World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism

By Norman Podhoretz

Book Overview

"In World War IV, Norman 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. 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 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."--BOOK JACKET.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385522215
• ISBN13: 9780385522212
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Very important book showing how Jimmy Carter is indeed to blame for Iran falling to Khomeini!

A book called The Much too Promised Land by Aaron David Miller makes Carter out to be a hero by talking about his success at Camp David but deletes any mention of how Carter let the pro-Israeli Shah fall and the anti-Israeli Khomeini rise! This book shows how Carter is indeed responsible for Khomeini's and now even Ahmadinejad's bad succcess!

Necessary context for liberals and conservatives

World War IV was not quite what I expected, and the title certain belies the contents of the book, although it performs several necessary functions despite its brevity. The American public is fed a steady drumbeat of pessimism and oftentimes outright hostility towards anything that George W. Bush has done or will do. Podhoretz places what GWB had called the `Global War on Terrorism' into the lager historical context of `World War IV,' which was preceded by World War III (the cold war). Objections to the current war on Iraq, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, are deconstructed into component strains of American isolationism extending back to Woodrow Wilson's presidency, outright anti-Americanism continuous with 1960's radical movements, metastasizing liberalism bordering on outright socialism, Democrat party hypocrisy and the myriad schools of foreign policy with Cold War genealogy. Podhoretz also demystifies the currently misused term `neoconservative,' exposes the blatant and shameful politicization of national security by the Democrats and succinctly defines the `Bush Doctrine.' I would highly recommend this book to both liberals and conservatives, although the former group is in desperate need of historical context in their often a-historical arguments.

Good Thesis

The author's thesis is well thought out. I also found the book to be a clear reminder that "World War IV", as he refers to it, began long before Sept 11, 2001. Clear thinking adults, not blinded by partisan rhetoric will most likely come away with a different view, or at minimum a different perspective of the Bush Doctrine as it relates to the war on terror.

Should Be Required Reading

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.

A provocative thesis about the very real threat

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. isola