Author of Bush Doctrine Honors a Devoted Fan

[Khephra]

snip...........

"The biggest deal imaginable," Mr. Podhoretz called it during an interview several hours before the ceremony. "It's the most wonderful honor ever to come my way, the most wonderful honor I could ever imagine coming my way."

Well, maybe it's not so hard to imagine, after all. Mr. Podhoretz, 74, a lifelong New Yorker, is widely recognized as a grandfather of neoconservatism, the intellectual and political movement begun in the 1970's by former liberals to push a wide-ranging agenda that included a renewed flexing of American power in the world. Only a handful of major writers and thinkers traveled a similar path, and those who held their new beliefs the most passionately, like Mr. Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, begat a generation or two of followers, many of whom have reached high seats of power and, some say, transformed neocon ideology into current foreign policy.

snip.........

In any case, he insisted that his selection arose not from any relationship with the president, whom he had met only once, long enough to shake his hand. Mr. Podhoretz said he did not even support Mr. Bush in the early goings of the 2000 presidential campaign, preferring Senator John McCain.

Nor did his son-in-law have anything to do with it, as far as he knows. Mr. Podhoretz and his wife of nearly 48 years, Midge Decter - she, too, a neocon writer and social critic - have presided over a family of conservatives that includes Elliott Abrams, a veteran of the Reagan administration who is now a senior official in the National Security Council and is married to the oldest of their four children, Rachel. (The other children are Naomi Munson, a public relations executive in northern Virginia; Ruth Blum, a columnist and feature writer for The Jerusalem Post; and John Podhoretz, a columnist for The New York Post and contributing editor at The Weekly Standard, a conservative weekly he helped Mr. Kristol's son William found.)

If any of his children or politically aware grandchildren are out of step with him, Mr. Podhoretz said, "they're further to the right."

snip..............

Mr. Podhoretz not only subscribes to the so-called Bush Doctrine of foreign policy, which embraces the concept of pre-emptive action against those who are viewed as a threat to the United States, but he is also taking the doctrine a step further in the next book he intends to write. The working title refers to an era begun by the Sept. 11 attacks: "World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win."

more...................

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/nyregion/24profile.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. A despicable cheerleader for war

Anyone who uses the phrase "World War IV" should be shunned. At least the 'Cold War' was between groups of real countries; but in reality it was normal politics between powers - what's happened, on various scales, through recorded history.

Calling the situation now another war, especially a world-wide one, is an excuse for more illegal invasions. It's really an international police matter - normal intelligence, investigation and legal methods of arrest and prosecution will defeat terrorists in the end. For one, this method of opposing them doesn't create huge amounts of new recruits for them.

[swag]

2. The egregious Poddy

is Midge Decter still alive?

[thebigidea]

5. she was on Washington Journal recently, looking decrepit and...

... plugging her awful book, a love letter to Rumsfeld.

What an awful family.

[MisterP]

6. Pod(horetz) people!

[swag]

8. Is that you Johnny?

"Jonee went to the pawnshop
Bought himself a guitar
Now he’s gonna go far
You gotta love ’em and leave ’em
Sometimes you deceive ’em
You made her cry"

DEVO 1975*ish*

www.clubdevo.com

(Jerry Casale freq blogs there)

[Khephra]

3. kick

[htuttle]

4. It takes no intellectual brilliance to notice that might makes right

It kills me when these so called 'neo-con academics' act like geniuses when they re-invent the strategies of Genghis Khan and the like.

I think this 'genius' is simply that they've come up with an attractive lie to cover the barbaric acts they commit in our country's name. Sorry guys, Goebbels beat you to that idea, too.

Mark me down as 'not impressed'.

[swag]

9. yes, indeed. It is either sophistry or cheese-fed yelling.

Fuck these bellowing and bleating shitheads.

America, use your brains.

Read a goddamned used book.

[Judi Lynn]

7. So this is the patriarch of this malicious tribe. Jeez.

Norman Podhoretz is a veteran neo-conservative who has exerted an enormous pull. He is married to Midge Decter, and together they helped found the Committee on the Present Danger in the late 1970s and the Committee for the Free World in the early 1980s, which Decter co-chaired with Donald Rumsfeld.

Norman Podhoretz joined Hudson Institute as a senior fellow in May 1995 after retiring from Commentary, where he had been editor-in-chief since 1960. Podhoretz studies, writes, and speaks on social, cultural, and international issues. He also serves as editor-at-large of Commentary.

Podhoretz still appears on TV - on BBC-2's Newsnight on 7 May he called for regime change throughout the Middle East in order to fight terrorism. As editor of Commentary he published articles by many of those who become known in the neo-conservatives movement since then. (Many will remember how Commentary tried to destroy the reputation of the most effective Palestinian voice in the USA, that of Edward Said, just when Said was on the verge of publishing his memoir out of place in 1999).
(snip)

Norman Podhoretz' son, John, is a columnist for the New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch, and often appears on the Fox Channel, which Murdoch also owns. John Podhoretz wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan and then for George Bush Sr. He has written against America putting any pressure on Israel, and even claims that Israel refuses to defend itself so, as to show its "good faith" in seeking peace.

According to Eric Alterman writing in Salon magazine, John Podhoretz has "spent virtually his entire life supping at the table of strange right-wing foreigners seeking to buy their way into respectability by courting the American right." Starting with the Reverend Sun Myung Moon of the Moonies "who hired John and his college roommate Todd Lindberg to provide a Nice-Jewish-Boy front for his nefarious activities."

http://english.daralhayat.com/column/06-2003/Article-20030617-d6242959-c0a8-01fc-0051-f910db137d67/story.html


John Podhoretz, flattering photo!
Norman Podhoretz