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August 7, 2008

Rabbi David Gutterman: A Continuing Story With a Sustaining Goal

Rabbi Berel Wein: Mourning and morning

JWisdom: Yes, we are still in exile by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

August 6, 2008

David Ashenfelter: Government made military engineer's life a living hell because of his faith, Defense Department report documents

Jonathan Tobin: Speak the Truth; Defeat the Lies

JWisdom: Jewish Spirituality: Fusion or Confusion? by Rabbi David Aaron

August 5, 2008

Chris Leppek: Church/state wall beginning to crumble?

Paul Greenberg: Exit Olmert (no encore, please)

JWisdom: Serenity: Make the commitment by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin (Read by Gavriel Sanders)

August 4, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Am I taking advantage of another's psychological quirk?

Andrew Silow-Carroll: A black and a Jew walk into the White House…

JWisdom: The Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith: Edward R. Morrow visits the ‘living dead’ by Rabbi Nosson Scherman

August 1, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: We have the power to alter another's destiny — use it well

Caroline B. Glick: Why Olmert — finally — did it

JWisdom: Life By The (Book of) Numbers by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

July 31, 2008

This Week in Biblical History by Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Ezra the Scribe returns from exile

Joan Verdon: Demure is in demand: More brides seek 'modest' gowns

JWisdom: You don't have to be ‘compatible’ to have a stable, happy relationship by Malka Shulman

July 30, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Does Israel need 'tough love'?

The Kosher Gourmet by Gail Borelli: Pickling captures the fleeting tastes of summer's fruits and vegetables

JWisdom: Serenity: It's Really Up to YOU! by Rabbi Zelig Pliskin (Read by Gavriel Sanders)

July 29, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Good things happen

Dick Morris: How Israel's race could shift ours

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Equal but Not Jewish or Jewish but Not Human?

July 28, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How and when to lie

Steven Emerson: More Perils of Interfaith Dialogue

JWisdom:: A TripTik for Your Spiritual Journey by Rabbi Dovid Gross

July 24, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: On the road again --- and again and again

Richard Z. Chesnoff: Mideast Refugees --- Failure vs. Success

JWisdom:: Word power is about more than vocabulary by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

July 23, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: The Mufti of Jerusalem's Nazi ideology lives on among contemporary Islamists

The Kosher Gourmet by Joe Gray: Smoked paprika turkey meatballs simmered in red wine and tomato sauce

JWisdom:: 'Routine' doesn't need to mean ‘rote’ By Rabbi David Aaron

July 22, 2008

Yossi Klein Halevi: Dear Barack Obama

Elliot B. Gertel: Eli Stone: Self-indulgent, arrogant corporate attorney as modern-day prophet

JWisdom:: Three Weeks - Nine Days - One Purpose by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

July 21, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Spending your kids' money

Mitch Albom: A grim exchange illustrates a key difference

JWisdom:: The Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith: Hammered on the Anvil --- Severed by the Sickle by Rabbi Nosson Scherman

July 18, 2008

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: The Sanctification and Importance of Time

Caroline B. Glick: US wants it absolutely clear it has no intention of attacking Iran's nuclear installations

Mona Charen: What can you say about a people who welcome a child murderer as a hero?

JWisdom:: Living a dog's life, dawg? by Rabbi Dovid Gross

July 17, 2008

Steven Emerson: Deals with devils

Libby Lazewnik: One Step at a Time

JWisdom:: Leader the follower? by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

July 16, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Poaching humans

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Meaty pasta salad with summer berries perfect for warm evenings

JWisdom:: Keeping A Secret by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

July 15, 2008

Dennis Prager: False Equation: Opposing Same-Sex Marriage and Opposing Interracial Marriage

Joel Greenberg: Researchers look to Israeli circumcision program to help combat AIDS 'Alternatives' to Logic Won't Work

JWisdom:: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part V: Why Judaism ISN'T Spiritual by Rabbi David Aaron

July 14, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: A warning from Canada to those who value life

Jonathan Tobin: 'Alternatives' to Logic Won't Work

JWisdom:: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Poland's Unique Antisemitism, Part II

July 11, 2008

Rabbi Francis Nataf: It's hard to be humble when you're great

Caroline B. Glick: A tale of two hostages

JWisdom:: Profane for Prophet by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

July 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Duty to save gullible from themselves?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Islamists have the West just where they want us

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review January 31, 2008 / 24 Shevat 5768

Were They Really So Wrong?

By Jonathan Tobin



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Neocon ideas are believed to have sunk Bush, but are the alternatives realistic?


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | As George W. Bush heads into his last, lame-duck year as president, the postmortems have already begun. And in the eyes of most of the pundits who have already begun shoveling dirt on the legacy of the 43rd president, there's little doubt about the chief culprits for the disasters of the last years: the neoconservatives.

Regardless of its origins, the term is now an all-purpose term of art to describe a group of advocates of an aggressive policy against Islamist terrorism and support for the State of Israel. Their supposedly nefarious influence on the Bush administration is an article of faith for those who see them as authors of all that is wrong about American foreign policy.

Indeed, the dust jacket of Jacob Heilbrunn's recent book on them, "They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons", screams that they are "the most feared and reviled intellectual movement in American history" and a "tight-knit cabal that ensnared the Bush administration."

The text of Heilbrunn's scathing tome doesn't quite live up to that level of hysteria, but the fact that the publishers felt free to throw such words around show how widely reviled anyone who can be labeled a "neocon" is these days.

REPEATING THE PAST
Indeed, a founding father of neoconservatism who is still an active force on the scene, former Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz, has gotten a full measure of scorn from most of the chattering classes for his recent book World War IV. In the view of his many critics, Podhoretz merely follows the logic of past neocon blunders in the Middle East and calls for an all-out Western effort to combat "Islamofascism."

But the chorus of neocon-bashers see the attempt on the part of Podhoretz to confront Iran and to pre-empt its effort to attain nuclear weapons as nothing short of insane. The recent release of the government's dubious National Intelligence Estimate, which appeared to debunk the idea that Iran is pursuing nukes merely adds to the sense among those who write about the movement that the obsessions of the neocons are based on fantasies.

Heilbrunn goes into great detail about the Jewish intellectual origins of the movement. The fact that many of the most famous and most influential neocons, such as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick or William Bennett, were not Jewish is merely a detail.

For the author, as well as other even more extreme commentators on the subject, neoconservatism is an idea rooted in Jewish insecurity left over from the Holocaust, which seeks to impose a moral clarity on a world more aptly illustrated in shades of gray than in the stark black-and-white of the neocons.

Indeed, for writers like Slate.com's Timothy Noah, who wrote in The New York Times recently that "to be neoconservative is to bear almost daily witness to the resurrection of Adolf Hitler," the obsession with avoiding a repeat of Munich is an absurdity.

Thus, even Heilbrunn cannot escape from an obsession with America's Israel policy. While he concedes that neoconservatives, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, see the interests of the two democracies as largely congruent, their devotion to Israel's survival is, in his view, a fatal flaw that's leading us astray. As Heilbrunn writes, "none of the Democratic candidates [for president in 2008] have uttered even a mild word of criticism of Israel." He adds ruefully that "this, too, must be counted as neoconservative success."

The point of the anti-neocon narrative is that the verdict of history, as written in the dust of the quagmire in Iraq, is that the neocons were wrong — wrong about Iraq; wrong about Iran; wrong about the nature of the threat from the Islamists; wrong about identifying Israel's interests with those of America; wrong even about their earlier warnings about the Soviets.

Yet even when we discard the allegations of conspiracies that have been put about by foes of Israel, such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the authors of The Israel Lobby, the problem with these critiques is that the verdict of history is by no means as definitive as the neocon critics would have us believe.

After all, neoconservatism gained notice in the 1970s specifically because the neocon rejection of the notion that appeasement of Soviet communism was either effective or sensible in the long run was entirely correct. Neocon intellectuals helped rouse an America mired in memories of Vietnam to reject the détentist policies of the "realists" of that era.

Similarly, are the neocons today wrong about the threat from the Islamists, and the need to spread support for democracy in the Arab and Islamic world? If some perceive would-be Hitlers — like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Palestinian Hamas allies, as well as Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq and elsewhere — as being a clear and present danger to the West, can it be credibly asserted that this characterization is false?

It is a fact that the execution of Bush's goals in Iraq was often as incompetent as its response to Hurricane Katrina. The goal of transforming the region via democracy was surely too ambitious. But that didn't mean the stakes there were not worth fighting for. Indeed, the recent improvement in Iraq — once better military leadership and strategies were substituted for faulty ones — shows that defeat is nowhere near as certain as some thought a few months ago.

Moreover, what exactly do the critics of the neocons offer as an alternative to dealing with the threat of the Islamists? Their answer is a combination of a return to the old "realism" that dominated the failed policies of previous administrations, which left America stuck backing unpopular authoritarian Arab regimes, appeasing Iran, and trying to force a peace between Israel and the Palestinians that the Arabs don't want.

With the "realists" now taking back control of foreign policy in Bush's last months, does anyone really believe that more pressure on the Israelis or a rapprochement with the mullahs in Iran would yield peace or security for anyone?

MORE RESOLVE NEEDED
Bush's successors may well continue this shift. But they won't be able to avoid the conflict with Islamism that neocons worry about. Nor can any of them chart a course that will not require the sort of U.S. resolve that the neocons have preached.

Podhoretz ends his latest call to arms by asking whether Americans are capable of "beating back the 'implacable challenge' of Islamofascism" as their forebears defeated Nazism. Writing at a time when he conceded the prospects for victory were "bleak," his answer was still yes.

In that sense, Jacob Heilbrunn's right when he concludes by warning that the neoconservatives are far from done. Podhoretz's optimism will ultimately be vindicated, if only because the alternatives to his views are simply implausible.

Like it or not — and notwithstanding the mistakes that were made in the last eight years — America is still locked in a worldwide struggle with Islamists that can't be wished away by blaming it all on the neocons.

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JWR contributor Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. Let him know what you think by clicking here.

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