Norman Podhoretz answers the Bush critics

Posted by Beth on August 24th, 2006 filed in Afghanistan, General, Iraq, Islamofascism, Politics, The War

Specifically, the conservative–and even neocon–critics. The fisking to end all fiskings, if you will. Losing faith in “the Bush Doctrine?” The Godfather speaks.

So far as the implementation of this new strategy goes, it is still early days–roughly comparable to 1952 in the history of the Truman Doctrine. As with the Truman Doctrine then, the Bush Doctrine has thus far acted only in the first few scenes of the first act of a five-act play. Like the Truman Doctrine, too, its performance has received very bad reviews. Yet we now know that the Truman Doctrine, despite being attacked by its Republican opponents as the “College of Cowardly Containment,” was adopted by them when they took power behind Dwight D. Eisenhower. We also know now that, after many ups and downs and following a period of retreat in the 1970s, the policy of containment was updated and reinvigorated in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan (albeit without admitting that this was what he was doing). And we now know as well that it was by thus building on the sound foundation laid by the Truman Doctrine that Reagan delivered on its original promise.

It is my contention that the Bush Doctrine is no more dead today than the Truman Doctrine was cowardly in its own early career. Bolstered by that analogy, I feel safe in predicting that, like the Truman Doctrine in 1952, the Bush Doctrine will prove irreversible by the time its author leaves the White House in 2008. And encouraged by the precedent of Ronald Reagan, I feel almost as confident in predicting that, three or four decades into the future, and after the inevitable missteps and reversals, there will come a president who, like Reagan in relation to Truman in World War III, will bring World War IV to a victorious end by building on the noble doctrine that George W. Bush promulgated when that war first began.

Read why. ALL of it.

Via Laura Ingraham, who also graciously provided Hot Air with an audio clip of Melanie Phillips’ (author of Londonistan ) appearance on her show. It’s also a must-see (or rather, must-listen?).