BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Right War?’ Probes Differences among American Conservatives over Iraq War; Traditionalists, Neocons, Realists Differ on Goals of Bush’s War on Terror
Reviewed By David M. KinchenHuntington News Network Book Critic
Hinton, WV (HNN) – “The Right War?: The Conservative Debate on Iraq” (Cambridge University Press, $19.99, 264 pages) is a necessary and useful vade mecum to the divisions among American conservatives that came into stark relief with the run-up to the Iraq invasion in 2002 and 2003 and with the actual war beginning in March 2003. They continue to this day.
The properly indexed quality paperback features essays by almost two dozen conservatives, including Henry A. Kissinger, Patrick J. Buchanan, Robert Kagan, Victor Davis Hanson, David Brooks, Max Boot, William Kristol, George F. Will, the Editors of National Review, Francis Fukuyama and Charles Krauthammer and many more. One who was new to me is Australian Owen Harries, who writes on “The Perils of Hegemony.”
Edited by Gary Rosen, managing editor of Commentary magazine, “The Right War?” features valuable contributions – some as short as three pages, others as long as long as Norman Podhoretz’s 67-page “World War IV” essay that is must reading for conservatives of every stripe. Podhoretz, one of the earliest neo-conservatives – a description he wears like a badge of honor – says that the Cold War, beginning in 1947 and ending with the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, was World War III. The war on terrorism, he posits, is World War IV and will continue until we convince Islamic terrorists and their allies that we will never become part of their hegemony.
“Neo-conservative” is a dirty word to contributor and presidential candidate Buchanan who says in his column that democracy in the Middle East “is not vital to our national security…no Middle East nation has ever attacked us.” This conveniently obscures the facts of the two World Trade Center attacks and the blurring of Islamofacism vis a vis the tribal Muslim states of the Middle East and Africa.
Several contributors point out that Buchanan and his myrmidons on the Left are quick to equate neo-conservatism with Judaism and revive the anti-Semitism of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” variety which is wildly popular in the Muslim world. Buchanan has denied that he’s the reincarnation of anti-Semites of the Father Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith variety, but he often cites Jewish neocons in his columns, ignoring the fact that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld don’t need support from neo-conservatives of whatever religious or ethnic background to pursue their war and nation-building: They’re “true believers” of the type described by the late, great Eric Hoffer, who used the term to describe the fanatics of the type who hijacked the planes on Sept. 11, 2001. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. are also Wilsonians, I believe. The “War on Terror” is a true religious crusade to them as much as Woodrow Wilson’s intervention in the European War of 1914-18 was a crusade for the man who wanted to participate in a “war to end wars.” Wilson, as a careful reading of history quickly reveals, was a serial intervener in other countries in our hemisphere prior to our 1917 entry into what later became to be called World War I.
In addition to the excellent Podhoretz essay – I repeat, must reading for everyone – I found the contributions from Max Boot and Victor Davis Hanson particularly incisive. Boot’s contribution – two columns that originally appeared in his home base, the Los Angeles Times -- says “it takes a long time to bring order out of chaos,” and suggests we’re going to be in Iraq at least as long as we occupied Germany – four years – and Japan – seven years. Boot inhabits roughly the same place at the Los Angeles Times as fellow contributor David Brooks does at the New York Times: The in-house conservative at a liberal newspaper. The second essay by Boot advises that “Formal empire isn’t our destiny. But …while fostering self-rule, the U.S. must also ensure that Iraq will not dissolve into civil war or become a haven for terrorists….” Kind of the you break it, you bought it argument for the U.S.
Hanson, the conservative guru of California’s San Joaquin Valley, contributes two essays – one at the beginning of the collection, the other toward the end. Hanson would probably not object to the label of “realist.” He says we’re in the war on terror for the long haul; it’s not a local, it’s an express and we’re going to the end of the line. I’m sounding like the Barbara Stanwyck character in “Double Indemnity”! Hanson says we have to kill “far more of our premodern enemies [Islamofacists] to achieve victory. I sense from the use of the word “victory” that “realist” Hanson is on the same page in the war on terror as neocon Norman Podhoretz.
The contributions in “The Right War?” demonstrate graphically how varied the conservatives of the U.S. really are. Rosen has done an excellent job compiling a valuable collection for anyone who wants to decipher what’s going on in the “blabocracy.”
Publisher’s Web Site: www.cambridge.org