The War Against World War IV by Neocon Norman Podhoretz

[norml]

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/special/A11902025_1.html Commentary


February 2005

The War Against World War IV

Norman Podhoretz

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A Second-Term Retreat?

Will George W. Bush spend the next few years backing down from the ambitious strategy he outlined in the Bush Doctrine for fighting and winning World War IV?

To be sure, Bush himself still calls it the "war on terrorism," and has shied away from giving the name World War IV to the great conflict into which we were plunged by 9/11. (World War III, in this accounting, was the cold war.) Yet he has never hesitated to compare the fight against radical Islamism, and the forces nurturing and arming it, with those earlier struggles against Nazism and Communism. Nor has he flinched from suggesting that achieving victory as the Bush Doctrine defines it may take as long as it took to win World War III (which lasted more than four decades—from the promulgation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989).

Even more than the Truman Doctrine in its time, the Bush Doctrine was subjected to a ferocious assault by domestic opponents from the moment it was enunciated. Then, when Bush actually started acting on it, the ferocity grew even more intense, finally reaching record levels of vituperation during the presidential campaign. But in defiance of everything that was being thrown at him, and in spite of setbacks in Iraq that posed a serious threat to his reelection, Bush never yielded an inch. Instead of scurrying for protective cover from the assault, he stood out in the open and countered by reaffirming his belief in the soundness of the doctrine as well as his firm intention to stick with it in the years ahead.

Thus, over and over again he said that he would stay the course in Iraq; that he would go on working for the spread of liberty throughout the greater Middle East (and democratic reform as a condition for the establishment of a Palestinian state); that he would continue reserving the right to take preemptive military action against what in his best judgment were gathering dangers to the security of this country; and that he would if necessary do so unilaterally.

Why then, given that he was reelected on this pledge, should a question now be raised about whether he will keep it? And why—more strangely still—should the answer most often be that he is indeed about to renege?

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[bluestateguy]

1. The neo-cons keep the heat on Bush

I don't think they have 100% trust that he is really ideologically "one of them". Bush did not campaign in 2000 as a neoconservative, but flip-flopped to that ideology after 9/11.

Frum and Perle's book actually tries to prod the Administration into more of a neo-con posture. And PNAC continues to say that Bush's defense budgets are "inadequate"; they also criticized him for the assualt on Fallujah--because he waited too long to do it.

Still, I think Podhoretz, Frum, Perle, Pletka and all the other neo-con chickenhawks will find that Bush will do most of what they want him to do. Though I think Bush will take a pass at picking a fight with North Korea.