Ian Buruma thinks Norman Podhoretz is a fanatic, without even mentioning that Podhoretz 'hopes and prays' that we will attack Iran
His Toughness Problem—and Ours
By Ian Buruma
New York Review of Books
World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism
by Norman Podhoretz
Doubleday, 230 pp., $24.95
1.
Not so long before the war in Iraq was launched, I was the only European at an American dinner party in Brussels. My fellow guests were a motley group of youngish diplomats, think-tank pundits, ex-spooks, and journalists, most of whom had established reputations as promoters of neoconservatism. Many topics were discussed, but two stand out in my memory: French wines and the "projection of force." Despite the praise for fine French wines, "the Europeans" were rather sneered at, as namby-pamby, frivolous, anti-Semitic appeasers, too far gone in spineless pacifism and political decadence to share America's burden of projecting force to make the world safe for democracy. They spoke with great confidence about military matters, of which none of them, to my knowledge, had any personal experience.
Listening to them talk, I tried to imagine what it must have been like to have been a youngish Old Etonian Foreign Office man at a smart London club around the time of the Boer War. I imagine it might have been something like that Brussels dinner party— the same sense of being just within fingertip reach of great power, the heady feeling of shouldering the burdens of that great power, and the contempt for those who fail to understand its basic benevolence, or indeed that a certain amount of unpleasantness ("messy" was the word in Brussels) is inevitable when such benevolence is to be spread forcefully to the benighted world.
If Irving Kristol is the godfather of neoconservatism, Norman Podhoretz is the patriarch. Podhoretz himself might not see all neocons as his intellectual offspring, although his son John has certainly followed in his footsteps. In fact, Podhoretz has a rather narrow definition of neoconservatism. He talks about "repentant liberals and leftists," mostly Jewish, who broke ranks with the left and "moved rightward" in the 1970s. "Strictly speaking," he says, "only those who fitted this description ought to have been called neo- (i.e., new) conservatives." Those who mimic the views of their parents (John P., say, or William Kristol) cannot be called "new." True, but simply to call them conservatives (or vieux cons -- 'old cunts,' as the French would say) would not do justice to the Napoleonic radicalism of their project.
(Continued here.)
By Ian Buruma
New York Review of Books
World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism
by Norman Podhoretz
Doubleday, 230 pp., $24.95
1.
Not so long before the war in Iraq was launched, I was the only European at an American dinner party in Brussels. My fellow guests were a motley group of youngish diplomats, think-tank pundits, ex-spooks, and journalists, most of whom had established reputations as promoters of neoconservatism. Many topics were discussed, but two stand out in my memory: French wines and the "projection of force." Despite the praise for fine French wines, "the Europeans" were rather sneered at, as namby-pamby, frivolous, anti-Semitic appeasers, too far gone in spineless pacifism and political decadence to share America's burden of projecting force to make the world safe for democracy. They spoke with great confidence about military matters, of which none of them, to my knowledge, had any personal experience.
Listening to them talk, I tried to imagine what it must have been like to have been a youngish Old Etonian Foreign Office man at a smart London club around the time of the Boer War. I imagine it might have been something like that Brussels dinner party— the same sense of being just within fingertip reach of great power, the heady feeling of shouldering the burdens of that great power, and the contempt for those who fail to understand its basic benevolence, or indeed that a certain amount of unpleasantness ("messy" was the word in Brussels) is inevitable when such benevolence is to be spread forcefully to the benighted world.
If Irving Kristol is the godfather of neoconservatism, Norman Podhoretz is the patriarch. Podhoretz himself might not see all neocons as his intellectual offspring, although his son John has certainly followed in his footsteps. In fact, Podhoretz has a rather narrow definition of neoconservatism. He talks about "repentant liberals and leftists," mostly Jewish, who broke ranks with the left and "moved rightward" in the 1970s. "Strictly speaking," he says, "only those who fitted this description ought to have been called neo- (i.e., new) conservatives." Those who mimic the views of their parents (John P., say, or William Kristol) cannot be called "new." True, but simply to call them conservatives (or vieux cons -- 'old cunts,' as the French would say) would not do justice to the Napoleonic radicalism of their project.
(Continued here.)
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