The War Against World War IV: A Second-Term Retreat?

Commentary ^ | February 2005 | Norman Podhoretz

[quidnunc]

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.

-snip-

[1_Inch_Group]

If Bush doesn't do something about our border, it's not going to matter where we fight World War Four.

Terrorist sneaks over the border, he's going to be dealing with Civil War II

[ex-snook]

Maybe Bush is more concerned with WW V against the Communist powers who possess a lot more threats than car bombs, improvised explosives and box cutters.

[snarks_when_bored]

Excellent post.

Podhoretz marshalls his arguments with great effectiveness. Let's hope his main conclusion is correct, viz., that President Bush will not turn aside from the task of combatting islamic terrorism and its supporters around the world.

[Christian4Bush]

Podhoretz BUMP

[Cicero]

Podhoretz was too darned smart to remain a New York Intellectual after the bankruptcy of the left became so evident. Too bad there aren't a lot more like him.

[Tolik]

Norman Podhoretz presents in the Commentary magazine his very well argumented position with his vote of confidence in President Bush. Long, but very interesting read.

This ping list is not author-specific for articles I'd like to share. Some for perfect moral clarity, some for provocative thoughts; or simply interesting articles I'd hate to miss myself. (I don't have to agree with the author 100% to feel the need to share an article.) I will try not to abuse the ping list and not to annoy you too much, but on some days there is more of good stuff that is worthy attention. I keep separate PING lists for my favorite authors Victor Davis Hanson, Lee Harris, David Warren, Orson Scott Card. You are welcome in or out, just freepmail me (and note which PING list you are talking about).

[jveritas]

Good article.

[BayouCoyote]

BTTT!

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

"A Second-Term Retreat?"

 

Conclusion: No.

---------------------

...But in the 24-hour-a-day TV coverage that now exists, the forces promoting defeatism have a far more potent weapon for magnifying everything that goes wrong, or only appears to have gone wrong. We who support World War IV can complain all we like about these conditions, but they are the ones under which it will have to be fought if it is to be fought at all. The bottom line is that we are up against even more defeatism in this war than there was in World War III.

Before we entered World War II, serious doubts were raised as to whether we were a match for such disciplined and fanatical enemies as Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. And in World War III, leading anti-Communists like Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham were sure that we lacked the stomach, the heart, the will, and the wit to stand effectively against the Soviet Union and its allies and sympathizers: to Chambers we were "the losing side," and to Burnham we were veritably suicidal in our weakness and folly. They turned out to be wrong because, as Charles Horner of the Hudson Institute once put it in speaking of Chambers, they, and not they alone, failed "to anticipate the resiliency of the American citizenry and its leadership."²¹ Today similar doubts and fears are once again all over the place, with even some of my fellow supporters of the Bush Doctrine murmuring that we have all grown too soft, too self-indulgent, and too self-absorbed to meet yet another daunting challenge.

Except for an occasional twinge brought on by paying too much attention to the antiwar forces, and to certain aspects of our culture, both low and high, I did not share these doubts and fears before the verdict of November 2, and they have been quite banished by what I am persuaded the American people were saying when they voted to keep George W. Bush in the White House for another four years.

Which is why I think (to say it one last time) that the amazing leader this President has amazingly turned out to be will—like the comparably amazing Harry Truman before him when he took on the Communist world—have the wind at his back as he continues the struggle against Islamist radicalism and its vicious terrorist armory: a struggle whose objective is the spread of liberty and whose success will bring greater security and greater prosperity not only to the people of this country, and not only to the people of the greater Middle East, but also to the people of Europe and beyond, in spite of the sorry fact that so many of them do not wish to know it yet."      

- Norman Podhoretz

~*~

[Calpernia]

::dances::

Hiya Cowgirl!!!

MISSED YOU!!

::hugs!!!::

[BJClinton]

Thanks for the ping, good read.

[Calpernia]

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?

and see post 11

[anniegetyourgun]

Thanks for that post, RC....good to 'see' you....

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[MEG33]

Love ya, Cowgirl! Woo Hoo!

[MEG33]

Thanks for the ping..Great read.

[My2Cents]

One of the best aspects of George W. Bush's character is that he seems to have a very accurate appraisal of his detractors, and hence (according to Times' "Person of the Year" article on Bush), he ignores the naysayers' snipings, and considers their opposition as proof that what he's doing is correct.

[JLO]

Thanks for pinging me to this, Calpernia!

Ragtime Cowgirl - nice to see you back! Hope you enjoyed your time off. Now, it's back to business, LOL. Seriously, I missed your presence!