World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism [Hardcover]

Norman Podhoretz (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 11, 2007

For almost half a century—as a magazine editor and as the author of numerous bestselling books and hundreds of articles—Norman Podhoretz has helped drive the central political and intellectual debates in this country. Now, in this beautifully written and powerfully argued book, he takes on the most controversial issue of our time—the war against the global network of terrorists that attacked us on 9/11.
 
In World War IV, Podhoretz makes the first serious effort to set 9/11 itself, the battles that have followed it in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the war of ideas that it has provoked at home into a broad historical context. Through a brilliant telling of this epic story, Podhoretz shows that the global war against Islamofascism is as vital and necessary as the two world wars and the cold war (“World War III”) by which it was preceded. He also lays out a compelling case in defense of the Bush Doctrine, contending that its new military strategy of preemption and its new political strategy of democratization represent the only viable way to fight and win the special kind of war into which we were suddenly plunged.
 
Different in certain respects though the Islamofascists are from their totalitarian predecessors, this new enemy is equally dedicated to the destruction of the freedoms for which America stands and by which it lives. But it took the blatant aggression of 9/11 to make most Americans realize that war had long since been declared on us and that the time had come to fight back. Past administrations, both Republican and Democratic, had failed to respond with appropriate force to attacks by Muslim terrorists on American citizens in various countries, and even the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 was treated as a criminal act rather than an act of war. All this changed after 9/11, when the whole country rallied around President Bush’s decision to bring the war to the enemy’s home ground in the Middle East.
 
The successes and the setbacks that have followed are vividly portrayed by Podhoretz, who goes on to argue that, just as in the two great struggles against totalitarianism in the twentieth century, the key to victory in World War IV will be a willingness to endure occasional reverses without losing sight of what we are fighting against, what we are fighting for, and why we have to win.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

One of the few proud neoconservatives remaining, Podhoretz offers an impassioned defense of President Bush's foreign policy, gleefully attacking those on the left and the right who harbor suspicions that Bush fils is less than infallible. Convinced that we are in the middle of the fourth world war (the Cold War was the third), he attempts to steel us for the years of conflict to come. But Podhoretz's argument falls flat because of his refusal to face difficult realities in Iraq. He insists that the media has resolutely tried to ignore any and all signs of progress and repeatedly asserts that those with whom he disagrees are committed to seeing the U.S. fail in Iraq in order to enhance their professional reputations. Even in describing how the events of September 11 drew America together, Podhoretz cannot resist partisan sniping: [E]ven on the old flag-burning Left, a few prominent personalities were painfully wrenching their unaccustomed arms into something vaguely resembling a salute. Podhoretz's take-no-prisoners writing style will delight his partisans while infuriating his ideological opponents, whom he brands as members of a domestic insurgency against the Bush Doctrine. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

Podhoretz has been an intellectual combatant in the neoconservative ranks for decades, and here he engages critics of America's current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Stoutly defending President George W. Bush, Podhoretz covers every avenue of attack on Bush's strategy of responding militarily to Islamic terrorists rather than continuing the law-enforcement approach that had been the tendency prior to 9/11. The so-called Bush Doctrine of regime change, preemptive war, and propagation of democracies in the Middle East, Podhoretz argues, is comparable to the Truman Doctrine at the start of the cold war and is strategically and morally sound in light of the aims and methods of radical Islamic terrorists. However, Podhoretz is pessimistic about the successful application of the Bush Doctrine. He asserts that a nearly unanimous anti-Bush phalanx in academia, in the Democratic Party, and in mass media has been successful in influencing public opinion toward an antiwar direction. Quoting and debating criticisms of Bush from such precincts, and from conservative corners as well, Podhoretz stands as a beleaguered but unwavering voice in the controversy over American foreign policy. Taylor, Gilbert

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition edition (September 11, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385522215
• ISBN-13: 978-0385522212
• Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 6.4 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #809,379 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

279 of 334 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A provocative thesis about the very real threat September 11, 2007

By Shalom Freedman HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

The thesis of this book is that the United States and the free world are now engaged in a fourth world- war, this one against radical Islam. The 'third world war' ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, and now according to Podhoretz the West faces another long- term struggle which will be decided not in a year or two but in the decades ahead. The point - man of this war at present is President Bush who Podhoretz sees as continually defamed and slandered by anti- American elements in the far - too- liberal for his taste Western media.
While I am fundamentally in sympathy with his approach and believe that he rightfully sees the insidious intentions of a radical revolutionary fundamentalist Islam , I have reservations about his approach. One reason for this is that when we think of War we tend to think of great military forces in direct collision. True, the United States and the Soviet Union did not come to the ultimate face off, as the Allies did against the Axis but there were two massive military and political empires in direct contention.
Here there is , as Podhoretz is well aware of, an assymetrical situation. Therefore he sees it as a new kind of war, a new kind of struggle which is especially demanding in the propaganda and media spheres. As I understand it he reads the intentions of Radical Islam rightly. Whether it be the Sunni Salafi Wahhabite strains or the Shiite Messianic strains there is an ideology whose ultimate goal is putting all of Mankind under the flag of Islam. The rise in this regard of a radical Iran on the verge of nuclear weapons is at this moment a key and most threatening development in the overall struggle.
In regard to Iran Podhoretz is most forthright and persuasive. He outlines the dangers of a nuclear Iran, and he rightly characterizes the regime as an Islamofascist one. He understands Gulf Oil, America's allies in the Middle East would all be put in great jeopardy by a nuclear Iran. And he strongly advocates as major step in the war the preempting of the Iranian nuclear threat.
Iran also plays a part in another aspect of the Islamic threat, the element of Muslim penetration into Europe. There is by this time a whole literature suggesting that in a few decades post- Christian Europe my well be Islamic.
But there are great weaknesses in the world of Islam, including the major failure to within their own societies confront the modern world and properly adapt to it. The Islamic world is by and large a backward world not simply in its political structure but in its command of the knowledge, and technique of modernity.
So my own understanding is that in the civilizational confrontations of the future it is not really poised for mastery and conquest. Its forces are too scattered, divided, and weak. Consider the chaos in Iraq with not simply Sunnite- Shiite conflicts but with internal Shiite conflicts. To my mind the danger of radical Islam and Islam's anti- American stand is in its power to weaken the U.S. isolate it from its allies, and generally serve as auxillary to the forces which present a greater real threat in the future, a renascent Russia, and far more importantly ,an ambitious rapidly developing China.
On the whole I believe Podhoretz rightly points to an ongoing, and increasing danger presented to the U.S. and the West by radical Islam. I believe he is right in seeing that this danger will not go away soon. And that the U.S. struggle will be a long term and global one. The historian Michael Oren in surveying two - hundred years of American involvement in the Middle East showed many of the U.S. involvement in that part of the world has been deeper and longer than we knew. It may be that the struggle of the kind Podhoretz rightly indicates the U.S. to be in will be going on in another one hundred years from now.
On the whole this is an informative and rich work which anyone who takes true interest in the present world- situation would do well to read.

155 of 203 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Should Be Required Reading September 17, 2007

By L. Young VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Outstanding analysis of the five years post 911. Podoretz places The War on Terror (or what he calls WW IV) in the context of the last sixty years of U.S. foreign policy. Drawing valid parallels between the response of the media, academia, and political leaders to WW 2, and the Cold War (or what he calls WWIII) Podhoretz has a clear vision of the dangers of the world today. He compares Bush favorably to Truman and asserts that history will prove the President to be a great president in the foreign policy arena. However, what Podhoretz fails to do is to point out explicitly the dangers of pulling out of Iraq before achieving success. Should be required reading.

133 of 174 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Truth Hurts September 18, 2007

By Vance

Format:Hardcover

Must reading for liberals and conservatives alike. In fact, every voter should be given a copy for mandatory reading. This was a concise and insightful review of the history of US foreign policy, from the post-WW II "Truman Doctrine," which formulated the plan to fight WW III, known as the Cold War, to the Bush Doctrine, designed as a road map to fight Islamofacism in WW IV.

Hopefully, our Presidential candidates are reading similar books to avoid the grave and costly mistakes of their predecessors as detailed in this interesting, and highly readable foreign affairs book.

Some may bristle at the defense of Bush's foreign policy initiative, including his doctrine of preemptive defense. That aside, it provides a cogent and readable explanation for its underpinnings rather than the puerile name-calling that the left is prone to engage in.