World War IV
The Powerline Blog Honors Norman Podhoretz for his latest book
By blackhedd Posted in Foreign Affairs | War — Comments (19) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Last evening, Dan McLaughlin and I had the privilege of attending a dinner at the Four Seasons hotel, given by our friends at the Powerline blog. The purpose of the event was to honor longtime Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz on the occasion of his recently-published book World War IV.
Quite a constellation of journalists, bloggers and dignitaries were present. The evening featured speeches by Henry Kissinger, Mark Steyn and Mr. Podhoretz, followed by a panel discussion and Q/A. Look on this page from Gateway Pundit for some photos from the event. Scroll down the page and you'll see Dan (miscredited as "Ken") and yours truly (miscredited as anonymous!).
The subject was the Bush Doctrine.
Read on...
It seems almost impolite these days to point out that we're still engaged in a global war against terror, and more specifically against terror perpetrated by radicals in the name of Islam. Our nation's political discourse seems to have moved on to an obsession with "change." What do you suppose is the thing many people think needs to be changed?
Well, the Bush Administration's focus on confronting the Islamic terror threat, of course.
Sitting in the Four Seasons last night, I felt like I was in an isolated little pocket of awareness that the world still faces a determined enemy that can not to be confronted or defeated in conventional ways, and is fully committed to the destruction of Western society. It felt pretty lonely. I couldn't help imagining what it must have felt like in the dark days of the early Cold War, when the toughest enemy we faced was our own lack of conviction to continue the fight.
It's always interesting to get Dr. Kissinger's perspective. He called himself an "aspirant statesman" and Mr. Podhoretz a visionary prophet, and entertainingly pointed out the difference: the statesman deals in the possible and the visionary deals in the ideal. You need both types.
Part of the focus in Mr. Podhoretz's book is to compare the current world war with the three that preceded it. Some very interesting points came out of this in his remarks, as well as Dr. Kissinger's and Mark Steyn's.
The default approach to World War IV on the part of many observers is essentially identical to appeasement. (Steyn said that, to many poeple today, enemies are merely friends whose grievances we have not yet accommodated.) Appeasement was perhaps not an unreasonable approach in 1938. But now that we know where it led, it's unconscionable to pursue the same course and to ignore the lessons of some very bitter history.
We were also reminded that Churchill thought of World War II as an unnecessary war. That's because, as is well known, there were at least two lost opportunities to eliminate the Nazi threat through timely military action. Keep this in mind, because it will come back when we talk about Iran.
The key comparison to World War I is in the genesis of that war with the assassination of a minor Hapsburg prince, and ending in the dissolution of four global empires. Keep this in mind when people tell you that 9/11 was merely a lucky strike, easily forgotten, and ultimately unimportant.
I've already touched on the Cold War comparison. Not only exhaustion from World War II played into America's reluctance to fully engage the Soviet threat. There was also a strong sense of sympathy, particularly among policy and academic elites, for the very ideology that had pledged to supersede Western society. Today, as Mark Steyn pointed out, it's darned hard to find many people who even think the instinct for societal self-preservation is a good thing. To paraphrase a Rumsfeldism, we will have to fight World War IV with the people we have. And this presents a deep challenge.
Now there is also another key parallel between the Cold War and today: the presence of a reviled but visionary President of the United States.
Truman recognized the true dimensions of the Soviet threat and mobilized a coherent policy to contain it. For this, of course he was excoriated brutally at the time, not least by Republicans. Mr. Podhoretz pointed out in his remarks that after a bitter campaign in 1952, President Eisenhower came to office the following January tacitly understanding the critical importance of the Truman Doctrine, and he continued it.
Throughout the Cold War, there were constant questionings whether we could defeat the Soviets, and even whether we should. Same as now. We did hold on to win the Cold War, of course. Although no one mentioned Ronald Reagan in any of the public remarks during the evening, Mark Steyn did wonder whether, having won one ideological war, it's possible to summon the will to win another.
Today, we have the Bush Doctrine. To Norman Podhoretz, this is the only coherent policy response anyone has yet devised to the threat of global Islamic terror. And of course, there are only a handful of people left who think of the Bush doctrine without automatically thinking "dismal failure," "historic folly," and "stupidity." (Many of them were at the Four Seasons last night.)
The essence of the Bush Doctrine, of course, is that the only way to pacify the states susceptible to the sponsorship of terror, is to convert their regimes to liberal democratic ones, through any means necessary, including military means.
In consequence, Podhoretz advocates the destruction of Iran's nuclear capability. The intermediate steps in the logical chain were pointed out by Dr. Kissinger:
Nuclear weapons in Iran are intolerable, regardless of the nature of the regime. This is a matter of simple arithmetic, as a nuclear Iran will inevitably lead to responses by Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and perhaps other states. Speaking as a man who engineered our program to prevent nuclear war among only two players, he said that nuclear war is simply inevitable in a world with twenty or more. Simply inevitable.
I don't happen to necessarily accept that bringing liberal democracy to the states of the Middle East and elsewhere is the answer. I have problems with the Bush Doctrine as formulated in these terms. I do think that a robust, quasi-imperial approach to global power is more likely to work. It would also be responsive to a range of other foreign policy imperatives that were not the topic last night but are no less important. Dr. Kissinger came very close to connecting these dots when he hinted that a permanent American military presence in Iraq is needed.
The dilemma, of course, is that no amount of negotiation or diplomacy can forestall the accession of the current Iranian regime to nuclear capability. Anyone who thinks otherwise has implicitly accepted that this will be the outcome, as indeed the Europeans seem to have done.
At the end of the argument, you're left with an inescapable reality, which is that nuclear weapons are coming to Iran, and that nuclear war, with millions (or more) of dead people, lies ahead.
The only alternative is to bomb the Iranian nuclear sites. And the question was asked: do we even have the military capability of doing so? In Podhoretz's opinion, there is not the slightest doubt that this is technically possible. But is it politically possible, especially in the eleven months remaining to the Bush Presidency, and especially after the recent disastrous (and mendacious) NIE report? Several people pointed out that even President Bush has given signs of being resigned to the possibility that Iran will go nuclear, notably in the SoTU address.
In regard to current politics, Podhoretz had supported Giuliani for President and now is resigned to supporting McCain, who for all his faults does recognize the importance of winning World War IV. In terms of the Democrats, there seems no hope for Barack Obama. Podhoretz holds out a faint glimmer of hope that a President Clinton would emulate Eisenhower in 1953 and tacitly accept and continue current policy.
If we don't reverse Iran's nuclear ambitions, people fifty years from now will be asking about us, as they did of the British in 1936 and 1938: "Why on earth didn't they act when there was still time?"
If we do act now, however, and pursue a military action that will result in a slaughter of 100,000 or more Iranian innocents, our nation will live in permanent infamy. Since the lessons of history are so easily forgotten, we will replace the Nazis, the Soviets, and the Chinese Communists at the head of the list of bloodthirsty, evil nations, and will sacrifice any moral or political authority we have in the world.
There's no easy way out.
« So Tell Me, Mr. Immelt, Why Are You Killing American Servicemen? — Comments (30) | FARC And The Chavez Regime In Venezuela — Comments (0) »
World War IV 19 Comments (0 topical, 19 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
...if Obama wins the nomination.
We cannot let America return to the failed isolationism and appeasement of the past.
We've got to pull together, people.
Joel Pollak
Guide to the Perplexed
http://guidetotheperplexed.blogspot.com
and I just plugged it on my site, www.win-the-war.com
thanks for your good work
If we don't act now, I figure it will either be the cockroaches trying to figure out what caused the extinction of the hairless apes or everybody will be bowing to Mecca 5 times a day while chanting the praises of OBL.
--------------
I've thought we were going to wind up with a permanent presence in Iraq since we went in. There are multiple reasons for it:
* didn't convert Germany into a liberal democracy without the troops there and we bombed them into submission. Since we didn't bomb Iraq into submission, it will take even longer there
* still haven't left Germany and they are no longer on the enemy list. Once the region is pacified, allies station and train troops with each other as a sign of the strength of the alliance.
* Having troops stationed in Iraq will help control some of Iran's more extreme behaviors. It's one thing to launch terrorists into the US with an aircraft carrier in the area, it's quite another when the aircraft carrier is backed up by troops on the ground and a permanent airbase there as well.
* Having a stable liberal democracy in the region does serve as a beacon for other countries in the area. It's one thing when only the infidels have liberal democracies, its quite another when other Muslims have it too.
--------------
The after-WWII comparison is actually pretty good too. Part of what played into the "sympathy" is that there were in fact a number of people who weren't merely sympathizers, but in fact belonged to the Communist party and were pulling the levers of power here in the US from appointed positions. Instead of recognizing the truth of this Democrats demonized McCarthy to the point that his name is synonymous with slander. We have the same sort of thing going on today with Islamists kicking out military advisers who oppose their point of view. And in a lot of ways, the current situation is the follow-on to WWII in much the same way WWII was the follow-on to WWI. In WWII we left Nazi sympathizers free in the Middle East to pursue their ideology and now we continue that fight. I think of the cold war as part of a different chain of events that overlaps the time frame but not the causal chain. Until we have dealt with the underlying causes, the chain will continue. I think the Bush doctrine eventually solves this problem, but the timeframe we need to be thinking on is the century time frame, not the 4-yr plan time frame.
--------------
As for Iran and nukes, I'm not sure bombing their sites is the only way to forestall the program. (I also don't see that it necessarily needs to wind up with hundreds of thousands of dead Iranians if we do. I think a bit more work on the ground penetrators, screw the no nukes rules because you are now far enough underground to not have fallout problems, and you can take out the sites.) An alternative solution is to start working on the revolt that throws out the imams now before they have the bomb and make the bomb irrelevant to the regime that replaces them. If we DO have to go the bombing root, I think it is critically important to go the correct route: take out the most critical component of the bomb manufacturing process. Hint: it ain't the centrifuges. Answer: Hit them when the scientists and technicians are most likely to be in the facilities because they are the most critical component of the manufacturing process. Granted both of these options won't sit well with most people, but they are the options that get us through this intact.
--------------
Eisenhower has an advantage Hillary doesn't: As a general, he could appreciate what Truman was up to, and more importantly, I think that as a former soldier he didn't want more soldiers to die while recognizing that sometimes it was going to be necessary for them to. I'm not sure Hillary really cares either way, just as long as her poll numbers stay tolerable.
--------------
Finally, I'm not sure the problem isn't that they can't be defeated in conventional ways. I think part of our problem is that we have redefined conventional ways to the point that they are no longer conventional, at least on historical time scales as opposed to single lifetimes. When the Greeks fought, the conventional way you won a war was fighting the enemy until you no one was left to oppose you. Some were killed outright, some were taken as slaves, and some had been beaten down often enough that they were willing to convert to your ways including your religion. Same thing applied to the Romans. Same thing applied to the ancient Egyptians, Japanese, and Chinese. The Islamists are following the same principles. We're the only ones not following this convention. And no, I'm not buying its different because these people are loosely organized instead of centrally controlled. I think there are central points of control and we just aren't willing to attack them. And I'm praying what save us is there is a long pause before some add the "-- yet." to that last statement.
I should have clarified that by "defeating," I didn't just mean in the context of what might look like a set-piece land war.
We want to achieve our objectives without war if at all possible. But the tools of traditional diplomacy don't work on an adversary who believes with all his heart that he is commanded by all that is right and holy to wipe us out, and is not only willing but also happy to die in the attempt. In such a context, there are no shared interests that can serve as a basis for peace.
The traditional response to this by our friends on the Left is to deny it. They are convinced that radical Islam is just like us, and will respond to appeasement. This is of course delusional, but it does have the great virtue (from the Left's perspective) of enabling us to think of ourselves as nice people.
but I am skeptical as to whether even Podhoretz grasps the true nature of the enemy. In his writings (those with which I am familiar) he has denied an organic connection between Islam and terror, but rather gone in for the phrase "Islamofascism," which only confuses matters.
Jihad is a doctrine of Islam, and has been such since the very infancy of the religion. Its teaching is quite unlike anything else in the world's great religions: namely, that all manner of cruelty and aggression -- from pillage to ambush to enslavement -- may be justified, nay encouraged, so long as it is inflicted on the unbeliever. It also contains a corollary doctrine of the Dhimmia, which may be regarded as Jim Crow for infidels.
Holy War and Holy Subjugation are aspects of the Islamic religion. Calling them fascistic is simply an anachronism.
I wonder, also: was there any discussion of the domestic threat from Islam? For here the Cold War parallel is, with most writers, abandoned. But Jihadist penetration of our institutions continues apace, and even our most hardline hawks have so far ignored it, just as most people ignored Communists penetration for all those years in the 30s and 40s.
I will join with Powerline and others in praising Podhoretz once he acknowledges these two uncomfortable facts: that Jihad is native to Islam and no other; and that it is following in the Communist footsteps of subversion and sedition of our domestic institutions.
______________
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Claudia Rosett (who was sitting next to Dan and me) stood up to ask a question about nomenclature. She wanted to know if any of the room full of journalists and bloggers could come up with a concise name for the "War on Terror" that would resonate with many more people and thus produce some level of engagement with the problem. (She was implicitly questioning Podhoretz's formulation "World War IV" on the ground that many people don't accept that we're in a war. Many even reject thinking of the Cold War as a world war.)
At this point and several others, Podhoretz pointed out that the existential threat arising from radicalized Islam (as I always do, I'm avoiding "Islamofascism"), doesn't come from states or regimes. In this connection, he reminded us of Rafsanjani, the putative Iranian "moderate" who has said that the Islamic world can't possibly lose a nuclear war against Israel. That's for the simple reason that a war with millions of dead people would be the end of Israel, but just an easily-tolerable annoyance for the Islamic ummah as a whole. (That kind of thinking is what makes radicalized Islam such a deep existential threat, regardless of what you may think of their actual capabilities.)
So I think Podhoretz may not be as far from your view as it might appear.
It's true that there was no discussion in the public speeches about whether the terror threat from radical Islamists arises in a fundamental way from Islam itself. It's an important question, but I won't touch it either.
I'm not convinced this is an accurate statement. Certainly in as much as at least some states support it, repeating it without challenging it causes us to lay aside tools that would otherwise be useful in the fight. While I am amenable to Paul's argument that the roots of jihad are within the religion itself, I don't think jihad metastasizes into the cancer we currently have without significant state/regime support. Would the Palestinians continue their attacks against Israel if they did not receive significant aid from other state actors (including the US via its "humanitarian" aid) and in the face of determined Israeli resistance? I don't think so. Same applies to the terrorist actors on behalf of Syria and Iran, and other bad actors in the area, some of whom are nominally our friends/allies. If we were to apply the appropriate "conventional tools" against these state actors, I think much of the current terrorist threat would fade. Part of the problem of course is also that we demand too much proof of the connection to these bad actors, and they work to keep their networks changing and hidden in order to avoid those conventional tools.
...can be a useful tool in attenuating the terror threat?
If you accept that terror is perpetrated primarily by radicalized individuals, you can see that states and regimes are considered somewhat illegitimate. What matters is the Islamic community as a whole. In fact, some of OBL's worst opprobrium is reserved for the regimes of Middle Eastern states, and one bizarre side effect of the American campaign in Iraq is that Bashir Assad in Syria worries much less about being overthrown than he did a few years ago.
Of course, many Americans believe that terrorism is just a minor nuisance, and not a serious threat to begin with.
The specific urgency attached to Iran is the nuclear question, because a nuclear Iran would be the first step in what (to Kissinger and Podhoretz) is an unstoppable march to nuclear war. Kissinger departs from Podhoretz on this point, stressing that the ultimate result of a nuclear Iran will be war, regardless of the nature of the regime in Teheran.
I'm pretty sure that many Americans would join with the Europeans in rejecting the inevitability of nuclear war, and see no serious risk from a nuclear-armed Iran.
I just don't buy that the problem is Islam itself. Every religion and ideology has its extremists that attempt to subvert its principles to serve their murderous intents. OBL is twisting Islam to stand for exactly what you are saying it must; Radical Jihad against the west. It is an interpretation of Islam that is the problem, not Islam, and when you venture to postulate otherwise you are reasoning right along the lines of OBL, Hitler, the KKK, and any other racist, bigoted, or prejudiced person that desires to ostracize a group of people.
Go ahead, make your jokes, Mr. Jokey... Joke-maker. But let me hit you with some knowledge. Quit now.
-White Goodman
Every religion and ideology has its extremists that attempt to subvert its principles to serve their murderous intents.
There is no "subversion" of the doctrine of jihad going on here. Bin Laden is no theological innovator. A serious investigation of the matter will disclose that he is a rather banal and conventional thinker. His rhetoric and reasoning echoes Jihadist literature that dates from the 8th century. The origins of the Jihad lie in the most primitive texts and traditions of the Islamic religion.
when you venture to postulate [that Islam is the problem} you are reasoning right along the lines of OBL, Hitler, the KKK, and any other racist, bigoted, or prejudiced person that desires to ostracize a group of people.
I postulate that the institution and doctrine of Jihad, along with its corollaries, is the problem. I postulate, further, that Jihad is a very old doctrine, with roots extending back to the earliest age of the Islamic religion. I postulate, finally, that it is a wicked and intolerable doctrine, which we ought to make our business to proscribe.
I recommend that you temper your remarks in the future. If it is "racist" or "bigoted" to denounce a doctrine, then we are in deep trouble.
______________
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
He's been writing about this for nearly many years
As it says in title Don't Worry - Be Happy !!!
Barack Hussein Obama is here to make peace with the world and especially Iran and Venezuela will soon be our friends /pals !!!!
is "Liberalizing Germany in the 20's paved the way for Hitler."
As Churchill himself points out in his Memoirs, a parliamentary constitution with all the latest improvements was imposed on a nation with a long tradition of autocracy. A constitutional monarchy would have been a better choice. It would have empowered the government sufficiently to keep Hitler from using the parliamentarian process to rise attain the highest political office. It would also have attached the people to the government more so that they resisted radicalism.
I'm all in favor of making Iraq a constitutional republic, and I also favor helping other parts of the Middle East become more constitutional and free (Iran, for example, whose history before the Revolution of 1979 proves it can have a relatively free, stable, and popular government).
But obviously it is not a good idea, neither in the short-term nor in the long-term, to attempt to attempt to turn every Middle Eastern country into a constitutional republic. Some countries would in fact devolve into radical Islamic tyrannies in the image of Hamas-controlled Gaza. This would likely be the fate of most countries in North Africa for instance, and also Saudi Arabia. (Morocoo, the exception to the North African countries, proves the rule: it has kept its long tradition of monarchy and thus prevented the rise of radicals to political power.)
So we need to blend Podhoretz's vision with Nixonian realism. Complete liberal reform will work well in some countries, but in others we should either maintain the status quo or, depending on the situation, try to encourage a kind of constitutional monarchy.
Perhaps this is eventually what we will end up with after a couple more presidential administrations.
Yep, it doesn't look like there are many options outside of direct military intervention with Iran. Russia is really acting the part of a tough guy about it too, and that complicates matters. Public opinion would go against us, much like it did after Iraq, but probably worse. That is bearable, but not if a prolonged struggle ensues. I really think that no matter what we decide, Israel will take matters into their own hands and force our own hand either way. Maybe in the long term Iraq can grow into the regional superpower that right now is nonexistent and that Iran is trying hard to be. I think that if America can control regional superpowers than that is better than trying to be every regions super power.
Go ahead, make your jokes, Mr. Jokey... Joke-maker. But let me hit you with some knowledge. Quit now.
-White Goodman
Iraq is well-positioned to be the breadbasket of the Middle East. If they concentrate on developing a modern agricultural industry (including re-developing the agriculture that got neutralized as a result of mismanagement by the Coalition Provisional Authority), they could become an economic spark plug for the whole region.
At the risk of opening up a threadjack, I think that a quasi-imperialistic approach is needed in Iraq, including a permanent military presence. The geopolitical stakes are simply too high to give Iraq the luxury of time to develop a functioning liberal democracy. (That's not to say that an Iraqi national government in collaboration with American military forces can't or shouldn't develop a functioning national security apparatus over the course of several years.)
and that breadbasket idea I'd forgotten about. I think I've seen it elsewhere, but it's been awhile. Thanks for raising it.
Just as an aside here, it's nice when we occasionally get to put a face to these names we've read so much, people whose advice and analysis we enjoy so much (even when we don't agree with it.)
Blackhedd looks a lot like I imagined he would. You, not so much -- for some reason I expected a big, NFL defensive line kind of figure.
Support the Patriot Post | Defend Liberty - Join the NRA| Visit me at TMR
WW 4 and America Alone are the best snapshots of the century so far. His book called The Prophets was also great. PLEASE read 'moderate muslims, wherefore art thou?' It's at the top of www.darrellepp.com and here's stuff on the death of free speech in canada, and james madison and ben franklin and john witherspoon.
http://www.darrellepp.com/?p=87
http://www.darrellepp.com/?p=85
http://www.darrellepp.com/?p=85
http://www.darrellepp.com/?p=78
http://www.darrellepp.com/?p=79
http://www.darrellepp.com/?p=44