Thinking The Unthinkable--Speaking the Unspeakable

The Geek has an admission. Norman Podhoeritz scares the pippin, doublet, and hose off of him. The seventy-seven year old granddad of the neocon ninnies of the current administration as well as the hyper-hawks surrounding Rudy Giuliani is in full chest-beating, testosterone fury over Iran.

According to the UK's Telegraph on-line, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/27/wbomb127.xml, Podhoeritz "thinks the unthinkable and speaks the unspeakable." That's sure nice. And, to some extent useful.

Of course the neocon clan elder is far from the only person to do just that. Years ago, Herman Khan, the founder of the Hudson Institute, wrote and spoke at length about nuclear war. He even titled a book, Thinking the Unthinkable. It gave the few folks who read it the shivers--and reasons to think harder and better about the taboo-in-polite-circles topic of nuclear war and the potential reality of mutually assured destruction.

In a very small way, the Geek has done the same in past years, challenging policy makers and executors alike to realise just how easy it is not to win in counterinsurgencies and akin stability operations. Like the (un)jolly fatman of the Hudson Institute, the Geek's goal was to get people to think deeper and better about the unique nature of a particular type of war.

That goal, it appears to the Geek, is not uppermost in Podhoeritz' mind--if it exists at any level there.

At some point decades ago, Mr Podhoeritz had an epiphany concerning his opposition to the Vietnam War which resulted in a lucidly argued mea culpa that still resides on the Geek's bookshelves. From that moment on, the gentleman under consideration became a neo-conservative. One of the most warlike coloration.

Therein lies the tragedy.

Mr Podhoeritz became one of those whom Eric Hoffer described more than fifty years ago with startling and fear-provoking clarity. The True Believer.

True Believers are very dangerous people. History shows that. So do recent events. Osama bin Laden is a True Believer. So were those who flew the passenger filled cruise missiles into the Pentagon and Twin Towers.

True Believers search for any facts, the slightest hint of a factoid even, which seem to support their belief and its expressions. All else is disregarded as heresy at best, counterfactual at worst.

As a result Mr Podhoeritz places an emphasis, an emphasis beyond all rational calculation, upon the necessity to execute massive air attacks using both manned and unmanned platforms upon Iranian targets. While Mr Podhoeritz might be willing to settle for striking the nuclear facilities, the Geek is convinced that his real desire is the complete obliteration of Iran as a functioning polity, economy, and society.

Mr Podhoeritz blithely assumes that the strikes could be delivered quickly, without any warning, and would be effective. He is probably correct in the first two portions of his assumption.

The further consequences of the action apparently are of no interest to him. Yet it is precisely in these that the dangers for us and the rest of the world exist.

As Iraq, Afghanistan, and a host of previous wars show clearly, Clausewitz was right: No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

In his carefree attitude to the "day after" Mr Podhoeritz is one with the neocon ninnies who gave no realistic thought to what would happen after we deposed Saddam in Iraq or Sheik Omar in Afghanistan. In this fantasyland approach to war planning and fighting, Mr Podhoeritz, Vice-President Cheney, former SecDef Rumsfeld, and the deep thinking crew in the Pentagon almost equal the brain dead Adolph Hitler with his totally unnecessary and utterly counterproductive declaration of war on the US in December 1941.

The True Believer world view of Mr Podhoeritz and his ilk as well as their demonstrated influence in the current administration is what has increasingly alienated, not to say scared the hell out of, the European governments who initially took our part in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. They are what has given rise to the increasingly oppositional posture of Vladimir Putin and the mandarinate in China.

By now even the Israeli government and public ought to be getting nervous over the impact of the Podhoeritz type True Believers. In the (hopefully remote) eventuality that the US gives reality to Mr Podhoeritz's unthinkable thoughts and unspeakable words, Israel will be in the impact zone. There is no way that any conceivable US air campaign will so defang or so demoralize the Iranian regime and those of similar mind that there will be no response.

The response is (quite) likely to make 9/11 and its aftermaths look like a flower power gathering out of the Sixties. The full menu of options available to the survivors in Tehran is extensive.

Mr Podhoeritz has written of Islamofacism and the World War IV between the Islamists and the West. The Geek found some merit in some of the man's arguments.

Call it World War IV or the Second Cold War, it doesn't matter. But, a firm grip must be kept on the fundamental reality that Cold Wars are not won by air strikes. They are won by a firm line, backed by the willingness to use minimal appropriate force for narrowly conceived goals over time. They are won not by bluster and bombs but by political will maintained over generations if need be.

Mr Podhoeritz, try thinking about this unthinkable. Cold Wars are won by outlasting the enemy, by outlasting his political will, by showing over time that the world view he espouses is inferior to yours. We won the last cold war this way. We won by allowing him to lose faith in his god.

That may not be emotionally satisfying to a True Believer. It is however intellectually warming to a realpolitiker.