Two-Alarm Fire

...But the virus that infects them seems to have spread beyond the asylum...

...But it is equally useful to define, as Podhoretz does, what is at stake...

...Difficult to understand, to be sure, yet it's not hard to read the message on the wall...

...Moreover, it's a thought that leads to darker speculation...

...If Guantanamo Bay is routinely compared to Auschwitz or the Gulag, what action is sanctioned in America's defense...

...You can hardly expect Norman Podhoretz, or anyone contending with the facts, to comprehend the motives of, say, the Noam Chomskys or Gore Vidals of our world: Their belligerence and derision about their country and its enemies is probably explained by psychiatry, not political science...

...For the origins of this struggle are comparatively obscure, and uncom-fortably—sometimes incomprehensibly—mixed with religious zeal, the romance of death, and tribal conflicts and loyalties that elude our grasp...

...To review this book, the Times commissioned one of the legion of ex-New Republic editors to record a series of personal insults and condescending phrases in order to avoid contending with the central thesis of the work...

...You need not subscribe to Podhoretz's thesis about the war on terror as the Fourth World War, or share in all of his biases and enthusiasms, to be persuaded that Islamofascism—or whatever term is preferred—is not just dangerous to our existence but increasingly so, and that the challenge of our time is not just to defeat Islamofascism, but to recognize that Islamofascism must be defeated...

...We may usefully wonder at the mystery of it all: the ethic of a press that demands "neutrality" in a war against terror, or the motive of a senator incapable of rising above partisan interest...

...Two obstacles seem to impede such recognition...

...troops from the front lines of the war on terror, what conclusion will Osama bin Laden draw...

...By the time the historic struggle against Soviet communism had ended, the clarity that might have thrown Islamofascism into relief was lost in the moral ambiguity of the Clinton decade...

...With a handful of honorable exceptions, the left is so distracted by contempt for George W. Bush, and so determined to frustrate his administration on principle, that it has lost all perspective on the war on terror, and seems willing to gamble the national interest for political advantage...

...That is the message of World War IV, and it's a disconcerting thought...

...Better to throw stones, from their perspective, than to gaze in the mirror...

...Surely, one thinks to oneself, these august institutions need not stoop to such depths to score points, or vanquish arguments, or construct alternative scenarios...

...The New York Review followed roughly the same strategy, although (to its credit) in a marginally less juvenile tone...

...For while we need not all agree on the wisdom or blindness of this or that tactic, or strategic vision, in this struggle, Podhoretz makes the successful argument that much of the discourse about World War IV is grounded not in debate about Islamofascism but in domestic politics...

...But they do...

...If the Democratic candidates for president compete with one another to withdraw U.S...

...To some degree, that explains why the Times and the New York Review would choose, in this instance, to avoid any argument on Podhoretz's ground, or even accept his terms of engagement...

...The end of history, the peace dividend, the insouciant response to African and European genocide—none of it was likely to shed light on Islamofascism...

...and describe, as he does in characteristic fashion, what has been said and done about World War IV...

...by Philip Terzian The New York Times and the New York Review of Books have lately had some fun, in their fashion, at the expense of Norman Podhoretz...

...If the networks and the blogs and the editorial pages and departments of politics in American universities are united in their rage and aversion to George W. Bush and his (not always satisfactory) response to Islamofascist attacks on our soil, how secure are the liberties of Americans...

...publications—I use the term "serious" advisedly—wrestling with the contents of Podhoretz's essay by throwing punches at Podhoretz himself...

...But there is method in his anger...

...For the uncomfortable truth is that, on the great moral question of the recent past—how to contend with the Soviet Union—they were reliably wrong and Norman Podhoretz was invariably right: On the nature of the Soviet beast, on the natural human impulse to appease, on the duty of the West, and, not least, on the outcome of the Cold War...

...The second, and rather less dangerous, obstacle is politics...

...And therein lies the lesson of this instructive, important book...

...The first is the gradual, even imperceptible, emergence of Islamofascism in the world, disguised as it was in differing forms and thriving in the latter phases of the Cold War...

...In one sense, the reader could only wonder at the spectacle of two serious Philip Terzian is literary editor of The Weekly Standard...

...For while its title is World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, the struggle described here is not against Islamofascism, as such, but against the perception on our side of the aisle that Islamofascism is inimical to Western values and worth a struggle...

...Podhoretz has been censured for expending so much effort on holding critics of the struggle against Islamofascism—and, specifically, the Iraq war—to account...

...If congressional Democrats are more interested in detailing the abuses at Abu Ghraib than pondering the murder of American soldiers and diplomats, what must al Qaeda think...