I don't have a lot of time to elaborate, but I just came across a rather stunning admission from Norman Podhoretz, wherein he claims he has been advising Rudy Giuliani as to how to initiate and win a World War IV that Podhoretz appears to be quite happy to help bring to fruition.
This is coming from an article in the upcoming edition of the New York Observer.
Podhoretz, dean of what is left of the neocons and a primary advocate for what passes for a Middle East policy in our nightmare of the last seven-plus years outs Giuliani as being cut from the same cloth as he in being a cheerleader for descending the world into chaos:
"I was asked to come in and give him a briefing on the war, World War IV," said Mr. Podhoretz, a founding father of neoconservatism and leading foreign policy adviser to Mr. Giuliani. "As far as I can tell there is very little difference in how he sees the war and how I see it."
This whole spiel on World War IV has been a rallying point for these increasingly nutjob-marginalized Commentary magazine types for awhile, along with various other quasi-intellectual end-timer fundies for some time. Of course, you may have wondered if the 77-year old Podhoretz lost count of his WW's. Actually, the WW-IV loon ethic was established in the days following 9/11 by people who couldn't wait to exploit 9/11 to bring about their own form of global annihlation:
A less palatable but more accurate name is World War IV. The Cold War was World War III, which reminds us that not all global conflicts entail the movement of multimillion-man armies, or conventional front lines on a map. The analogy with the Cold War does, however, suggest some key features of that conflict: that it is, in fact, global; that it will involve a mixture of violent and nonviolent efforts; that it will require mobilization of skill, expertise and resources, if not of vast numbers of soldiers; that it may go on for a long time; and that it has ideological roots.
So that's all you need to know about that background--worldwide genocide and meltdown told with the detached gusto of an ESPN talking head profiling the Red Sox starting pitching lineup for the impending World Series.
Back to Norm and Rudy. Podhoretz is also pretty stoked to predict a conflict lasting decades, in which "the casualties that the United States has so far endured are 'miniscule.'". And these guys just live for World Wars--he apparently sees Giuliani as being the next participant in a holy crusade that began--yes--I guess--with the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, or maybe with the long disintegration of the Ottoman empire, or...hell, you figure this out:
"My view has been, and I very much doubt that Giuliani would disagree with what I am about to say, what we are doing is to try and clear the ground that has been covered over at least since WWI," he said. "Draining the swamps is the beginning of the process of clearing the ground, and planting the seeds from which institutions can grow the foundations of a free society."
I'd be very very interested in someone exploring these attributions to America's Mayor in one of his next appearances, if there's a break in the carrier signal of Giuliani's repeated mantra-like intonation of "9/11".
Before I go, I'm struck by the common mission statement shared by Podhoretz/Giuliani's neocon screed here, and the ultimate practical aims of Osama Bin Laden, up to a pretty significant point, at least:
Instead, America should be working to overthrow governments in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt and "every one of the despotic regimes in that region, by force if necessary and by nonmilitary means if possible," he said. "They are fronts of the war. You can’t do everything at once. And to have toppled two of those regimes in five years or six years is I think a major achievement. And maybe George Bush won’t be able to carry it further, but I think he will. It may have just been given to him to start act one of the five-act play."
Vote Republican! We toppled two regimes, and we're just getting started!