Stormin' Norman Podhoretz At It Again

It seems that Norman Podhoretz is intent on spinning himself completely and utterly out of all relevance, as his recent debate with Fareed Zakaria has demonstrated. I'm sure that we're all familiar with Podhoretz; he's the one who had this to say about the Iraq War:

'it's an amazing success' and.. 'There were WMD (weapons of mass destruction), and they were shipped to Syria ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better.'

And when probed about the fact that (at the time) polls were saying that 80% of Iraqis wanted the U.S out of Iraq he replied:

"I don't much care,...nobody was tortured in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo"

Now Norman is having his say on the next mission, Iran, and as you might imagine, considering how well the Iraq War has gone, he's all for an attack:

'...only one terrible choice, which is to bomb those facilities and retard their program, or even cut it off altogether, or allow them to go nuclear. US senator John McCain is right to say: "The only thing worse than bombing Iran is to allow Iran to get the bomb." '

Zakaria replies:

'Well, there is a third choice, which is the choice we have used for pretty much every other country that has developed nuclear weapons. That is deterrence. We allowed Mao Zedong to get a nuclear weapon and have used deterrence against the Chinese. We allowed the Soviet Union to get nuclear weapons and used deterrence against the Russians. We've allowed the North Koreans to get nuclear weapons and have used deterrence against them.'

Podhoretz responds in a manner that's become far too predictable for U.S foreign policy hawks:

'This attitude represents an irresponsible complacency that I think is comparable to the denial in the early 1930s of the intentions of Adolf Hitler, which led to what Winston Churchill called an unnecessary war involving millions of deaths that might have been averted if the West had acted early enough.'

The attempts at painting all opponents as potential Chamberlains has always been tempting for such Hawks, but it's a massive twist of today's reality. Saddam may have been an evil son of a bitch but he was no Hitler. Hitler, Stalin etc... were the heads of major powers in their day representing a colossal threat. Saddam and Ahmadinejad were, and are, leaders of minor powers by international standards. The threat wasn't, and isn't, even comparable to Hitler's Germany. Iraq was a basket case before it was made into a.......well.........basket case.

Of course Podhoretz makes the claim that Iran's Islamic rulers may be fanatical enough to use the bomb regardless of the repercussions:

'The reason deterrence can't work with Iran is that there's a different element involved here than was involved with Mao or Kim or Joseph Stalin, and that is religious fanaticism. With a religious fanatic such as Ahmadinejad and the "mullahcracy" ruling Iran generally, there is no assurance that the idea of self-preservation or the protection of the nation will deter them.'

Zakaria destroys this position by looking at the history:

'"If the worst came to worst and half of mankind died, the other half would remain, while imperialism would be razed to the ground." This is what Mao said. And it wasn't just his words. It was his actions. He was actively aiding revolutionary movements and killing Americans all over the world. So the question about Iran's rationality rests on this: The mullahs have been in power for nearly 30 years. What have they done? Iran has followed a pretty rational, national interest-oriented foreign policy. Look at how they opposed al-Qa'ida and the Taliban, another Islamic revolutionary movement. You'd think that they would have been sympathetic, but no, the Iranians were the sworn enemies of al-Qa'ida and they helped the US depose the Taliban in Afghanistan. They've been fairly calculating, they have followed their national interest. When it has bumped up against the US, they have worked against us. When they have thought that our interests were in common, as in Afghanistan, they've worked with us.'

Iran's Ahmadinejad is a racist wanker, and the Mullahs rule is tyrannical, but Zakaria's reply above is correct which makes Podhoretz's appraisal rubbish.

The scary thing about Norman Podhoretz isn't that some still take him seriously after his comments on the Iraq invasion, it's the fact that he's a foreign policy adviser to Republican Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani. The world simply can't afford another one of these nut jobs whispering into the ears of another stupid President.