World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism

A book called The Much too Promised Land by Aaron David Miller makes Carter out to be a hero by talking about his success at Camp David but deletes any mention of how Carter let the pro-Israeli Shah fall and the anti-Israeli Khomeini rise! This book shows how Carter is indeed responsible for Khomeini's and now even Ahmadinejad's bad succcess!

World War IV was not quite what I expected, and the title certain belies the contents of the book, although it performs several necessary functions despite its brevity. The American public is fed a steady drumbeat of pessimism and oftentimes outright hostility towards anything that George W. Bush has done or will do. Podhoretz places what GWB had called the `Global War on Terrorism' into the lager historical context of `World War IV,' which was preceded by World War III (the cold war). Objections to the current war on Iraq, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, are deconstructed into component strains of American isolationism extending back to Woodrow Wilson's presidency, outright anti-Americanism continuous with 1960's radical movements, metastasizing liberalism bordering on outright socialism, Democrat party hypocrisy and the myriad schools of foreign policy with Cold War genealogy. Podhoretz also demystifies the currently misused term `neoconservative,' exposes the blatant and shameful politicization of national security by the Democrats and succinctly defines the `Bush Doctrine.' I would highly recommend this book to both liberals and conservatives, although the former group is in desperate need of historical context in their often a-historical arguments.

The author's thesis is well thought out. I also found the book to be a clear reminder that "World War IV", as he refers to it, began long before Sept 11, 2001. Clear thinking adults, not blinded by partisan rhetoric will most likely come away with a different view, or at minimum a different perspective of the Bush Doctrine as it relates to the war on terror.

Outstanding analysis of the five years post 911. Podoretz places The War on Terror (or what he calls WW IV) in the context of the last sixty years of U.S. foreign policy. Drawing valid parallels between the response of the media, academia, and political leaders to WW 2, and the Cold War (or what he calls WWIII) Podhoretz has a clear vision of the dangers of the world today. He compares Bush favorably to Truman and asserts that history will prove the President to be a great president in the foreign policy arena. However, what Podhoretz fails to do is to point out explicitly the dangers of pulling out of Iraq before achieving success. Should be required reading.

The thesis of this book is that the United States and the free world are now engaged in a fourth world- war, this one against radical Islam. The 'third world war' ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, and now according to Podhoretz the West faces another long- term struggle which will be decided not in a year or two but in the decades ahead. The point - man of this war at present is President Bush who Podhoretz sees as continually defamed and slandered by anti- American elements in the far - too- liberal for his taste Western media. While I am fundamentally in sympathy with his approach and believe that he rightfully sees the insidious intentions of a radical revolutionary fundamentalist Islam , I have reservations about his approach. One reason for this is that when we think of War we tend to think of great military forces in direct collision. True, the United States and the Soviet Union did not come to the ultimate face off, as the Allies did against the Axis but there were two massive military and political empires in direct contention. Here there is , as Podhoretz is well aware of, an assymetrical situation. Therefore he sees it as a new kind of war, a new kind of struggle which is especially demanding in the propaganda and media spheres. As I understand it he reads the intentions of Radical Islam rightly. Whether it be the Sunni Salafi Wahhabite strains or the Shiite Messianic strains there is an ideology whose ultimate goal is putting all of Mankind under the flag of Islam. The rise in this regard of a radical Iran on the verge of nuclear weapons is at this moment a key and most threatening development in the overall struggle. In regard to Iran Podhoretz is most forthright and persuasive. He outlines the dangers of a nuclear Iran, and he rightly characterizes the regime as an Islamofascist one. He understands Gulf Oil, America's allies in the Middle East would all be put in great jeopardy by a nuclear Iran. And he strongly advocates as major step in the war the preempting of the Iranian nuclear threat. Iran also plays a part in another aspect of the Islamic threat, the element of Muslim penetration into Europe. There is by this time a whole literature suggesting that in a few decades post- Christian Europe my well be Islamic. But there are great weaknesses in the world of Islam, including the major failure to within their own societies confront the modern world and properly adapt to it. The Islamic world is by and large a backward world not simply in its political structure but in its command of the knowledge, and technique of modernity. So my own understanding is that in the civilizational confrontations of the future it is not really poised for mastery and conquest. Its forces are too scattered, divided, and weak. Consider the chaos in Iraq with not simply Sunnite- Shiite conflicts but with internal Shiite conflicts. To my mind the danger of radical Islam and Islam's anti- American stand is in its power to weaken the U.S. isola