From David Hendrickson:
After Norman Podhoretz wrote scurrilously about me in the February 2005 issue of Commentary, the editors of that journal sent me the issue along with a letter requesting a comment of no more than 750 words. I complied, but the version published in the May issue was truncated and differed materially from my submission. Apparently dumbfounded by unanswerable objections, and being trapped in self-contradiction, Podhoretz solved this difficult problem by deleting said objections from my letter, prepatory to hounding me further.

As Podhoretz aimed his shafts more largely at various members of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, it seemed appropriate to post my original letter to Commentary here. If Podhoretz responds, perhaps I will be able to "edit" the piece before it appears online.

To the Editor of Commentary:
I grew to political maturity reading Commentary. As a young man, in my twenties, I was a great enthusiast of the journal. Being an aspiring writer, of course I wanted someday to appear in it, with my name in bold big letters on the cover, alongside such luminaries as Moynihan, Bickel, Glazer, Trilling, Frankel, and Tucker. Under the category, therefore, of "not being exactly what I had anticipated for my first appearance in Commentary" must fall Norman Podhoretz's denunciation of me in the February 2005 issue ("The War Against World War IV"). Even though the gods have granted my wish in a way that seems very Greek to me, I am resolved to make the best of it.

Podhoretz charges two sins against my essay, "A Dissenter's Guide to Foreign Policy," World Policy Journal (Spring 2004). First, that I "implicitly" place "the things America has done under George W. Bush on a par with the 'iniquities' of the Soviet Union under Stalin, from 'the horrors of collectivization, the show trials, the devouring of the children of the Revolution in purges and assassinations' and up through 'the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939.'" Second, that I and other like-minded critics are "rooting for defeat." I do not accept these attributions, which are severe misrepresentations of what I wrote, and am happy to repudiate them both.

By using the word "implicitly," Podhoretz alerts the reader to the fact that he is imputing the Stalinist comparison to me even though I did not make it myself. The passages he cites explained what the "Kronstadt" meant, and in enumerating these Soviet iniquities I was explicating the point that the moment of psychological repudiation of one's object of belief did not occur at the same time for various enthusiasts of the Soviet experiment. It was the psychological turning point represented by the "Kronstadt," not some absurd comparison between Bush and the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, that I found interesting and instructive, because it seemed to describe what had happened to the authors of the books I was reviewing (and what had happened to me) in the face of the Bush revolution. As for proper objects of historical comparison for what Bush represented, I do think there is a legitimate parallel with Trotskyism and associated ideas of overturning illegitimate regimes through force, but the main emphasis in my writings, and especially in the essay Podhoretz cites, has been on the striking affinities between the Bush Revolution and the French Revolution. The votaries of both had a universal creed, a declared willingness to liberate foreign peoples from tyranny, a strategic doctrine of preventive war, and armed forces (yesterday's levee en mass, today's "revolution in military affairs") that represented a new order of military power. This complex of ideas and conditions does not signify totalitarianism, but it still constitutes in my view a serious political malady. It is especially subject to the severe strictures that the American founding fathers made upon these pretensions when they appeared in the Wars of the French Revolution. I would welcome an attempted refutation of that point, if my learned critic wishes to continue our dialogue.

Podhoretz also writes that critics of the Bush doctrine who insist that it will end in tears are "rooting for defeat." He singles me out for mock admiration in candidly confessing this sordid desire, when I did no such thing, and he also imputes the same desire to many fellow critics, for which he proffers no evidence. There is not an older argument in politics than the assertion that such-and-such a course of action will end in trouble or disaster. A political opposition must be permitted to speculate on what will or will not conduce to public good without being subject to the ungracious charge that they care nothing for it. Worse for Podhoretz's side of the question is that he engages in precisely this form of argumentation in his critique of me. He asserts that an attack by terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. . .is far more likely to occur" if the "'unholy propensities'" of the Bush Doctrine "are prevented from working themselves out than if they are allowed to take their course." Since he has made the prediction of disaster, are we to infer that he wishes for it to happen? No reasonable person would think so. It is no more reasonable to conclude that critics of Bush's policies are "rooting for defeat." They are, on the contrary, rooting for the possibility that President Bush will back off from the ruinous prescriptions of endless war that Podhoretz has advanced in his recent essays.

DAVID C. HENDRICKSON
Colorado College
Colorado Springs, Colorado

From David Isenberg:
One must be thankful to Mr. Podhoretz. Contrary to popular thinking it appears that neoconservatives DO have a sense of humor. Now if only they could do something about their lack of realism.

To the Editor:
In Norman Podhoretz's world, everything is very simple. There are only two positions to take: uncritical praise of and obeisance toward the Bush administration, which places you on the side of all things good and virtuous, or opposition to the Bush Doctrine, in which case you are either French, an Iraqi insurgent, a right- or left-wing isolationist, a follower of Noam Chomsky, a superhawk, a liberal internationalist, a realist, or a member of the media, in which case you hate America and democracy.

For Mr. Podhoretz, the choice is clear. The rest of us may still have some hardheaded questions about what the Bush administration's policies are doing for and to America.

What is the evidence for Mr. Podhoretz's claim that "record levels of vituperation" were leveled against President Bush during the last election campaign; that Iraqi "insurgents were praying for the victory of John F. Kerry"; that the CIA is "hell-bent on sabotaging the Bush Doctrine"? Who are those people supposedly "in a position to know" that the State Department under Colin Powell was the most "insubordinate" in American history?

As evidence of the President's belief in the righteousness of the Bush Doctrine, Mr. Podhoretz cites the fact that he has kept Donald Rumsfeld on as Secretary of Defense. But this tells us nothing more than that Bush is unable to admit to a mistake. As anyone only cursorily familiar with his record understands, and as Kitty Kelly documents in her recent book on the Bush family, this is a man who does not take responsibility for anything. This would also explain why he recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former CIA director George Tenet, who said it was a "slam dunk" that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction.

Mr. Podhoretz distorts reality when he writes of Abu Ghraib that "a half-dozen or so American guards had inflicted humiliation--mostly of a sexual nature--on a few Iraqi prisoners." Even the military's own investigations of Abu Ghraib have turned up evidence of egregious abuses by American troops. (The ACLU has catalogued hundreds of government documents detailing other instances of abuse and torture beyond Abu Ghraib.)

Also inaccurate is Mr. Podhoretz's mention of "the approximately 1,000 [U.S. troops] killed in combat over the entire span of the battle of Iraq." In fact, U.S. military fatalities reached 1,000 back around the beginning of September 2004, and as of this writing, over 25,000 members of the armed forces have suffered mental or physical injuries, including over 11,000 "seriously injured." To date, nearly 1,500 soldiers and marines have died.

DAVID ISENBERG
Arlington, Virginia