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FACEDOWN IN THE MUD OF MILTON. As Matt points out below, Peter Beinart's review of Norman Podhoretz's new book on World War IV, or 9, or 62, or whatever we're up to, had its problems, but was nonetheless effective at rapidly establishing that that facts are to Podhoretz glowing green rocks are to refugees from the planet Krypton:
His new book, “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” contains remarkably little information about its supposed subject. “Islamofascism,” for instance, goes largely undefined. Podhoretz does call it a “monster with two heads, one religious and the other secular.” But if fascism involves worship of the state, how exactly does the religious “head” — Al Qaeda — qualify, given that Osama bin Laden sees the state as a pagan imposition threatening the unity of Islam? And if the secular “head” was Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, what made it Islamofascist? After all, Hussein’s longtime foreign minister was Christian, as was Michel Aflaq, Baathism’s ideological founder (though some claim that on his deathbed he converted to Islam).Not everyone is so concerned about such oversights. Writing in The National Review, Jay Nordlinger's gushing love-note begins: "Everyone who writes has written about the war: both the general War on Terror and the particular war in Iraq. And Norman Podhoretz has written his share. He has now put his thoughts between hard covers, and has done so with his typical care and verve."This is not, so far as I can tell, meant to be a joke. Nor, I guess, is this rundown of the sacrifices Podhoretz has made in service of promoting wars for people not named "Podhoretz" to fight: "Podhoretz is one of our finest analysts of feelings and tics, from either direction. He was born in Brooklyn, in 1930, and had an early reputation as a literary critic. He is still a literary critic. But 'human events,' in the words of the Declaration, demanded his attention. He might have preferred to write about Shakespeare, Milton, and Conrad; but conscience told him to spend most of his time on Vietnam, the Middle East, and the like." God that must have been hard.--Ezra Klein
