that in reality consists of holding actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, warrantless surveillance, and an occasional terrorist trial (not to mention the continued open immigration of our enemies and an open door for them at the White House). Of course, Podhoretz’s article is only an excerpt from his book, but there is nothing in it suggesting an interest in the Muslim problem separate from the left-right dynamics that form Podhoretz’s main paradigm for viewing the world.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 12, 2007 09:34 AM | Send