Norman Podhoretz receives the Center’s Mightier Pen Award

On Tuesday, December 15 in New York City’s legendary ‘21′ Club, the Center for Security Policy honored Norman Podhoretz with its Mightier Pen Award. The Mightier Pen Award was inaugurated in 2001 in recognition of individuals who have, through their published writings, contributed both to the public appreciation of the need for robust U.S. national security policies and the perpetuation of military strength as indispensable ingredients in international peace.

Norman Podhoretz is editor-at-large of Commentary Magazine, where he served as editor-in-chief from 1960-1995. He has written hundreds of articles for many major American periodicals, lectured at many universities and before many civic and religious groups on foreign policy, American culture, and Jewish affairs.

Mr. Podhoretz was introduced by his longtime associate at Commentary, Neal Kozodoy, as America’s "most hated intellectual"- a reference to the intensely vituperative response from his ‘ex-friends’ on the left since he made his ideological break with them some thirty years ago. "In ‘breaking ranks’ with the left.," Mr. Kozodoy noted, "he committed so traitorous an act to the intellectual class to which he belonged, that he could never be forgiven, but instead must be eternally and repeatedly consigned to the flames."

Mr. Kozodoy identified another source of the left’s strident animus for Mr. Podhoretz. "Running like a crimson thread through every word penned by Norman’s Mightier Pen is a disposition, a sentiment, a conviction. The most galling conviction of all.. unabashed, unapologetic, unalloyed, unambiguous, unconstrained and unqualified love of the United States."

Both in his prepared remarks and in answering questions, Mr. Podhoretz addressed the issue of Iran and its quest for nuclear weapons and, specifically, recent American diplomatic history that, he believes, will make a confrontation inevitable.  

He cited now-discredited the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate as a politicized document designed to preclude any moves by the Bush Administration to stop Iran’s advance. The Estimate was, "a different kind of bomb… obviously designed to blow up the near-universal consensus that had flowed from the conclusions reached by the intelligence community itself in its 2005 NIE." On the effect of that ‘bomb,’ Mr. Podhoretz said, "what had been politically very difficult for Bush to do, now became impossible."

With regards to the Obama Administration, Mr. Podhoretz believes it has "adopted the mistaken belief that, ‘we could learn to live with an Iranian bomb.’" He recounted a recent debate with writer Fareed Zakaria who expressed this view paradigmaticly. "If Bush was prevented from acting by exterior forces, the obstacles that prevent Obama from acting are lodged in his own mind and heart. It is next to inconceivable that he will take military action against Iran."

"Deterrence could not be relied upon with a regime ruled by Islamofascist revolutionaries who not only are ready to die for their beliefs, but cared less about protecting their people than about the spread of their ideology and their power. If the Mullahs got the bomb… it was not they who would be deterred, but we."

Looking towards Jerusalem, Mr. Podhoretz assessed the likelihood of an Israeli first strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. "With time running rapidly out, only the Israelis can save us all from a nuclear Armageddon. I believe the Israelis are prepared to do it; I also believe that Barack Obama is prepared to stop them, and that he may succeed in doing so. In that case, G-d help the Israelis and the rest of us as well."

As a recipient of the Mightier Pen, Mr. Podhoretz joins some of America’s most influential and beloved political writers-including William F. Buckley, Jr., Mark Helprin, Charles Krauthammer, and Mark Steyn.

 
 
Introducton of Mr. Podhoretz by NEIL KOZODY

Thank you, Frank. And thank you, in the Center, for these annual visits to our town where you bring light and joy. Of all the occasions when I’ve had the honor of introducing Norman Podhoretz, and there have been a few, this one, to me, is a particularly satisfying one. One big reason has to do with the award itself. And the name of the award that we’re here to bestow on him. Mighty, mightier, mightiest, these adjectives become Norman. They suit him. His style, his voice, his effect, his influence, they suit him exactly. But another reason has to do with the timing of this award. Which falls a scant month before Norman’s eightieth birthday. The Mishnah, quoting a phrase from the Book of Psalms: "At eighty, might." Amen to that.

Not that I’m at a loss to imagine other prizes that might be bestowed on Norman, of which one in particular that I want to talk about may offer an instructive contrast with today’s. And that is the prize for most hated intellectual in America.   Norman has worked for this prize.  And I can just picture the citation. In the course of a decades-long career that has seen the production of numerous books, countless essays, millions of words, Norman Podhoretz has succeeded in collecting more nasty reviews, attracting more displays of ad hominem spleen, provoking wilder fits of vilification, calling down upon himself more contumely than any other public intellectual in the land. Hilton Kramer. No cigar.  Irving Kristol. Not even close.  Bill Buckley? Forget it.  More than any of these, more than the three of them put together. The prize? A presentation copy of the inflame assault on Mr. Podhoretz’s latest book Why Are Jews Liberals?  that appeared this fall on the front page of the New York Times book review.

Now speaking of Hilton Kramer, a quarter century ago or so, that intrepid critic and scold of the left publicly congratulated Norman for the many enemies he had made.  A badge of honor, said Hilton, and proof positive that Norman was doing something right. But the curious thing is that to this day, Norman, who rather likes to be loved, has never quite inured himself to the sheer single-mindedness of the campaign to revile and defame him.  In 1995, on the eve of his retirement as chief editor of Commentary, he actually allowed himself a moment’s pleasure when, upon opening the day’s New York Times, he found therein a relatively benign assessment of his intellectual career. I stress relatively, but benign. Flushed and bewildered, Norman turned to Pat Moynihan, a seasoned expert on the hermeneutics of the New York Times to interpret this sudden, mysterious uptick in his status. "That’s easy," Moynihan shot back. "You’re leaving."

But of course, Norman wasn’t leaving and he hasn’t left. To the contrary, over the fourteen or so intervening years, he has entered into and made thorough use of the most productive, one of the most productive and creative periods of his life, in the process driving his adversaries to new heights of calumny and vituperation. But what accounts for this passion to shut him down?

An explanation favored by Norman himself is that in breaking ranks with the left–Breaking Ranks is the title of his 1979 memoir detailing his political odyssey from radicalism through left liberalism to neo-conservatism–in breaking ranks, he committed so traitorous an act against the intellectual class to which he belonged, that he could never be forgiven, but instead must be eternally and repeatedly consigned to the flames. It’s a plausible explanation as explanations go.

In political terms, you might think, for instance, of the treatment of Joe Lieberman these days. Another brave turncoat for principle. But others similarly broke ranks with the liberal left in the late sixties and seventies. And although never really forgiven, were in time extended a grudging tolerance or even a smidgen of admiration. No, I think the more relevant explanation lies elsewhere in the specific nature and gravity of the offense committed by Norman. And in the methodology of the offender. Which is this.

Like an incorrigibly innocent child, Norman dares incessantly to ask the question "Why?" of issues long pronounced settled beyond dispute. And then, by dint of exposition, documentation, analysis, and critique, he reasons his ineluctable way to powerfully-argued and remorselessly-original conclusions, many of which cast a rather withering discredit on the positions held by his ex-comrades and friends. Why were we in Vietnam? Quick answer. We were engaged in the ultimately failed pursuit of what was nevertheless a wholly noble cause. Why do most Western intellectuals, as a class, adopt a reflexively hostile attitude to the arrangements of their fellow citizens, if not to democracy itself? Quick answer. Out of an insatiable will to power over the freedom of ordinary people to make decisions for themselves. Why do so many Jews remain blindly faithful to a liberalism increasingly inimical to Jewish interests? Quick answer. No, no, no. You’ll have to buy the book.  

And there’s something else. And something even more intolerable. Running like a crimson thread through every word penned by Norman’s mightier pen is a disposition, a sentiment, a conviction–the most galling conviction of all. A conviction of unabashed, unapologetic, unalloyed, unambiguous, unconstrained and unqualified love of the United States of America.  My Love Affair With America, Norman’s classic book from the year 2000, tells the story and the title tells it all, My Love Affair With America, in today’s political atmosphere, the very words sound anachronistic. An embarrassment. Words to be uttered in secret. Under one’s breath. Or, if aloud, only in a room presided over by the honorable Frank J. Gaffney.  My Love Affair With America, words to curl the flesh of one’s enemies.

And this brings me back to the Mightier Pen Award. In his unqualified and un-everything else love for America, Norman is not, after all, alone. Even within the otherwise monochrome company of American intellectuals. He shares his sentiments with a powerful brigade of thinkers and doers, many in this room. And some of them the givers and the recipients of this same, richly-deserved award. Their trophies of battle may still fall short of his in number, but it is not surely for want of their trying. Nor is he without spiritual comrades among other famously-execrated creatures of our age. I think not only of Senator Lieberman, but of our former president and of both members of the 2008 Republican presidential ticket. With these, and perhaps most strikingly and improbably with Mrs. Palin, he shares a number of strengths as precious in the life of the mind as they are indispensable in politics. In bestowing upon him the Mightier Pen Award, the Center for Security Policy recognizes and celebrates these qualities.

So I hope you’ll join me in saluting Norman Podhoretz–at eighty, unembarrassed, unafraid, undeterred, unsinkable, and unstoppable.

NORMAN PODHORETZ:

Well, in addition to being grateful for this great, great honor, from an organization whose progress I have followed since literally the weeks and months before it was born, when it was still a germ in Frank Gaffney’s brain, in addition to that, I’ve been doubly-rewarded by that introduction. I mean, how would you like to be introduced in those terms?  It was wonderful.

Normally, I would tell a joke, but I’m told that we have to get out of here pretty soon and I have a longer than usual talk, so you’ll have to suffer the absence of any merriment here because the tidings I bring in my talk are very grim indeed. Cause what I want to talk to you about today is what John McCain once called the most serious crisis we have faced since the end of the Cold War. Yet I would guess that not even everyone gathered in this well-informed room would be able to identify the crisis McCain was talking about. It was, of course, Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

Now at the time McCain made his statement, there was very little controversy over the facts of the case. Indeed, scarcely anyone could be found in those days who dissented from the assessment offered with quote high confidence by the National Intelligence Estimate, known as NIE, of 2005. That the Iranians, in spite of loud and angry protestations that their nuclear program was designed for strictly civilian uses were in reality quote determined to develop nuclear weapons. Those are the words of the NIE of 2005. Another reason for the absence of controversy was just about everyone in the world also agreed with President George W. Bush that no effort–let me get this out of the way, okay–that no effort should be spared to prevent Iran from succeeding in its quest for nuclear weapons. Why?

Because to begin with, Iran is certified, even by the doves of the State Department as the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world. And it was therefore reasonable to fear that it would transfer nuclear technology to terrorists who would be only too happy to use it against us. Moreover, since Iran evidently aspired to become the hegemon of the Middle East, its drive for a nuclear capability could result as, according to the New York Times, no fewer than twenty-one governments in and around the region were warning in a quote grave and destructive nuclear arms race. This meant a nightmarish increase in the chances of a nuclear war. And an even greater increase in those chances would result from the power that nuclear weapons and the missiles capable of delivering them, which Iran was also developing and/or buying, would give the mullahs to realize their evil dream of, in the words of Iran’s president, Ahmadinejad, wiping Israel off the map.

Nor, as almost everyone in the world also agreed in those days, were the dangers of a nuclear Iran confined to the Middle East. Dedicated as the mullahs clearly were to furthering the transformation of Europe into a continent where Muslim law and practice would more and more prevail, they were bound to use nuclear intimidation and blackmail in pursuit of this goal of Islamization as well. Beyond that, nuclear weapons would even serve the purpose of a far more ambitious aim. The creation of what Ahmadinejad called a world without America.

Now although, to be sure, no one imagined that Iran could acquire the capability to destroy the United States, but it was all too easy to imagine that the United States would be deterred from standing in Iran’s way by the fear of triggering a nuclear war. Running alongside this near-universal consensus on Iran’s nuclear intentions was a commensurately broad agreement on the question of how the regime could best be stopped from realizing those intentions. The answer was by a judicious combination of carrots and sticks. The carrots offered through diplomacy consisted of promises that if Iran were, in the words of the Security Council, to suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, it would find itself on the receiving end of many benefits. If, however, Iran remained obdurate in refusing to comply with these demands, sticks would come into play in the form of sanctions. And indeed, in response to continued Iranian defiance, several rounds of sanctions were approved by the Security Council.

Predictably, however, these, watered-down to buy the support of the Russians and the Chinese, failed to bite, let alone to force Iranian compliance. What then, to do? President Bush kept declaring that Iran must not be permitted to get the bomb. And he kept warning that the military option, by which he meant air strikes, not an invasion on the ground, was still on the table as a last resort. Then, suddenly, in November of 2007, the world was hit with a different kind of bomb. This took the form of an unclassified summary of a new National Intelligence Estimate. That was obviously designed to blow up the near-universal consensus that had flowed from the conclusions reached by the intelligence community itself in its 2005 NIE. In brief, whereas the NIE of 2005 had assessed with high confidence–and I’m quoting–that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons, closed quote. The new NIE of 2007 did not quote know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons. Well, we now have the evidence to prove that the NIE of 2007 was wrong. Nevertheless, it did succeed, as it was clearly intended to do, in cutting the ground out from under Bush.

Still, the White House desperately continued to insist that Iran was still hell-bent on developing the bomb. And it also continued to insist that Iran could be stopped by nonmilitary means. But where nonmilitary means were concerned, Bush and his people were lagging behind a loss of faith in the carrot and stick approach that had been appearing within the American foreign policy establishment even before the publication of the new NIE. In those precincts, it was more and more being acknowledged, but first mainly in private and in whispers, that diplomacy and sanctions had been given a fair chance. And that they had accomplished nothing but to buy Iran more time.

Now as one who has long since rejected the faith in diplomacy and sanctions, I never thought I would live to see the day when most members of the foreign policy establishment would come to admit that the carrot and stick approach would not and could not succeed in preventing Iran from getting the bomb. The lesson they drew from this new revelation was, however, an entirely different matter.

In was in the course of a public debate with one of the younger members of the foreign policy establishment that I first chanced upon the change in view. I had expected him to defend the carrot and stick approach and to attack me as a warmonger for contending that bombing was the only way to stop the mullahs from getting the bomb. Instead, to my great surprise, he took the position that there really was no need to stop them in the first place. Since, even if they had the bomb, they could be deterred from using it no less effectively, and even more easily. Even more easily than the Soviet Union and China had been during the Cold War.

Without saying so, in so many words then, my opponent was acknowledging that diplomacy and sanctions had proved to be a failure. And that there was no point in pursuing them any further. But in order to avoid drawing the logical conclusion, namely that military action had now become necessary, he simply abandoned the old establishment assumptions that Iran must, at all costs, be prevented from developing nuclear weapons. And he adopted, in its place, the complacent idea that we could learn to live with an Iranian bomb.

In countering this, I argued that deterrence could not be relied upon with a regime ruled by Islamofascist revolutionaries, who were not only ready to die for their beliefs, but cared less about protecting their people than about the spread of their ideology and their power. If the mullahs got the bomb, I said, it was not they who would be deterred, but we. So little did any of this shake my opponent that I came away from our debate with the grim realization that President Bush’s continued insistence on the dangers posed by an Iranian bomb would more and more fall on deaf ears. Ears that would soon be made even deafer by the new NIE’s assurance that Iran was no longer working to acquire nuclear weapons after all.

There might be two different ideas competing here. One, that we could live with an Iranian bomb. The other, that there would be no Iranian bomb to live with in the immediate future. But the widespread acceptance of either one of these ideas would put paid once and for all to the military option and there would be nothing left to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. And yet, there did remain something else, or rather, someone else, to factor into the equation. The perennially misunderestimated George W. Bush.

Bush was a man who, far more than most politicians, said what he meant and meant what he said. And what he had said, at least twice before the new NIE came out, and what he went out of his way to repeat the day after it came out, was that if we permitted Iran to build a nuclear arsenal, people fifty years from now would look back and wonder how we of this generation could have allowed such a thing to happen. And they would rightly judge us as harshly as we today judge the British and the French for what they did at Munich in 1938. Why, I wondered, would Bush put himself so squarely in the dock of history on this issue if he were resigned to an Iran in possession of nuclear weapons? Thanks to the new NIE, however, what had been politically very difficult for Bush to do before now became altogether impossible.

But what about the Israelis? How could they afford to sit by while the regime pledged to wipe them off the map was equipping itself with nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them? For unless Iran could be stopped before acquiring a nuclear capability, the Israelis would be confronted with only two choices. Either strike first or pray that the fear of retaliation would deter the Iranians from beating them to the punch. Yet a former president of Iran, Rafsanjani, had served notice that his country could not be deterred by the fear of retaliation. And I quote him: "If the day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession, application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel. But the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world."

If this was the view of even a supposed moderate like Rafsanjani, how could the Israelis depend upon the mullahs to refrain from launching a first strike? Under the aegis of such an attitude, mutual assured destruction would turn into a very weak read indeed. Understanding that, the Israelis would be presented with an irresistible incentive to preempt and so, too, would the Iranians. Either way, a nuclear exchange would become, if not inevitable, than terrifyingly likely. What would happen then?

In a careful study, Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, no friend of Israel, argued that even in the doubtful assumption that such a nuclear exchange could be contained within the region, the resulting horrors would include the deaths of tens of millions and the obliteration of whole societies. But what would happen if Israel were to strike Iran before it reached the point of no return?

At worst–and this is my own scenario, not Cordesman’s–the mullahs would retaliate by attacking Israel with missiles armed with non-nuclear warheads, but possibly containing biological and/or chemical weapons. They would also do their utmost to destabilize Iraq, to make more trouble for us in Afghanistan, and to close the straits of Hormuz. There would be a vast increase in the price of oil with catastrophic consequences for every economy in the world, very much including our own. And there would be a deafening outcry from one end of the earth to the other against the inescapable civilian casualties.

Yet, bad as all this would be, it does not begin to compare with the gruesome consequences of nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran. Now I think that if not for having been ambushed by the NIE of 2007, Bush might well have taken military action. For he believed, as I do, too, that there was an uncanny resemblance between the situation we were in and the one the world faced in 1938. In 1938, as Winston Churchill later said, Hitler could still have been stopped at a relatively low price and many millions of lives could have been saved if England and France had not deceived themselves about the realities of their situation. Mutatis, mutandis. It is the same today.

When Iran can still be stopped from getting the bomb and even more millions of lives can be saved. Yet if Bush was prevented by external obstacles from acting on this assessment, the obstacles standing in the way of Barack Obama are lodged within his own mind and heart. Which is to say that, in spite his defense of just wars in his Nobel speech, it is next to inconceivable that he will take military action against Iran. And at the rate the centrifuges are already spinning, Iran will have the bomb before the courageous dissenters now demonstrating in the streets of Tehran can, if indeed they ever can, grow strong enough to overthrow the mullahcracy. The upshot is, that with time running rapidly out, only the Israelis can save us all from a nuclear armageddon. I believe that the Israelis are prepared to do it. But I also believe that Barack Obama is prepared to stop them. And that he may succeed in doing so. In that case, God help the Israelis and the rest of us as well.

I apologize for bringing you such glad tidings on this happy occasion.