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Another mind-destroyed neocon
In my discussion of Norman Podhoretz’s book, I showed how in a key passage he acknowledges the single most devastating argument against Muslim democratization—that it empowers jihadists rather than defeating them—and then dismisses it with a non-sequitur. I adduced this as proof that Podhoretz has stopped thinking about the meaning of what he is saying. Mona Charen, once a sharp and incisive though not especially profound conservative columnist, reads the same passage, and—guess what?—she sees Podhoretz’s non-sequitur as an apt response to the criticism, triumphantly dispelling all doubts about the wisdom of democratization:
Podhoretz’s critique of the Right is polite but forceful. He replies to those who have accused Bush of naivete in promoting democracy in the Middle East. Yes, he acknowledges, elections have brought Hamas to power in the Palestinian areas, gave the Muslim Brotherhood seats in the Egyptian parliament and provided Hezbollah a share of power in Lebanon. And yet, as Fouad Ajami, Middle East Studies professor at Johns Hopkins, has written, “while the ballot is not infallible, it has broken the pact with Arab tyranny.” Podhoretz adds that “bad as this option may have been by certain political standards, it was—and still is—marked by more than a touch of nobility.”So, by the reasoning of Podhoretz, Ajami, and Charen the cheerleader, if complete democracy were installed in every Muslim country, and if it led to the rise to power of al Qaeda-type regimes in every Muslim country, that would be a success for democratization, since the pact with Arab tyranny would be broken! Moreover, even if these al Qaeda-type regimes were not the best possible outcome from our point of view, we would find consolation in the fact that our deluded actions that had put jihadists in power were marked by more than a touch of nobility! When they say things like this, the neoconservatives—the people who claim to be America’s best guides on its national and international policies—reveal themselves as utopian liberals who have literally lost their ability to think and reason. I wonder how many people see this.
Also, let us not forget who is the presidential candidate who has made Norman Podhoretz his senior foreign policy advisor and upon whom the neocons have set all their hopes: Rudolph Giuliani. Email entry |