The Case For Bombing Iran

by Norman Podhoretz - May 30th, 2007 - Wall Street Journal (Opinion Journal)

I hope and pray that President Bush will do it.

Although many persist in denying it, I continue to believe that what Sept 11, 2001, did was to plunge us headlong into nothing less than another world war. I call this new war World War IV, because I also believe that what is generally known as the Cold War was actually World War III, and that this one bears a closer resemblance to that great conflict than it does to World War II. Like the Cold War, as the military historian Eliot Cohen was the first to recognize, the one we are now in has ideological roots, pitting us against Islamofascism, yet another mutation of the totalitarian disease we defeated first in the shape of Nazism and fascism and then in the shape of communism; it is global in scope; it is being fought with a variety of weapons, not all of them military; and it is likely to go on for decades.

What follows from this way of looking at the last five years is that the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be understood if they are regarded as self-contained wars in their own right. Instead we have to see them as fronts or theaters that have been opened up in the early stages of a protracted global struggle. The same thing is true of Iran. As the currently main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11, and as (according to the State Department's latest annual report on the subject) the main sponsor of the terrorism that is Islamofascism's weapon of choice, Iran too is a front in World War IV. Moreover, its effort to build a nuclear arsenal makes it the potentially most dangerous one of all.

Because of the appeasers (defeatocrats) it is likely that we will finally get serious about World War IV when nuclear bombs have destroyed several American cities. What amazes me is the unwillingness of the appeasers to think about what will happen in America at that time.

Their assumption is that the American people will cave in and let them "negotiate" a world socialist government, thus accomplishing the number one goal of the democratic party leadership, elimination of the evil thing called "free enterprise".

I don't think that is the probable result. I think the probable result is immediate willingness on the part of a great number of patriots to open warfare against democrats and liberals. A shooting war like the civil war that we experienced in the middle of the last century. Civil war always results when one group or another reaches a point where they are simply unwilling to tolerate the other.

Since the democrat appeasement actions are so obviously encouraging the Islamofascists to nuclearize the conflict, many feel it is just and right that the appeasers be held responsible when that happens. It is easy to say right now they are traitors. When the first nuclear bomb goes off in an American city, saying it will not be enough. If our government will not do something to punish them for their treason there will be plenty of patriots who will see that it is done.

Our nation is heading for a bloodbath of unimaginable scope. The only thing that will stop it is if we can muster the will to stop Iran from getting nuclear bombs. We must win the war against Islamofascism, this World War IV that we are currently fighting. Podhoretz thinks it is still possible to get agreement to do this. I think it is too late.

If you love America Podhoretz's article is a long but very important read.