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The War Against World War IV (A Second-Term Retreat?)
COMMENTARY ^ | February 2005 | Norman Podhoretz

Posted on 01/23/2005 1:05:25 PM PST by tbird5

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.

(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: bush43; bushdoctrine; geopolitics; podhoretz; term2; wwiv
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To: tet68

Ha, hits in the black.

Dang pesky punctuation.


21 posted on 01/23/2005 2:30:34 PM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: tet68
I stopped reading after, "...The retrograde "red-state voters..."
22 posted on 01/23/2005 2:35:22 PM PST by snopercod ( We as the people no longer truly believe in liberty, not as Americans did -- Dayfdd ab Hugh)
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To: Joe Bonforte

"The "realists" are what Mark Steyn call "stability junkies","

Otherwise known as sellouts.


23 posted on 01/23/2005 2:36:25 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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To: EternalVigilance

Don't forgot The Cola Wars.


24 posted on 01/23/2005 2:36:53 PM PST by voteconstitutionparty
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To: voteconstitutionparty

I'm a Coke man, myself...


25 posted on 01/23/2005 2:40:43 PM PST by EternalVigilance (The Left believes in everything about the First Amendment....except what it actually says!)
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To: demecleze
I think the moniker "World War" should apply when you have total war between all of the dominant powers on the planet.

It does. The next time there's an all-out military war across the globe, it's going to be known as "WWIII," because that's what everyone's going to call it. Just as there was no government decree that the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon were to be forever referred to as "9/11," no mere set of intellectuals is going to tell the public that we have to start calling the Cold War by a different name. Whatever name comes to the forefront of our culture is what will stick.

If there was a full nuclear exchange tomorrow morning between the U.S. and Russia, I don't think those of us that are left would be calling it "World War V."

26 posted on 01/23/2005 2:41:58 PM PST by Dont Mention the War (Liberal radio can be summed up in five words: Dead air, um, dead air.)
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To: tbird5
Of course, things are a little different now. In 1968, when Walter Cronkite, speaking in his characteristically solemn tones from the anchor chair of the CBS Evening News, endorsed the view that Tet had been a defeat for us, Johnson realized that there was nothing further he could do to counter this blatant falsehood, and that he himself was for all practical purposes finished. But with the rise of alternatives to the mainstream media like talk radio, Fox News, and the blogosphere, when in 2004 Cronkite’s successor, Dan Rather, tried to palm off a falsehood about George W. Bush, it was he and not Bush who was for all practical purposes finished.

Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army, told the Wall Street Journal after his retirement that the antiwar movement in the United States was "essential to our strategy."

the present leaders of the democrat party are the same anti-warriors of the 1960s-70s.

27 posted on 01/23/2005 2:42:23 PM PST by ken21 (4 as much time as u spend on the internet, u cd have several college degrees--daisy noonan)
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To: voteconstitutionparty; EternalVigilance
Don't forgot The Cola Wars.

Does that mean that Al Gore and John Kerry were the New Coke and Crystal Pepsi of the Democratic Party?

28 posted on 01/23/2005 2:44:22 PM PST by Dont Mention the War (Liberal radio can be summed up in five words: Dead air, um, dead air.)
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To: Clypp

The Cuban missile crisis didn't affect nations? It was not the only time we were on the brink of nuclear war.


29 posted on 01/23/2005 2:56:04 PM PST by weegee (WE FOUGHT ZOGBYISM November 2, 2004 - 60 Million Voters versus 60 Minutes - BUSH WINS!!!)
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To: Dont Mention the War

John Kerry is very much a "Tab" kind of guy. A horrible byproduct of the 60s and 70s. An effiminate girly man. And it came in a pinko can.


30 posted on 01/23/2005 2:57:34 PM PST by weegee (WE FOUGHT ZOGBYISM November 2, 2004 - 60 Million Voters versus 60 Minutes - BUSH WINS!!!)
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To: EternalVigilance

Vehement agreement will not hide the fact that arbitrarily calling a non-war "WW III" is almost childish sophistry. More that "thinkers" who deal on that level are merely scammers and whatever they have to say is worthless.


31 posted on 01/23/2005 2:58:21 PM PST by CBart95
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To: voteconstitutionparty

W is a Dr. Pepper kind of a guy. Not that stuff that you see around America, but the local variety found in the Texas Hill Country, bottled by Dr. Pepper and still made with Imperial cane sugar.


32 posted on 01/23/2005 2:58:48 PM PST by weegee (WE FOUGHT ZOGBYISM November 2, 2004 - 60 Million Voters versus 60 Minutes - BUSH WINS!!!)
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To: CBart95

So the Cold War was not a war then?

America gives medals for all who served if they want them.

The Korean War and Vietnam War had nothing to do with global communism, they were just territorial skermishes? Is that right?

The Berlin Wall was just a bit of civic redevelopment?


33 posted on 01/23/2005 3:01:38 PM PST by weegee (WE FOUGHT ZOGBYISM November 2, 2004 - 60 Million Voters versus 60 Minutes - BUSH WINS!!!)
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To: CBart95

Let's see your credentials, Mr. Expert.

I seriously doubt they compare with those of Norm Podhoretz.


34 posted on 01/23/2005 3:18:29 PM PST by EternalVigilance (The Left believes in everything about the First Amendment....except what it actually says!)
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To: EternalVigilance
Podhoretz is brilliant. People here who don't read this article are missing out on a very lucid and precise description of what's is going on in our war against terror. Some can quibble about what war number this is, but you miss many insights by bogging down in something like that.
35 posted on 01/23/2005 3:35:44 PM PST by elhombrelibre (Liberalism is proof that intelligent people can ignore as much as the ignorant.)
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To: Dont Mention the War

Yes, and they lasted about as long.


36 posted on 01/23/2005 3:36:47 PM PST by voteconstitutionparty
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To: weegee
John Kerry is very much a "Tab" kind of guy. A horrible byproduct of the 60s and 70s. An effiminate girly man. And it came in a pinko can.

They still make that stuff! I just saw it in the supermarket last week. Still pink too.

37 posted on 01/23/2005 3:41:53 PM PST by Dont Mention the War (Liberal radio can be summed up in five words: Dead air, um, dead air.)
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To: tbird5
Wow! This one must have taken up the whole magazine. A long read but a good summation of the last three years or so.

"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."

I beg to differ that the Europeans do not know yet that they need the security of a democratic ME. They know it. They just don't want the "swamps" to dry up before they sell their back log of weapons to offset their upcoming economic crisis. Besides, if the ME becomes overall prosperous..uh oh..no more "peasants" to exploit. What will that do to france's inflated self esteem? La boohoo.

38 posted on 01/23/2005 3:43:04 PM PST by Earthdweller (US descendant of French Protestants)
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To: tbird5

The question is not whether when this goes hot it will be III, IV or V. The American Revolution was part of WW I. The Great War, the War to End All War, was WW II. The war against Fascism was WW III or WW II continued. The Cold War was no war at all but a series of local wars that involved the US locally. There was never to be a major war between Russia and the US, nor with China. In the next world war Russia, China, and the US will be allied once more.


39 posted on 01/23/2005 3:46:59 PM PST by RightWhale (Please correct if cosmic balance requires.)
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To: elhombrelibre

Indeed.


40 posted on 01/23/2005 3:51:57 PM PST by EternalVigilance (The Left believes in everything about the First Amendment....except what it actually says!)
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