Mystery Writer

Guess who's the voice of reason:

On the dust jacket of his book, Richard Perle appends a
Washington Post depiction of himself as the �intellectual guru of the
hard-line neoconservative movement in foreign policy.�
The guru�s reputation, however, does not survive a reading. Indeed,
on putting down Perle�s new book the thought recurs: the
neoconservative moment may be over. For they are not only losing their
hold on power, they are losing their grip on reality.
An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror opens on a note of
hysteria. In the War on Terror, writes Perle, �There is no middle way
for Americans: It is victory or holocaust.� �What is new since 9/11
is the chilling realization that the terrorist threat we thought we had
contained� now menaces �our survival as a nation.�
But how is our survival as a nation menaced when not one American has
died in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11? Are we really in
imminent peril of a holocaust like that visited upon the Jews of
Poland?
�[A] radical strain within Islam,� says Perle, � ... seeks to
overthrow our civilization and remake the nations of the West into
Islamic societies, imposing on the whole world its religion and
laws.�
Well, yes. Militant Islam has preached that since the 7th century. But
what are the odds the Boys of Tora Bora are going to �overthrow our
civilization� and coerce us all to start praying to Mecca five times
a day?
In his own review of An End to Evil, Joshua Micah Marshall picks up
this same scent of near-hysteria over the Islamic threat:

The book conveys a general sense that America is at war
with Islam itself anywhere and everywhere: the contemporary Muslim
world .... is depicted as one great cauldron of hate, murder,
obscurantism, and deceit. If our Muslim adversaries are not to destroy
Western civilization, we must gird for more battles.

To suggest Frum and Perle are over the top is not to imply we not take
seriously the threat of terror attacks on airliners, in malls, from
dirty bombs, or, God forbid, a crude atomic device smuggled in by Ryder
truck or container ship. Yet even this will never �overthrow our
civilization.�
In the worst of terror attacks, we lost 3,000 people. Horrific. But at
Antietam Creek, we lost 7,000 in a day�s battle in a nation that was
one-ninth as populous. Three thousand men and boys perished every week
for 200 weeks of that Civil War. We Americans did not curl up and die.
We did not come all this way because we are made of sugar candy.
Germany and Japan suffered 3,000 dead every day in the last two years
of World War II, with every city flattened and two blackened by atom
bombs. Both came back in a decade. Is al-Qaeda capable of this sort of
devastation when they are recruiting such scrub stock as Jose Padilla
and the shoe bomber?
In the war we are in, our enemies are weak. That is why they resort to
the weapon of the weak�terror. And, as in the Cold War, time is on
America�s side. Perseverance and patience are called for, not this
panic.

I bet you never thought you'd find yourself nodding in agreement while
you read a Pat Buchanan article, did you? That's right, ladies and
gents. Compared to the current neocon administration Pat Buchanan is a fucking moderate.

Politics, as they say, certainly does make for strange bedfellows.

Posted by flow Frazao on February 19, 2004 at 03:36 PM | Permalink