Full page editorial in WSJ: "I Hope And Pray That Bush Will Do It" - The Case For Bombing Iran

[kpete]

The Case for Bombing Iran
I hope and pray that President Bush will do it.

BY NORMAN PODHORETZ
Wednesday, May 30, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Although many persist in denying it, I continue to believe that what Sept 11, 2001, did was to plunge us headlong into nothing less than another world war. I call this new war World War IV, because I also believe that what is generally known as the Cold War was actually World War III, and that this one bears a closer resemblance to that great conflict than it does to World War II. Like the Cold War, as the military historian Eliot Cohen was the first to recognize, the one we are now in has ideological roots, pitting us against Islamofascism, yet another mutation of the totalitarian disease we defeated first in the shape of Nazism and fascism and then in the shape of communism; it is global in scope; it is being fought with a variety of weapons, not all of them military; and it is likely to go on for decades.

What follows from this way of looking at the last five years is that the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be understood if they are regarded as self-contained wars in their own right. Instead we have to see them as fronts or theaters that have been opened up in the early stages of a protracted global struggle. The same thing is true of Iran. As the currently main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11, and as (according to the State Department's latest annual report on the subject) the main sponsor of the terrorism that is Islamofascism's weapon of choice, Iran too is a front in World War IV. Moreover, its effort to build a nuclear arsenal makes it the potentially most dangerous one of all.

The Iranians, of course, never cease denying that they intend to build a nuclear arsenal, and yet in the same breath they openly tell us what they intend to do with it. Their first priority, as repeatedly and unequivocally announced by their president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is to "wipe Israel off the map"--a feat that could not be accomplished by conventional weapons alone.

But Ahmadinejad's ambitions are not confined to the destruction of Israel. He also wishes to dominate the greater Middle East, and thereby to control the oilfields of the region and the flow of oil out of it through the Persian Gulf. If he acquired a nuclear capability, he would not even have to use it in order to put all this within his reach. Intimidation and blackmail by themselves would do the trick.

more at:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110010139

[hatrack]

1. This just in - Norman Podhoretz is a drooling homicidal lunatic

That is all.

[lpbk2713]

25. Is he a DoD contractor or perhaps a major stockholder?

He certainly sounds like one. Or maybe he is sincerely concerned about our precious bodily fluids.

[Wilms]

27. You asked...

"As godfather of the movement, Irving Kristol played mentor to Norman Podhoretz, the long-time but now-retired editor of Commentary, the influential monthly publication of the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Originally identified with the anti-war left in the mid-1960s, Podhoretz converted to neo-conservatism late in the decade and transformed the magazine into a main source of neo-conservative writing, despite the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community itself rejecting those positions.

"Podhoretz and his spouse, Midge Decter, a polemical powerhouse in her own right, created a formidable political team in the 1970s as they deserted the Democratic Party, and then, as leaders of the Committee on the Present Danger -- like (Project for the New American Century) PNAC a coalition of mainly Jewish, neo-conservatives and more traditional right-wing hawks like Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld - helped lay the foreign-policy foundation for the rise of Ronald Reagan. After Reagan's victory, Decter and Rumsfeld co-chaired the international offshoot of the committee, called the Coalition for the Free World.

"Podhoretz is the father of John Podhoretz, a columnist for the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, who also acts as a ubiquitous booster of the hawks. And his son-in-law, Elliott Abrams, who held a number of controversial posts in Reagan's State Department and was eventually convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal for lying to Congress, now serves in George Walker Bush's National Security Council as his top Middle East adviser.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Norman_Podhoretz

[Drum]

2. Just

:puke:

[msongs]

3. the "president" of iran is mostly a figurehead without power. nt

[whistle]

9. Who in Iran has power if not the president of Iran?

[Cassandra]

14. The religious leader.

I forget the current one's name but he seems saner than the president (theirs and ours).

[whistle]

21. Would that be Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

<snip>
Iran's Religious Leader Renews Anti-U.S. Rhetoric
Suggestions of Consensus Against Nuclear Program Are Called 'a Lie'

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 5, 2006; Page A10

TEHRAN, June 4 -- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei unleashed a flurry of broadsides Sunday at the United States and other countries confronting his government over its nuclear program, saying that suggestions of a consensus against Iran were "a lie."

"There is no consensus against Iran. This is a lie by the U.S. and a few other U.S. supporters," Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, said in a speech. "Some 116 member states of the Non-Aligned Movement supported Iran's brave achievements in nuclear technology. The consensus is among a few monopolist countries. Their consensus is of no value."

<no photo> An Iranian woman hugs her baby as they stand under a giant picture of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the 17th anniversary of the death of Iran's late leader Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran on Saturday. (Hasan Sarbakhshian - AP)

Khamenei, marking the anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death 17 years ago, echoed the themes on which his predecessor constructed the government's foreign policy: disdain for the West, hatred of the United States, and pride in the notion of Iran as an example for disempowered Islamic and developing nations.

The speech offered no evident support for a new package of incentives and possible penalties being offered to Iran by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany. Nor did Khamenei express interest in the Bush administration's historic offer to engage in direct talks with Iran if it suspends uranium enrichment.

Khamenei warned the United States that Iran would respond to any "wrong move" by disrupting "energy flow in the region," an apparent reference to the oil tankers that transit the Strait of Hormuz.
<MORE>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/04/AR2006060400143.html

[Louis Cipher]

4. The CIA was the cause of global instability during the Cold war.

[ShortnFiery]

5. WSJ : War is good for business! Norman Podhoretz is an immoral scumbag.

:grr:

[librechik]

6. Podhoretz is the chief loon of the remaining Washington neocons

I hope this time he discovers that wishing does not make it so.

[Jim__]

7. If we consider war a last resort ...

... then Podhoretz fails to make his case. Seems like before we bomb Iran, we might try diplomatic efforts to prevent them from building a bomb - something they currently deny they intend to do; failing that, we might be able to prevent them from getting some critical material; and if that fails, we still have the massive intimidation factor - what good does it do for Iran to make threats against its neighbors, if we threaten to wipe Iran off the map if it carries out its threat. There are numerous steps that we can take against Iran, short of war, that give us the ability to stop Iran from becoming a major threat to world peace.

In short, Podhoretz seems to be urging us to war as a first resort. A tactic that has failed miserably in Iraq.

[malaise]

8. WTF

Has the world gone mad?

[JHB]

13. No, just the people running it. n/t

[IndyOp]

29. Since when has war been a last resort?

The corporate media and pols like to pretend it is a last resort. To some citizens it really is a last resort -- particularly to the ones who have been to war -- but to many it is a "reason for living" -- war gives meaning to life, it is a focus for nationalism.

Our great nation must export democracy - at the end of a gun barrel.

Our great nation must protect it's interests - at the end of a gun barrel.

We must maintain our standard of living - controlling resources and markets even if we have to kill to do it.

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.

by William Blum

Table of Contents
Introduction
1. China - 1945 to 1960s: Was Mao Tse-tung just paranoid?
2. Italy - 1947-1948: Free elections, Hollywood style
3. Greece - 1947 to early 1950s: From cradle of democracy to client state
4. The Philippines - 1940s and 1950s: America's oldest colony
5. Korea - 1945-1953: Was it all that it appeared to be?
6. Albania - 1949-1953: The proper English spy
7. Eastern Europe - 1948-1956: Operation Splinter Factor
8. Germany - 1950s: Everything from juvenile delinquency to terrorism
9. Iran - 1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings
10. Guatemala - 1953-1954: While the world watched
11. Costa Rica - Mid-1950s: Trying to topple an ally - Part 1
12. Syria - 1956-1957: Purchasing a new government
13. Middle East - 1957-1958: The Eisenhower Doctrine claims another backyard for America
14. Indonesia - 1957-1958: War and pornography
15. Western Europe - 1950s and 1960s: Fronts within fronts within fronts
16. British Guiana - 1953-1964: The CIA's international labor mafia
17. Soviet Union - Late 1940s to 1960s: From spy planes to book publishing
18. Italy - 1950s to 1970s: Supporting the Cardinal's orphans and techno-fascism
19. Vietnam - 1950-1973: The Hearts and Minds Circus
20. Cambodia - 1955-1973: Prince Sihanouk walks the high-wire of neutralism
21. Laos - 1957-1973: L'Armée Clandestine
22. Haiti - 1959-1963: The Marines land, again
23. Guatemala - 1960: One good coup deserves another
24. France/Algeria - 1960s: L'état, c'est la CIA
25. Ecuador - 1960-1963: A text book of dirty tricks
26. The Congo - 1960-1964: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba
27. Brazil - 1961-1964: Introducing the marvelous new world of death squads
28. Peru - 1960-1965: Fort Bragg moves to the jungle
29. Dominican Republic - 1960-1966: Saving democracy from communism by getting rid of democracy
30. Cuba - 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution
31. Indonesia - 1965: Liquidating President Sukarno ... and 500,000 others
East Timor - 1975: And 200,000 more
32. Ghana - 1966: Kwame Nkrumah steps out of line
33. Uruguay - 1964-1970: Torture -- as American as apple pie
34. Chile - 1964-1973: A hammer and sickle stamped on your child's forehead
35. Greece - 1964-1974: "Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution," said
the President of the United States
36. Bolivia - 1964-1975: Tracking down Che Guevara in the land of coup d'etat
37. Guatemala - 1962 to 1980s: A less publicized "final solution"
38. Costa Rica - 1970-1971: Trying to topple an ally -- Part 2
39. Iraq - 1972-1975: Covert action should not be confused with missionary work
40. Australia - 1973-1975: Another free election bites the dust
41. Angola - 1975 to 1980s: The Great Powers Poker Game
42. Zaire - 1975-1978: Mobutu and the CIA, a marriage made in heaven
43. Jamaica - 1976-1980: Kissinger's ultimatum
44. Seychelles - 1979-1981: Yet another area of great strategic importance
45. Grenada - 1979-1984: Lying -- one of the few growth industries in Washington
46. Morocco - 1983: A video nasty
47. Suriname - 1982-1984: Once again, the Cuban bogeyman
48. Libya - 1981-1989: Ronald Reagan meets his match
49. Nicaragua - 1981-1990: Destabilization in slow motion
50. Panama - 1969-1991: Double-crossing our drug supplier
51. Bulgaria 1990/Albania 1991: Teaching communists what democracy is all about
52. Iraq - 1990-1991: Desert holocaust
53. Afghanistan - 1979-1992: America's Jihad
54. El Salvador - 1980-1994: Human rights, Washington style
55. Haiti - 1986-1994: Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?
56. The American Empire - 1992 to present
Appendix I: This is How the Money Goes Round
Appendix II: Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-1945
Appendix III: U. S. Government Assassination Plots

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

10. He goes on to compare Ahmadinejad to Hitler.

<<Which brings us back to Ahmadinejad. Like Hitler, he is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism. Like Hitler, too, he is entirely open about his intentions, although--again like Hitler--he sometimes pretends that he wants nothing more than his country's just due. In the case of Hitler in 1938, this pretense took the form of claiming that no further demands would be made if sovereignty over the Sudetenland were transferred from Czechoslovakia to Germany. In the case of Ahmadinejad, the pretense takes the form of claiming that Iran is building nuclear facilities only for peaceful purposes and not for the production of bombs.
>>

I believe there is some kind of juxtaposing going on here.

[O.M.B.inOhio]

11. Hooey

This is delusional, sociopathic dreck that could have come from the pen of the Virginia Tech shooter. Islamofascism? It seems to me that the hatred of the US in the Middle East is a grassroots phenomenon fueled by the policies of Israel and the U.S., and not a state-led fascist phenomenon. The war in Iraq, initiated by a U.S. government installed in a judicial coup d'etat, is more Christian-fascist than "the enemy" is "Islamofascist". To suggest that the rhetoric of wiping a country off the map is evidence of a nuclear program is like using American rhetoric of "blowing them back to the stone ages" is proof of our clandestine research in to time travel. Is the WSJ reporting on sightings of Batboy, too?

[roamer65]

12. Podhoretz is dangerous.

He was on IBA (Israeli TV) trying to lobby Olmert to bomb Iran. His theory on the air was Israel should do it, then Iran will attack US forces and then we'll be forced to come to Israel's aid. This guy is evil.

[JHB]

16. So he's trying to arrage for foreign governments to attack our military>

I believe that comes under "treason".

To recap: we try to stop the war, and are smeared as "supporting the terrorists".

Podwhorez actively advocates for an antagonistic country to attack our troops, and he gets full page editorials in the WSJ.

[whistle]

23. Are you talking about this Norman Podhoretz?

<snip>
October 27, 1999

BUCHANAN VERSUS PODHORETZ:
WHO IS THE REAL HATER?
Let any American begin to advocate a noninterventionist foreign policy, and, sooner or later, he is going to have to deal with the accusation of "anti-Semitism." To those readers living outside the US, this may seem like a non sequiteur – after all, what has anti-Semitism got to do with anti-interventionism? Logically, the answer is: nothing. Politically, however, the answer is: everything. But why? How could these two seemingly disparate issues be so melded in the public mind – or, at least, in the collective consciousness of the punditocracy? This could well be the subject of a book, but for the purposes of this column let me just point to a specific example to give the reader the full flavor of this topic: the nearly decade-long crusade of Norman Podhoretz to label Pat Buchanan an "anti-Semite," the latest eruption of which is an article in the Wall Street Journal , "Buchanan and Anti-Semitism."

A QUEER THEORY
Podhoretz, for those who do not know, has been buzzing angrily around New York intellectual circles since the 50s. He has undergone many incarnations, at least politically: first as a left-wing Democrat on the periphery of the New Left, then as a Scoop Jackson Democrat, and finally as a "neoconservative" whose desire to nuke the Soviet Union overrode his loyalty to leftist domestic initiatives. Podhoretz stunned practically everyone, even those who agreed with his support of the Vietnam War, with his, uh, unusual thesis, in an essay entitled "The Culture of Appeasement," that antiwar sentiment was attributable to the evil influence of homosexuals in our culture: the works of Allen Ginsberg, Gore Vidal, and James Baldwin figured prominently in his analysis. According to Podhoretz, the intellectual and political atmosphere of the times was the result of, I kid you not, homosexual lust: after all, if we killed all the handsome young soldiers, who would there be left for the queers to bed?

A MANLY MAN
Podhoretz's argument – if such it can be called – taken to its logical conclusion, amounts to this: all opposition to war is a manifestation of homoeroticism. Given this Podhoretizian axiom, it might safely be said that there is nary a nelly bone in Norman's body, for since his break with the Left in the late sixties he has never met a war he didn't support – oh, what a man!

THE LEARNED ELDERS OF SODOM
Now this is a man who, today, is telling us that Pat Buchanan is a dangerous hater. If that doesn't beat all records for shameless hypocrisy, then what does? In the Podhoretzian worldview, a small cliquish minority – the Learned Elders of Sodom – exert a powerful and one might almost say controlling influence over the culture, and manipulate events to suit their selfish (in this case sexual) needs. I think I sense a certain pattern here, I get this chill of déjà vu, the sense that all of this seems somehow familiar. There is something distinctly Hitlerian in this thesis, at least stylistically, and now I see what Alan Wald meant when he wrote, in his book The New York Intellectuals, that "a consistent feature of Podhoretz's critique of his fellow intellectuals is the projection of his own motives onto others." For in smearing Buchanan as an anti-Semite, this champion scapegoater and hater par excellence underscores yet another of his distinctly Hitlerian traits: a propaganda style similar to that of Joseph Goebbels, whose expertise in the art of the Big Lie propelled the National Socialists to power.
<MORE>

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j102799.html

[zbdent]

15. Imagine how many quality teachers could have been hired

for the cost of that FULL-PAGE advertisement for Bush ...

Or, for that matter, substantially more Bush-loving teachers (significantly more than the number of quality teachers you could hire) ...

[Marr]

17. Praying for war and death is profane. n/t

[spanone]

18. Praying for war.....I'm just SURE Jesus is listening. One sick motherf*cker.

[Swede]

19. He should sign up for immediate deployment,first on the beach.

Otherwise he should zip it.

[grytpype]

20. Well, now they're finally coming out and saying it. This is World War IV.

And it didn't have to happen. They're as nuts as General Jack T. Ripper.



"Yes gentlemen, they are on their way in and no one can bring them back. For the sake of our country and our way of life, I suggest you get the rest of SAC in after them, otherwise we will be totally destroyed by red retaliation. My boys will give you the best kind of start, fourteen hundred megatons worth, and you sure as hell won't stop them now. So let's get going. There's no other choice. God willing, we will prevail in peace and freedom from fear and in true health through the purity and essence of our natural fluids. God bless you all."

[madrchsod]

22. he`s a bitter old man that still lives in his delusion

that all the enemies of israel will be consumed in fire. he will be but a small footnote in history

[WinkyDink]

24. The "Cold War" was HARDLY "WWIII", given it was PEACE-TIME.

[glitch]

26. And the WSJ finds this fit to print? Somebody needs to be fired.

They are exposing their ignorance and humiliating themselves again.

[teriyaki jones]

30. Rachel Maddow has warned

not to look at the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal because, "it will burn your eyes!"

Their news reporting can be top-notch, but their editorials are clearly in tune with the Bush Administration's propaganda (just on a more "intellectual" level than Fox News).

tj

[glitch]

31. Good one from Rachel. Still, amazing to think the publisher supports this crap.

I know I shouldn't be shocked.

[n2doc]

28. How many nations has Iran invaded? Hmmmm...

How about NONE, PODWANKER. Why isn't this guy out there fighting his "WWIV" on the front lines? Never too old to help!

[BuyingThyme]

32. Nothing intelligent to say? Make stuff up.

[Scriptor Ignotus]

33. Iran will NEVER nuke Jerusalem

for it contains the Al Aqsa mosque. It'd be like a Christian blowing up Bethleham or Nazareth with atomic weapons. Won't ever, ever happen. Tel Aviv and Eilat on the other hand, may not be as safe.

[progressivebydesign]

34. I saw some scary ass shit on TV today... similar vein from some guy Bill McKay.

I was flipping by a "christian" tv station and saw this unblinking wildeyed man saying that we should bomb Iran.. same thing. His reasoning was... that Iran has 50% of the oil reserves and nuclear capabilities, so he thinks that they'll tell Europe that if they want oil, then they have to "hand over all of the Jews there", and then they'll come to America looking for them, or else we'll not have any oil and face a nuclear threat. It was some crazy ass shit... He called the Europeans "decadent" and that they'd do "anything" to maintain their decadent lifestyles.. even turning all of the Jewish people to Iran.

This was some crazy religious religious show. The host/preacher said that the Bible tells all Christians they have to support Israel no matter what, so that means all the Christians must support the bombing of Iran. It's a full court press folks. From stories about atrocities in Iran, amassing of our Navy off of their coast, Bush's ultimatums, weird media events like that. They're SO trying to get it on with Iran. The use of religion to find reasons to kill people is why I'm totally not religious. It's a sham.

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

35. The Wildeyed group will get even more insane

in the weeks and months to come. What off the wall antics they will give us in the near future, time will only tell. They have only * et Cheney to thank for Burning their Bridges Down, But Good. heh.