I have been slogging through Podhoretz’s new manifesto, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. It’s true that each new great eruption by Podhoretz adds nothing new to his canon, but rather marks his ongoing descent into madness. Indeed, the book is disappointing even to avid neocon watchers like myself, an amalgam of tedium and terror. I have been wondering whether it’s healthy to keep on reading such stuff, or if it’s simply a perverse form of escapism.

It would have been beyond belief just six months ago. I speak, of course, of the Ron Paul Revolution”€”and for purposes of this piece, I shall refer to it as exactly that, for at once it has been bringing revolutionary change to American politics, and most especially American radical politics, and is doing so at what increasingly looks like a revolutionary moment in American history. I write this as a member of the young generation that has been rallying to Ron Paul, creating a youth movement that is at least the rival of Gene McCarthy’s…

It’s easy, in the wake of the Iraq invasion, to forget what else was going on at the time”€”for instance, the bloodiest period of the Palestinian Intifada, in the spring of 2002. For a time, it should be recalled, Bush actually appeared to promote negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians”€”but by the summer of that year, he dramatically reversed course and essentially declared himself a Likud partisan. That helped set the stage for his aggression against Iraq. It is significant that in several interviews John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have stated that their interest in the Israel Lobby originated not with the beginnings of the war in Iraq but with the dramatic reversal by the Bush regime that occurred in summer 2002″€”which proved the turning point in his presidency.