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Former White House national security adviser says if John McCain becomes the next US president the world will move toward World War IV. Former US President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski criticized US officials in Senator McCain's camp for pushing the presumptive Republican nominee toward a radical foreign policy on issues such as Iran. Brzezinski described McCain's presidency as an 'appalling concept' as it would lead to the World War IV, arguing that from the viewpoint of figures surrounding the Arizona senator the Cold War counted as World War III. "Well, if McCain is president and if his...

There’s always the watershed moment. That moment that guarantees war in the future and it becomes just a matter of time before it happens. No war is ever caused by the obvious act that triggers it. The Sarajevo bullet fired on June 28, 1914 didn’t cause World War I. Hitler invading Poland on September 1, 1939 didn’t cause World War II. Because wars are about taking care of “unfinished business”, we are faced with the prospect of a third world war. If that comes, the independence of Kosovo will be the watershed moment. Pandora’s box, despite all the warnings issued,...

Our conversation soon turned to the present situation in the Middle East, about Hamas winning the elections, the situation of the Israeli Arabs, and the last Lebanese war against Hezbollah. "As Christians we are in a difficult situation here in Israel. Unfortunately, the Moslems and especially the extreme Islamist section, are giving the tone here. My family who lived in Bethlehem probably since the Crusaders, had to flee for their life. The Moslems have been forcing us out, by threats and even murder. Bethlehem that was once predominantly Christian is now predominantly Moslem. Very little is written about it even...

What kind of campaign is this? Six-plus years after 9/11; while the Taliban attempts an Afghanistan comeback; as Islamist terrorists cause mayhem in Algeria and occupy huge swaths of tribal Pakistan; despite "United 93" and "The Kite Runner," a library-full of books, presidential commissions, congressional hearings, and four election cycles—despite all of that, a strange, Victorian reticence about naming the enemy in the contest for the human future in which we are engaged befogs this political season.Such reticence is an obstacle to victory in a war we cannot avoid and in which we must prevail. For if there is...

January 19, 2008World War IV: A Military Perspective By Christopher D. Geisel World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, by Norman Podhoretz, New York: Doubleday, 2007. 240 pp. Not once during my six months serving in Iraq did I ever hear anyone refer to our conflict there as “World War IV.” In fact, to an airman like me on the ground in Baghdad and Camp Taji—with the day-to-day work of equipping the Iraqi Security Forces and training Iraqi soldiers to manage their own logistics system—the idea that anything I was doing was part of a global conflict was an...

Editor’s Note: Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld received the 2007 Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award in honor of Sir Winston S. Churchill on November 17, 2007, and delivered the following remarks (as released by the secretary, exclusively to National Review Online). This past year has certainly provided ample entertainment for those interested in politics. The activities of Congress and the unexpected blessing of an extra year of presidential campaigning fill our newspapers, televisions, and blogs. The problem is that this entertainment tends to focus on the petty and the personal, and seems to avoid a serious discussion of the emerging...

Rudy Giuliani has made a "promise" not to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear capability, even if it requires U.S. military action. Though the U.S. Army is scrimping to meet recruitment goals, Rudy has pledged to add at least 10 new combat brigades. Speaking to an Atlantic Bridge conference in London, Rudy called for NATO expansion to include Japan, India, Australia, Singapore and Israel. Has Rudy thought this through? Why would Japan and Australia, each of which already has a U.S. commitment to come to its defense, commit to go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia if it invaded Estonia?...

Inside Today's Bulletin Are You Ready For WWIV? Author Says Fight Is Now By: Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin 10/11/2007 This is a look at one of the most important books of our time, which raises perhaps the most important question of our time: "The question of whether the Americans of this generation will turn out to be as willing and as able to bear the burden of World War IV as their forebears were in World War II and again in World War III." World War IV refers to the ongoing war against Islamofascism, a war we cannot avoid by...

Have America’s troubles in Iraq sounded the death knell of neoconservatism, the political ideology that is said to be behind our presence there? Over the past year, there has been no shortage of voices saying so, many with undisguised glee. Abroad, the Times of London heralded “the end of an ideological era in Washington,” while the Toronto Globe and Mail reported with satisfaction that neoconservatism has been “decisively wiped out.” Observers here at home have agreed. To the historian Douglas Brinkley, Democratic electoral victories in November 2006 spelled “the death of the neoconservative movement,” while at National Review Online John...

Six years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, we continue to hunt for those whose blunders let them happen. The latest addition to earlier investigations such as The 9/11 Commission Report and television’s Path to 9/11 is the recently released CIA report detailing the agency’s mistakes before the attacks. As with the earlier reports, this latest exposé of error and incompetence has prompted demands for scapegoats. Blaming some government employees might make us feel better, and of course we should identify blunders to avoid in the future. But punishing a few bureaucrats won’t do anything to correct the two larger,...

As we’ve seen in Iraq, premodern enemies have become more effective in insurgencies against postmodern societies. VICTOR DAVIS HANSON tells why. Image credit: Photo by flickr user pingnews.com.Is it five or ten—or fifteen—years that are necessary to win wars of counterinsurgency such as Iraq? By now, Americans are well acquainted with such warnings that patience—along with political and economic reforms, not just arms—defeats guerrillas.In these messy fights, Western nations can’t, for both practical and moral reasons, use the full advantages of overwhelming arms against terrorists that hide among civilians. Such conflicts are fought far from home for perceived long-term...

Despite bin Laden’s bragging, America remains the big stumbling block, the stronger horse We’ve been arguing over al Qaeda’s aims since before 9/11. Some take Osama bin Laden’s specific complaints seriously. But we shouldn’t, as we learned this month from his latest rambling communiqué, which faulted America for seemingly everything — global warming, high interest rates, shaky home mortgages, and free-market democratic capitalism itself. Remember that back in the 1990s, he declared war on America for three other reasons: We had troops in Saudi Arabia. The United Nations had imposed sanctions on Iraq. And America supported Israel. Now it...

Something quite strange is happening: Despite all the bad news about the Middle East from the European and American media, things actually seem to be improving. Iraq is getting better, and the opposition to the war is, in the current campaign cycle, is starting to shift away from the “war is lost” to something more like “stabilizing the government over time would not be worth the cumulative cost in American lives and treasure.” All sober Democrats realize not only that the Moveon.org ad was a political disaster, but more importantly, that the Moveon.org/Michael Moore/Cindy Sheehan/Hollywood ticking bombs actually scare...

This week the American public will surely be focused on Iraq, as Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker present their reports to Congress. Petraeus and Crocker undoubtedly will speak of the striking military success of the surge strategy, while Democrats will try to focus on the failure of Iraqi politicians to reach agreement on major issues. But Iraq is not the only challenge America will face in the coming years. Islamist terrorists will continue to try to attack the U.S. and undermine, if not destroy, our free society. Americans, for all the media's concentration on Iraq, seem aware of...

On that day, we watched tape of the doomed in suits diving head first from the burning floors, hoping to splatter on roofs rather than crush and kill incoming firefighters — as some tragically did. I remember reading about the last hours in the stairwell of the Cassandra FBI agent John O’Neill, who chose to go back into the inferno. His year-long, near solitary race to save us against the evil of the al Qaeda planners Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh came to an end that day — and with it O’Neill himself. And I remember reading the accounts...

“You don’t roll out a new product in August,” said President Bush’s aide, Andrew Card, apropos Iraq in the summer of 2002. But in this seventh September of a no longer new war a somewhat battered product is in need of a rebranding. It was launched in the days after 9/11 as a “war on terror,” an artful evasion deemed necessary on the grounds that a war on any enemy beginning with “Islamist,” “Islamo-,” or “Islamic” might give the impression we had some, ah, issues with Islam itself and only complicate things further with various “friends” like Mubarak and the...

Some set the matter aside as being nothing more than verbal play for the benefit of word-men. What term properly designates what we are doing, and what we are enduring, in many parts of the world, the symbolic center of which is the Twin Towers site in Manhattan? Sometimes the words chosen can mean the justification of an additional measure of military power. Always they calibrate the public mood and the public perception of what is going on. I am informed that French pacifists, ensconced in the French Academy in 1939 and determined to understate Nazi military exercises (even...

"Mess," "fiasco," "disaster," "blunder," and "catastrophe." Fill in the blanks with almost any stock noun of gloom these days when speaking about Iraq. For finger-in-the-wind politicians, writing off Iraq is mere throat-clearing before moving on to any discussion of immigration reform or taxes. For ahead-of-the-curve pundits, starting out with “The failure in Iraq” is like opening their browser before daily pontificating. No need of explanation or empiricism, one just gets things out of the way at the very beginning with our new postmodern ritual. Usually the more vehemently one used to clamor for the idea of removing Saddam Hussein —...

At 91, Bernard Lewis, the doyen of Middle Eastern Studies who for more than half a century has been considered one of the West's foremost scholars of Islamic history and culture, is the author of more than two dozen books, most notably The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, The Political Language of Islam, and The Muslim Discovery of Europe and is the subject of envy because of his remarkably lucid mind and memory. Both qualities were on display on Wednesday evening, May 2, 2007 when he addressed an overflow audience in the ballroom of the Loew’s Philadelphia...

Scholars and writers gathered at Queens College the past two days to discuss threats to Israel and the West under the conference title: "Is it 1938 Again?" The participants, representing the pro- Israel center left and center right positions, expressed vigorous differences. The editor-at-large of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz, spoke of a World War IV against Islamofascism and favored American military action against Iran's nuclear capability. A professor at Hebrew University, Moshe Halbertal, told The New York Sun that Mr. Podhoretz's target was too broad, saying there should be a more "calibrated definition" of specific targets to avoid increasing jihadism. In...

It is best if an enemy nation comes and surrenders of its own accord. —Du You (735-812) To the student of counterinsurgency warfare, the war in Iraq has reached a critical but dismally familiar stage.On the one hand, events in that country have taken a more hopeful direction in recent months. Operations in the city of Najaf in January presaged a more effective burden-sharing between American and Iraqi troops than in the past. The opening moves of the so-called “surge� in Baghdad, involving increased American patrols and the steady addition of more than 21,000 ground troops, have begun to sweep...

Machiavelli could offer President Bush what he needs most at this pivotal juncture: a philosophical blueprint for confronting the Iranian nuclear threat and successfully prosecuting the broader war against radical Islam. A leading figure of the Renaissance, Niccolo Machiavelli served as a diplomat and militia commander for the short-lived Florentine Republic of the early sixteenth century. His seminal experiences in office, coupled with a remarkably deep reading of history, led Machiavelli to the pioneering political philosophy which he would outline in The Prince and elaborate upon in Discourses on Livy. Like all great books, The Prince transcends the time for...

Hillary Clinton recently said: "If I had been president in 2002, I would not have started this war." "If we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will." Both of these certitudes ignore the context and the realities. This may be because the Democrats by and large are in denial or believe that America is to blame for terrorism. If only America would stop oppressing the Arabs or stop favouring Israel, terrorism would greatly diminish. Even if they are prepared to accept that we are in World War IV with Islamists, staying engaged in Iraq...

An important and interesting report by an independent think-tank released in Britain Monday has found that young Muslims are heading toward religious extremism. This is not just a warning bell, it is a thunderous one, but Europeans are unable to take action lest they be accused of not being liberal. On the contrary, the main lessons drawn from the British research is one of self–flagellation, with Brits asking what they did wrong and why they had discriminated against the Muslim community. The research was based, among other things, on a survey conducted among the Muslim population that showed 37 percent...

President Bush is a genuinely awful speaker. Wouldn't it be a shame if we lost a war for the survival of western civilization because we had a President who reads his speeches in a dispassionate drone? It's been interesting to watch the media respond to the speech. Not that many months ago, the media was reporting on the speeches of Democrats and other critics of the war, talking about how Bush's plan in Iraq had failed because we always needed "more boots on the ground." None of them -- not even the generals who hated defense secretary Rumsfeld with such...

A third World War is already underway between Islamic militancy and the West but most people do not realize it, the former head of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad said in an interview published Saturday in Portugal. ‘We are in the midst of a third World War,’ former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy told weekly newspaper Expresso. ‘The world does not understand. A person walks through the streets of Tel Aviv, Barcelona or Buenos Aires and doesn’t get the sense that there is a war going on,’ said Halevy who headed Mossad between 1998 and 2003. ‘During World War I and II...

Charles Krauthammer writes an internationally syndicated column for the Washington Post Writers Group. He is also a monthly essayist for Time magazine, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and The New Republic, and a weekly panelist on Inside Washington. He was awarded the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, and Financial Times recently named him America’s most influential commentator. This enote is based on his keynote address at FPRI’s November 14, 2006, annual dinner, at which Dr. Krauthammer was the second recipient of FPRI’s Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Service. We are now in a period of confusion...

With great conviction, my half-sister cried: "It's a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed." She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust. Later, as a teenager in...

SANTA ANA, Calif. - Five members of a family accused of scheming to send sensitive information about Navy warships to China were indicted Wednesday on new conspiracy charges, prosecutors said. The indictment, handed down by a federal grand jury, added counts of conspiracy to export U.S. defense articles to China, possession of property in aid of a foreign government and making false statements to federal investigators to existing charges. Named in the supplemental indictment were Chi Mak, a U.S. citizen who worked for Anaheim defense contractor Power Paragon; his wife, Rebecca Laiwah Chiu; his brother, Tai Mak; Tai Mak's wife,...

As we mark the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, and we review the half a decade of war on terror since, the central question that comes to the minds of both experts and policymakers is this – who is winning the war and where are we in its prosecution? And to refine, is al Qaeda on the retreat, is Afghanistan working, is Iraq surviving the challenge, and is Lebanon’s Cedars Revolution on the rise or has it been defeated? Is Hezbollah’s war changing the U.S. strategy regarding Iran and Israel? And finally, is the U.S. homeland secure,...

By stigmatising organisations such as Hizbullah, Hamas, there is no longer necessity to respect their constituencies, democratic mandates Lee Marsden Published: 09.21.06, 16:59 Today, the United States’ campaign to reshape the Middle East is an unmitigated disaster. The ambitious project to create a democratic region has resulted in the deaths of over seventy thousand people, mainly civilians, in the Middle East and beyond. Recent democratic elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories and Israel have resulted in more rather than less violence. For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this may be the acceptable “birth pangs of democracy” but for...

Gazan Muslims Form Group to Attack Christian Targets 23:03 Sep 19, '06 / 26 Elul 5766 by Ezra HaLevi Muslims in Hamas-controlled Gaza have formed an ad hoc terrorist group promising to attack Christian targets to avenge the Pope’s choice of a quotation insinuating that Islam is prone to violence. The group, which calls itself the “Army of guidance,” sent an announcement to news agencies based in Gaza saying that “every place relevant to Christians will be a target until the cursed infidel – the Vatican – apologizes to Muslims.” Hardline Islamic groups were offended by the Pope’s citing of...

PAKISTANI President Pervez Musharraf today called for a ban on the "defamation of Islam" in a speech to the UN General Assembly in which he took a veiled swipe at Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks linking the Muslim faith to violence. "We also need to bridge, through dialogue and understanding, the growing divide between the Islamic and Western worlds," General Musharraf told the 192-member assembly. "It is imperative to end racial and religious discrimination against Muslims and to prohibit the defamation of Islam." In an indirect reference to Pope Benedict XVI, he said, "It is most disappointing to see...

By common consent among historians, the modern history of the Middle East begins in the year 1798, when the French Revolution arrived in Egypt in the form of a small expeditionary force led by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte—who conquered and then ruled it for a while with appalling ease. General Bonaparte—he wasn't yet Emperor—proclaimed to the Egyptians that he had come to them on behalf of a French Republic built on the principles of liberty and equality. We know something about the reactions to this proclamation from the extensive literature of the Middle Eastern Arab world. The idea...

<...SNIP...> In free societies, the best weapon against those who choose not to fight is simply to tell the public — constantly and candidly — why we should fight. This is true even in ugly wars that present only bad and worse choices. Western armies always do better when a Pericles or a Franklin Roosevelt explains — rather than asserts — how difficult the task is, what the enemy is up to, and how we will, as in the past, ensure its defeat. For all the talk of Vietnam, one forgets that America has so far been quite successful in...

<...snip...>In only one respect does the Field Manual recognize any difference between lawful and unlawful combatants: The latter may be separated from their compatriots. Otherwise, terrorists who have violated the rules of war by targeting civilians and fighting out of uniform are to be treated exactly like POWs and considered honorable fighters who have a right to keep their secrets. So Iraqi and Afghan insurgents won't even face the prospect of your average good cop/bad cop routine. The manual allows for a watered down version called "Mutt and Jeff" in which interrogators can affect different personalities. But the Manual admonishes...

ELEANOR HALL: A former CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) director and chief adviser to New York's Terrorism Preparedness Taskforce has described the conflict against al-Qaeda as the "fourth world war", and he predicts it will go on for decades. James Woolsey was director of the CIA under President Clinton and was an arms control negotiator under presidents Reagan and Bush Senior. He's critical of US administrations from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton for failing to tackle Islamic terrorism more robustly. James Woolsey has been speaking to Paolo Black. JAMES WOOLSEY: I think that war will go on for decades, like the...

It is now becoming trite to write of the American military “failure” in Iraq. But recently this purported setback has been lumped together with the Israeli problems in southern Lebanon to suggest an end to the long dominance of the Western Way of War — an approach to warfare that has usually allowed Western soldiers to do what they wish abroad, from Alexander at the Indus to the Europeans in the 20th century. Supposedly the Islamists have not only evolved beyond the old, failed Arab paradigm of feebly copying Western conventional practice (remember the 1967 Six-Day War or Saddam’s disaster...

George Bush recently declared that we are at war with "Islamic fascism." Muslim-American groups were quick to express furor at the expression. Middle Eastern autocracies complained that it was provocative and insensitive.Critics of the term chosen by the president, however, should remember what al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other extremist Muslim groups have said and done. Like the fascists of the 1930s, the leaders of these groups are authoritarians who brook no dissent in their efforts to impose a comprehensive system of submission upon the unwilling.Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to kill any American they could find, and then...

To: National Desk Contact: Department of Justice, 202-514-2007 WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following fact sheet on anti-terrorism efforts was released today by the Department of Justice: The highest priority of the Department of Justice since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been to protect Americans by preventing acts of terrorism. The ability of the Department to identify and prosecute would- be terrorists, thereby thwarting their deadly plots, has improved dramatically over the past five years thanks to: a core set of structural reforms, the development of new law enforcement tools, and the discipline of a...

We know what the terrorists intend to do because they've told us — and we need to take their words seriously. Thank you all very much. (Applause.) Thank you all. Please be seated. General Hendrix, thank you for the invitation to be here. Thanks for the kind introduction. I'm honored to stand with the men and women of the Military Officers Association of America. I appreciate the Board of Directors who are here, and the leaders who have given me this platform from which to speak. I'm proud to be here with active members of the United States military. Thank...

LONDON (EJP)--- Prominent British film director Ken Loach has called for a boycott of state-sponsored Israeli cultural institutions in response to Israel’s actions in Lebanon, and has encouraged others to follow suit. The 69-year-old winner of this year’s Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival has also refused an invite to attend this year’s Haifa Film Festival in protest against Israel’s actions during the recent hostilities in Lebanon. He said: “I support the call by Palestinian film-makers, artists and others to boycott state sponsored Israeli cultural institutions and urge others to join their campaign. “Palestinians are driven to call...

Hezbollah’s black-clad legions goose-step and stiff-arm salute in parade, apparently eager to convey both the zeal and militarism of their religious fascism. Meanwhile, consider Hezbollah’s “spiritual” head, Hassan Nasrallah — the current celebrity of an unhinged Western media that tried to reinvent the man’s own self-confessed defeat as a victory. Long before he hid in the Iranian embassy Nasrallah was on record boasting: “The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death.” Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad trumps that Hitlerian nihilism by reassuring the...

Poll about whether or not Islamofacism is a 'real' threat.

A senior military spokesman says there is clear evidence that Iran has directly aided insurgents in Iraq. Those comments follow Iraq's deadliest month since the U.S.-led invasion, in terms of civilian casualties. In the Baghdad neighborhood of al Mashtal Thursday, there were the familiar scenes that have become daily reminders of Iraq's insurgency -- burned out cars, wounded rushed to hospitals, and U.S. and Iraqi troops cleaning up the mess after another suicide bombing. One car blast about 100 meters from the al-Rashad police station killed two civilians and injured at least five others. Sectarian violence in Iraq culminated in...

Neoconservatism is hard to pin down as discrete political theory; Mr. Podhoretz [prefers] "tendency." In any case, as a practical matter, it denotes the mentality of those who moved from somewhere on the political left to somewhere on the right, primarily during the late '70s. It had "two ruling passions," according to Mr. Podhoretz. On the one hand, the neocons were repulsed by the countercultural '60s radicalism that came to dominate the American liberal establishment. On the other, they argued for a more assertive, muscular foreign policy (at the time in response to Soviet expansionism). ... The "war on terror,"...

To see the context of this remarkable article I suggest one see the Wall Street Journal editorial today by Joseph Rago in opinionjournal.com It gives a comprehensive view of America's war against international terrorism and why we must not waver even - especially! - in Iraq.

Yesterday on this page, in a serious and thoughtful survey of a world in crisis, Richard Holbrooke listed 13 countries that could be involved in violence in the near future: Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Somalia. And in addition, of course, the United States. With those 14 nations Holbrooke could make the case for what I describe as "an emerging third world war" -- a long-running conflict whose latest manifestation was brought home to Americans yesterday with the disclosure in London of yet another ghastly terrorist plot -- this one intended to...

The Shiite mullahs who rule Iran and have seized the leadership of the Islamofascist war against us are as dangerous an enemy as America has ever faced. Although we have chosen to be deaf to them, their war aims have never been secret. They have been shouting them out on the world stage to a billion listening Muslims, ever since they handed us the first of many humiliating defeats in 1979.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said recently that “we are in the early stages of what I would describe as the third world war.”  Citing fresh examples of North Korean belligerency, Islamic terrorism in India, ongoing fighting in Afghanistan, insurgency in Iraq, support for Hezbollah terrorism by Iran and Syria, the related fighting between Israel and Lebanon, and the arrests of terrorists aspiring to murder Americans, Gingrich analogized the current state of affairs to the Great War and World War II.  In politics, the term “war” is sometimes used metaphorically in ways that do not shed precise light on the...