NORMAN PODHORETZ'S
WAR. Recall the celebrated remark of a
famous general. My right flank is shattered, he declared, and my left
flank is in retreat; my center is wavering-therefore, I attack. The example
appears to have influenced Mr. Norman Podhoretz . In the April issue of
Commentary ,
he denounces American conservatives and liberals alike for
their cowardly attitude to world Communism (indeed, toward world his–
tory itself) . In an essay entitled " Making the World Safe For Communism,"
he describes our elites as defeatist and weak, seized by a new isolationism.
Me.
Podhoretz proposes to call upon ordinary Americans (whom he des–
cribes as exhilarated by Professor Moynihan's recent performance at the
United Nations) to impose upon the rest of us the only policy the times
require . That policy, of course, would consist of a general offensive against
Communism, everywhere .
It
is a large program, with large assumptions ;
these merit
examin~tion.
Mr. Podhoretz understands "the new isolationism" as a recrudescence
of an old American axiom, "the proposition that the United States should
never go
to
war to any purpose other than the defense of its territory against
attack." His essay, however, is not primarily concerned with an analysis of
that proposition. Most of us are troubled by a problem simply ignored by
Commentary's
editor. Thermonuclear war poses a threat to the existence of
any values, to the continuation of civilization of any kind, to life on earth
itself. If Gerald Ford did not grasp this as a congressman, he appears
to
have
done so-to his credit-since becoming President. A politician apalled,
even terrified, at the prospect of thermonuclear war is not cowardly or
morally defective; he is merely behaving with a minimum of rationality.
Since Mr. Podhoretz ignores the question, we are entitled to conclude that
he is concerned primarily with something other than our country's policy
toward the rest of the world. A deeper reading of his text would show that
his central interest is indeed elsewhere-in our country's interpretation of
itself. Mr. Podhoretz does tax us with a failure of political will, inextricably
bound to a failure of conviction . His description of world politics has a hap–
hazard connection with a situation which is bewildering and changing. That
description , however, has moral functions: it is intended to provide large
simplifications , which , if grapsed, can raise us
to
heroism-or, at the very
