Music of the Day: John Coltrane, Blue Train

A while back, while wandering aimlessly in the stacks at the local chain bookstore while MLB (My Lovely Bride) scoured the racks at her favorite clothing store, I stumbled across the new book by Norman Podhoretz, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. This was an unexpected find, as the tables are normally filled with books by folks such as the insufferable Jimmy Carter, the rude, bombastic and openly partisan Chris Matthews, the former Narcissist in Chief Bill Clinton, the incomparably tedious and preachy Al Gore, the shifty Barak Obama, the shrill and slightly scary Hillary Clinton, the pathological hater Noam Chomsky, the indescribable Michael Moore, and the profoundly irrelevant Al Franken. I snatched up the Podhoretz book, thinking that some poor fool employee had ordered it by accident and that if I didn't buy it, it would disappear forever from the store--purged and sent back to the home office for eventual filing on the remainder shelf in their outlet in Nome. I also thought that whoever ordered this was probably now working at the Tastee-Freeze across the way, next to the Sprint kiosk, banished forever from the book-buying and book-selling business.

I put down all other books and read this one quickly; it seems to me that some of what appears in the book is an extension of, and expansion of, numerous article published previously in Commentary (and perhaps elsewhere) on the subject, including (in Commentary alone) the following: World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win (September 2004; The War Against World War IV (February 2005); Who Is Lying About Iraq (December 2005); The Panic Over Iraq (January 2006); and, Is the Bush Doctrine Dead? (September 2006).

The central idea of the book is straightforward--the struggle we in the west are engaged in with what Podhoretz calls the Islamofascists is in actuality World War IV, with World War III having been what has traditionally been called the Cold War, or that period between the end of World War II in 1945 and 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Podhoretz argues that World War III was a decades-long struggle that was "cold" in name only--and he's right when one looks at American casualty figures from various wars, police actions, and peace-keeping enterprises during that time, including nearly 37,000 dead in Korea and more than 58,000 dead in Vietnam. Think about that for just a second--95,000 dead Americans in just those two places, Korea and Vietnam--there's nothing "cold" about those two conflicts when it comes to American casualties. . . .

Podhoretz warns that the struggle against the Islamofascists may well take decades, too, as did World War III and he implies that the casualty figures in this new war will continue to climb, including the 3,000 civilian deaths on September 11, 2001 and the American soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen we have lost in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere before and since the fight against the state-less purveyors of religiously-motivated murder and terror. Podhoretz lays out the history of Islamic-style terrorism against Americans and westerners beginning in the 1970s in Sudan and Lebanon, and later in Iran and again in Lebanon (obviously, this implies some overlap with World War III), then here at home with the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, Nairobi and Tanzania in 1998, and of course the USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen.

He also addresses, and generally defends, the Bush Doctrine in detail, contrasting it to the world view of what he calls "liberal internationalists" and the foreign policy realists who view the Bush Doctrine as a hopelessly flawed set of ideas grounded in sappy moralistic notions about the universality of humans preferring freedom to tyranny and oppression--including, yes, even Muslims and Arabs of all stripes.

Whether or not Porhoretz and Bush are right in their view of the struggle, this is an interesting and important book--and it asks, and leaves unanswered, as many important questions as it answers. But on page 213, Podhoretz quotes Bernard Lewis, who says we have no choice in the fight that has been brought to us. "Either, he says, we bring them [Middle Easterners] freedom, or they destroy us." That may be over-cooking things a bit [my questions--are the Islamists ideologically stronger, or more creative, or more intellectually flexible, or more technologically adept than the mad dogs of the various and sundry communist regimes of the 20th century?], but it's worth thinking about in a serious way.

Next posting: World War IV and The Suicide of Reason, by Lee Harris.

AJ

Music of the Day: Tord Gustavsen Trio, Being There.

In my last posting here I made reference to the new book by Norman Podhoretz, but I did not give the complete title, which is as follows--World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism.

And now, the brief proposal. I have seen, recently, that three of our esteemed film "stars" have been consorting with the dictator, Hugo Chavez. They are: Sean Penn, Danny Glover, and Kevin Spacey. Two of the three, Penn and Spacey, are in my opinion very talented actors who have given excellent performances in various film roles. What the three of them know about world politics, totalitarian governments, strongmen, brutality, and systematic oppression I cannot say, but I can say this--I for one will not spend my money on films in which these people participate. They are free to consort with whomever they please, but I am free to avoid their films; I hope some of you will do the same. If enough of us stay away from the box office maybe they'll see a connection between friendly chats with real-world tyrants and loss of income.

AJ

Music of the Day: Frank Zappa, Overnight Sensation.

Thought Number One--Tolerating the Intolerable (and the Intolerant). One of the east coast bastions of academe, Columbia University, invited the saber-rattling, apocalypse-loving president of Iran, M. Ahmadinejad, to speak on their campus, ostensibly to further "educate" the students there (but about what it wasn't made clear). The school's president, apparently in an attempt to ameliorate the public (and alumni) outrage over the invitation, took some half-hearted prefatory cheap shots at his guest, and then allowed the man to speak. Free speech for the man who does everything possible to stifle free speech in his own country; I wonder if he received an honorarium?

In Peggy Noonan's piece in the Wall Street Journal today, she argued that we Americans needed to hear M. Ahmadinejad speak because, she wrote, it's good for us to hear our "foes speak uncensored." Normally I find Peggy Noonan's thinking to be right on, but I think this time she doesn't have it right--we already know what this Iranian nut-job thinks about the West and America and Israel and the Holocaust, so it escapes me how we might be further edified by another of his nut-job rants. It's bad enough that he had a forum at the United Nations--there he was preaching to the anti-American choir, so no big deal; but in my view, it's worse that he had a forum at an American university. If ever there was a case of the tolerant tolerating the intolerable, this was it; no wonder bin Laden and his ilk think Americans are weak, sniveling softies who deserve slaughter and ignominy.

Thought Number Two--The Newsweek Factor. Again, kudos to the anonymous soul who sent us the subscription to this appalling rag, for it does provide grist for the mill and considerable unintentional humor, too. This week's edition had an overlong piece about people called, if memory serves me correctly, "freegans." These are folks who call themselves vegans, but with a twist--these are vegans who do not BUY food, which would be giving in to the evil capitalist monster, but instead go dumpster-diving to retrieve discarded food from garbage bins, trash heaps, and other places that once can find "free" detritus. There is a gentleman here in our semi-rural mega-plex who, it seems, might be a "freegan" pioneer--I have seen him around the square for more than a few years, reaching into gutters to snag the incompletely smoked cigarette; I've often noticed him lounging about the local Salvation Army outpost awaiting his next free something-or-other, and just yesterday he was running a finger through the change slot in the machines that dispense newspapers on various corners in town. The people of my parent's generation had a name for "freegans" before that ugly neologism was coined and it was this--bums. The only catchy slogan I could come up with was: Think Globally, Eat Garbage Locally.

Thought Number Three--World War II and World War IV. The Ken Burns series on World War II is better than I thought it would be and deserves your close attention (thanks to Dr. Phil for turning my attention to the series); and Norman Podhoretz's book, World War IV, is as good as I thought it would be. I recommend both to you and i suspect I'll have more here about World War IV once I get my teeth into it.

AJ

Music of the Day: Paul Simon, You're the One

I have, for a whole variety of reasons, more or less removed myself from the world of ideas and politics and sound-bites and policy flip-flops and radio talk-shows and nightly/daily newscasts of any stripe--we have had too many other important things transpire of late, so even my attempt to keep my brain involved in matters intellectual has gone by the wayside (although every now and then I would find time to read a few pages of one of the four or five books I'm trying to read).

So, here's a partial list of the important things:

A funeral of a beloved man, a World War II veteran.
A wedding of two really lovely young people.
Dear Old Mom's recent respiratory difficulties.
An ill spouse--yes, MLB has been "down" with some unspecified malady. We have both spent too much time recently either in doctor's offices, medical labs, or emergency rooms.
A son who left a job he loved because of a management decision that got someone else fired.
A friend who had an unscheduled surgical procedure to remove an organ.

So, here's a partial list of the less important things:

The U.S. Open--it's hard not to watch good tennis on the TeeVee.
Attending a baseball game with my old buddy Cliff (another World War II veteran).
Work at the slaughterhouse--as per usual.

There is too much to sort out from all of these events (it has been semi-crazy for a few weeks) to get at right now, so any comments on these things will likely come at a later time. I do want to try to finish the Lee Harris book (The Suicide of Reason) and comment upon it before too long--I think it's an important book, but I need to finish the damned thing before I can begin to write about it. And, of course, RB had me read an excerpt of something else that I now have to read, so that will likely be next--the good news is that the two works are related, so perhaps I'll be able to make a connection or two after having read both.

Thanks for checking in on the blog, good readers--more later, I promise.

AJ

I have a more complete posting in the works, something that explains, in brief, the recent dearth of postings at this fine site; give me another day or so and I'll crank out some more screed for ya'.

AJ