More War, World War IV!

And speaking of discretionary wars...in the last issue of the New York Review of Books, Ian Buruma has a trenchant review of the new Norman Podhoretz book on the dangers of "Islamofascism," which Podhoretz claims are the basis for the next world conflagration. It's clear, as Buruma points out in this excerpt, that Podhoretz inhabits the same myopic parallel universe as the rest of the war supporters:

"Podhoretz is aware that not all world wars are alike. World War IV has its own special needs and strat-egies. Yet neither Podhoretz nor the "great president" he champions can resist the self-glorifying analogies of World War II. As Podhoretz observes, Bush in September 2001, in "expressing his determination to win the war... was mainly reaching back to the language of Winston Churchill." Churchill: "We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end." Bush: "We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail." When Churchill spoke, Britain was facing an imminent invasion by the biggest military power in Europe. Bush spoke after one ghastly act of terror by a handful of murderous fanatics mainly from Saudi Arabia."

Since this is the Bush world view redux, you would be tempted to dismiss it as old news, but this Podhoretz is chief foreign policy advisor to...Rudy Giuilani, the current Republican front-runner. We need to keep an eye on this campaign, because all indications are that if it succeeds, we could be headed for the World War IV Podhoretz's book seems to advocate. And that would absolutely be a discretionary war, because no credible historian of terrorism believes that Islamic extremism can be defeated exclusively by force of arms.