Republicans are running entire campaigns based on their fears of monsters in the closet.
Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”
Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.”
And yes, these claims are actually being taken seriously.
Mr. Podhoretz, in short, is engaging in what my relatives call crazy talk. Yet he is being treated with respect by the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination. And Mr. Podhoretz’s rants are, if anything, saner than some of what we’ve been hearing from some of Mr. Giuliani’s rivals.
Thus, in a recent campaign ad Mitt Romney asserted that America is in a struggle with people who aim “to unite the world under a single jihadist Caliphate. To do that they must collapse freedom-loving nations. Like us.” He doesn’t say exactly who these jihadists are, but presumably he’s referring to Al Qaeda — an organization that has certainly demonstrated its willingness and ability to kill innocent people, but has no chance of collapsing the United States, let alone taking over the world.
And Mike Huckabee, whom reporters like to portray as a nice, reasonable guy, says that if Hillary Clinton is elected, “I’m not sure we’ll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country’s ever faced in Islamofascism.” Yep, a bunch of lightly armed terrorists and a fourth-rate military power — which aren’t even allies — pose a greater danger than Hitler’s panzers or the Soviet nuclear arsenal ever did.
All of this would be funny if it weren’t so serious.
And it is quite serious. Jeffrey Feldman lays it out, detailing Podhoretz’s view that 9/11 was the beginning of World War IV:*
What will World War IV look like? Invasion of Iran, and then Syria, and then Lebanon. Expanding the American occupation of Iraq to become the American occupation of everywhere in the Middle East except Egypt and Israel. The endless destruction of America’s enlisted men and women in no-win colonial police work against a multiplying and bottomless mix of anti-occupation nationalists and terrorists.
But, wait! There’s more!
Beyond the insane military actions in the Middle East, World War IV will bring police action at home as the entire nation becomes wrapped up in fear of a Arabic speakers in our midst. Giuliani’s adviser Daniel Pipes, in all likelihood, launches a campaign to weed out all the assumed terrorists around here. Camps, deportations, arrests in the night–oh, we’ll have all of that, you can bet on it. It’s all part of the World War IV package–and we’ll get it all with Rudy Giuliani.
But…wait (yawn)…there’s…more…
World War IV will finally bankrupt our federal government, setting our children and our children’s children into crippling debt for generations. To pay for World War IV, we will need to increase spending by billions without end–turning the federal government into an ATM for the U.S. military.
And what happens when we have a bankrupt U.S. federal government. Fun stuff. No federal revenue to solve the healthcare crisis in this country (insurance companies will take care of that, they’ve been so helpful up to this point). No federal revenue for Social Security (brokerage firms will take care of that, they’ve been so helpful up to this point). No federal revenue for education, no federal revenue for environmental reforms, no federal revenue for medical research, no federal revenue for anything but an endless, winless, bloody war in the Middle East.
So vote Rudy! Because World War IV is just too good pass up.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll repeat: Rudy Giuliani is a scary, scary man. Even scarier, in my opinion, then the right-wing social conservative candidates. He has enlisted some truly terrifying people to staff his campaign, and he has demonstrated that he has no respect for the Constitution, for civil liberties, or for the very people he is elected to govern. If he’s elected — and I don’t think he will be, but stranger things have happened — we are all in for some very bad times.
*Wondering where WWIII went? That was U.S. v. U.S.S.R.