Norman Podhoretz

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Norman B. Podhoretz (b. January 16, 1930) is a prominent American neoconservative theorist and writer for Commentary. In 2007, his role as foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani's Republican presidential campaign and public advocacy of an American attack on Iran brought renewed attention to his thought and works.[1]

Contents

[edit] Early life

The son of Julius and Helen (Woliner) Podhoretz,[2] Jewish immigrants[3] from the Central European region of Galicia,[4] Podhoretz was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Podhoretz's family was leftist, with his elder sister joining a Socialist youth movement.

Podhoretz received Bachelor's Degrees from both Columbia University — where he studied under Lionel Trilling — and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He later received a BA with first-class honors and an MA from the University of Cambridge. He also served in the United States Army (1953-1955) as an enlistee with the U.S. Army Security Agency.[5]

[edit] Career

Podhoretz served as Commentary magazine's Editor-in-Chief from 1960 (when he replaced Elliot E. Cohen) until his retirement in 1995. Podhoretz remains Commentary's Editor-at-Large. In 1963, he wrote the influential essay, “My Negro Problem — And Ours," in which he described the oppression he felt as a child from blacks, and concluded by calling for a color-blind society, and advocated "the wholesale merging of the two races [as] the most desirable alternative for everyone concerned."

From 1981 to 1987, Podhoretz was an adviser to the U.S. Information Agency. From 1995 to 2003, he was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the 43rd President George W. Bush, the highest honor the U.S. President can bestow on a civilian, in 2004, the same year as former CIA Director George Tenet and General Tommy Franks, Commander of US Forces in Iraq .

Podhoretz is married to author Midge Decter, and is the stepfather of Rachel Decter (Elliott Abrams' wife) and father of syndicated columnist John Podhoretz.

Norman Podhoretz was one of the original signatories of the "Statement of Principles" of the Project for the New American Century.

Podhoretz received the Guardian of Zion Award from Bar-Ilan University on May 24, 2007.

He served as a senior foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani in his presidential campaign.[6]

[edit] Political Views

[edit] Iraq

In the leadup to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Podhoretz argued strongly for military intervention, claiming that Saddam Hussein posed a direct threat to the U.S.[7] After the 9/11 attack and more than a year before the start of the War in Iraq, Podhoretz wrote in February of 2002 that "There is no doubt that Saddam already possesses large stores of chemical and biological weapons, and may ... be 'on the precipice of nuclear power.' ... Some urge that we ... concentrate on easier targets first. Others contend that the longer we wait, the more dangerous Saddam will grow. Yet whether or not Iraq becomes the second front in the war against terrorism, one thing is certain: there can be no victory in this war if it ends with Saddam Hussein still in power."[8]

[edit] Iran

Podhoretz is currently arguing that the United States should attack Iranian nuclear facilities, based on similar claims about WMD that he made about Iraq. According to The Sunday Times, Podhoretz believes that "Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are merely different fronts of the same long war."[9] Podhoretz describes recent diplomatic efforts with Iran as equivalent to appeasement of Nazi Germany prior to World War II. He also contends that the War on Terror is a war against Islamofascism, and constitutes World War IV (World War III having been the Cold War), and advocates the bombing of Iran to preempt Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons.[10] His book on that subject, entitled World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, was published by Doubleday on 11 September 2007.

In a recent article, Podhoretz explicitly stated his view that Iran should be attacked: "In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force."[11] He then went on to consider the consequences of bombing Iran:

The opponents of bombing—not just the usual suspects but many ... who have no illusions about the nature and intentions and potential capabilities of the Iranian regime—disagree that it might end in the overthrow of the mullahcracy. On the contrary, they are certain that all Iranians, even the democratic dissidents, would be impelled to rally around the flag. And this is only one of the worst-case scenarios they envisage. To wit: Iran would retaliate by increasing the trouble it is already making for us in Iraq. It would attack Israel with missiles armed with non-nuclear warheads but possibly containing biological and/or chemical weapons. There would be a vast increase in the price of oil, with catastrophic consequences for every economy in the world, very much including our own. The worldwide outcry against the inevitable civilian casualties would make the anti-Americanism of today look like a love-fest. I readily admit that it would be foolish to discount any or all of these scenarios. Each of them is, alas, only too plausible. Nevertheless, there is a good response to them, and it is the one given by John McCain. The only thing worse than bombing Iran, McCain has declared, is allowing Iran to get the bomb. [11]

[edit] Vietnam

In an editorial to the Wall Street Journal on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Podhoretz contends that the retreat from Iraq should not be similar to the retreat from Vietnam. He argues that when the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam, it sacrificed its national honor by a disgraceful show of weakness and cowardice.[12]

In 1982 James Fallows wrote a review of Podhoretz's book "Why We Were in Vietnam" for the New York Times, in which he accuses Podhoretz of "changing his views" and "self-righteousness" on the subject of Vietnam, noting that in 1971 Podhoretz wrote that he would "prefer just such an American defeat to a 'Vietnamization' of the war."[13]

A larger quote from "Why We Were in Vietnam" which was included in the review is as follows:

As one who has never believed that anything good would ever come for us or for the world from an unambiguous American defeat, I now find myself -and here is the main source of my own embarrassment in writing about Vietnam - unhappily moving to the side of those who would prefer just such an American defeat to a 'Vietnamization' of the war which calls for the indefinite and unlimited bombardment by American pilots in American planes of every country in that already devastated region.

[edit] Soviet Union

In the early 1980s, Podhoretz was extremely sceptical that fundamental reform was possible in the USSR, and sharply criticized those who argued that U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union should be one of détente. In his 1980 book The Present Danger, Podhoretz predicted that the United States was in danger of losing the Cold War and falling behind the Soviet Union as a global power.[14] Later he would express anger with President Ronald Reagan for, in his view, "not establishing sufficiently strong policies toward the Soviets."[15]

[edit] George W. Bush

Podhoretz has praised the current President of the United States: "George W. Bush (is) a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it." He goes on to claim that Bush has been "battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory."[11][7]

[edit] Books

  • 1964: Doings and Undoings: The Fifties and After (essays on American writers)
  • 1967: Making It (autobiography) ISBN 0-394-43449-8
  • 1979: Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir
  • 1980: The Present Danger: "Do We Have the Will to Reverse the Decline of American Power?" ISBN 0-671-41395-3
  • 1982: Why We Were in Vietnam (history and argument) ISBN 0-671-44578-2
  • 1986: The Bloody Crossroads: Where Literature and Politics Meet (essays on Camus, Kundera, Henry Adams, Kissinger, Solzhenitsyn, Orwell et al.) ISBN 0-671-61891-1
  • 2000: Ex-Friends: Falling Out With Allen Ginsberg, Lionel & Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer (memoir) ISBN 1-893554-17-1
  • 2001: My Love Affair With America: The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative (autobiography) ISBN 1-893554-41-4
  • 2002: The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are (about the classical Hebrew prophets) ISBN 0-7432-1927-9
  • 2003: The Norman Podhoretz Reader: A Selection of His Writings from the 1950s through the 1990s, edited by Thomas L. Jeffers; foreword by Paul Johnson ISBN 0-7432-3661-0
  • 2007: World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism ISBN 0-385-52221-5

[edit] Further reading

[edit] References

  1. ^ "His Toughness Problem—and Ours", by Ian Buruma
  2. ^ Norman Podhoretz - NNDB
  3. ^ Contemporary Literary Criticism | Norman Podhoretz
  4. ^ Biography of Norman Podhoretz
  5. ^ Profile: Norman Podhoretz
  6. ^ Giuliani's War Cabinet The American Prospect, Sept. 25, 2007
  7. ^ a b Podhoretz N., "In Praise of the Bush Doctrine," Commentary Magazine, Sept., 2002
  8. ^ Podhoretz N., "How to Win World War IV,", Commentary Magazine, February, 2002
  9. ^ Baxter, Sarah. "Neocon godfather Normal Podhoretz tells Bush: bomb Iran." The Sunday Times. Sept. 30, 2007
  10. ^ Podhoretz N., "The Case for Bombing Iran," The Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2007. Accessed May 30, 2007.
  11. ^ a b c "The Case for Bombing Iran", Commentary Magazine, last accessed November 26, 2007
  12. ^ Podhoretz N., "America the Ugly" The Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2007. Accessed September 11, 2007.
  13. ^ Fallows, James "In Defense of an Offensive War" The New York Times, March 28, 1982. Accessed January 3, 2008.
  14. ^ Norman Podhoretz, The Present Danger, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980.
  15. ^ "The Rise of Neoconservatism", The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring, 1996

[edit] External links