You might think this jovial looking neoconservative is pretty harmless. It's John Podhoretz, who usually spends his time making pithy observations about sitcoms (did you know that haircuts on Friends signalled a conservative resurgence?).
J-Pod isn't so much a movement conservative as to the manor born. He's the child of Norman Podhoretz ("The Pod") and Midge Decter. Those bright lights fought Communism early and were among the first to agitate for the U.S. to use its army to destroy the rest of the Middle East for the glory of Greater Israel. To give you an idea of how far afield they are, The Pod thinks we're fighting World War IV and once penned a piece called My Negro Problem - And Ours [pdf]. Midge used to pal around with the likes of Donald Rumsfeld.
J-Pod "has a regular column at the New York Post, is a political commentator on Fox News, and regularly appears on CNN's Reliable Sources. He has also worked at Time, the Washington Times, Insight, and U.S. News & World Report." He even did a stint as a speechwriter for Saint Ronald.
So what's the big deal? He's just another well-fed neocon think-tank type, right? Nothing much going on.
Not exactly. Last week, John Podhoretz called on the U.S. (or Israel, or both, whatever) to commit genocide - that's a crime, you know. "Oh so what!" you say - "neocons call for brown people to be interned or slaughtered all the time!" Well, this time it's a bit much, even for the jaded among us here in the Reality Based Community™:
What if the tactical mistake we made in Iraq was that we didn't kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything? Wasn't the survival of Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35 the reason there was an insurgency and the basic cause of the sectarian violence now?
If you can't imagine George W. Bush issuing such an order, is there any American leader you could imagine doing so?
And if America can't do it, can Israel? Could Israel - even hardy, strong, universally conscripted Israel - possibly stomach the bloodshed that would accompany the total destruction of Hezbollah? [emphasis supplied]
J-Pod hides behind carefully-placed question marks, but his potboiler could easily be rewritten as that familiar recipe for a Crusade. The tone is almost breezy: "Gee whiz, we didn't do it - Israel should! ... or both of us! Let's start in Lebanon and then just swing over to Iraq, shall we? So what if we have to go through Syria! And Iran's right in the neighborhood!" J-Pod knows what he wants - mass graves and death - and he's not afraid to ask for it.
It's not as though J-Pod demands all these scalps in some obscure neocon journal - he was writing in the New York Post. Do you suppose that Rupert Murdoch will fire this bloodthirsty throwback? Probably not, but you can comment on the article here, and you can email J-Pod here.
UPDATE: J-Pod says he's not in favor of genocide: "The fundamental question I was posing is this: What if only a civilization willing to commit [such acts] can successfully extirpate a conscienceless menace like Islamic extremist terror?" J-Pod asserts what his piece really says is that genocide is "closed off" to us. Tell that to the Indians. But there are a couple problems:
1) J-Pod and the other neocons told us we'd be greeted as liberators - now he asks if it was a "tactical mistake" on our part "not to kill enough Sunnis." Does he mean kill more of the Sunnis that were shooting at us? No, because he singles out "Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35" as the problem, not, curiously, "Sunni insurgents between the ages of 15 and 35." And what about the Sunni female insurgents? Nope, J-Pod just thinks that young males are the problem. You know, the ones necessary to keep the Sunnis from dying out.
2) If J-Pod believes genocide is "closed off" to us, the sentence would read: "What if our refusal to engage in genocide resulted in our inability to kill enough Sunnis in the early going to intimidate them and make them so afraid of us they would go along with anything?" But he doesn't - it was not a prohibition, it was a "tactical error." An "error" means we chose the wrong path, implying a choice. Ooops.
One more thing - if genocide is something we'd never do, why even mention it? Do you believe the neocons, faced with an impending terrorist victory, would just say: "Oh well, we won't do genocide, so here are our women and children!" Not bloody likely.
J-Pod's theorizing here is reminiscent of Bennett's theorizing about aborting black babies and the crime rate. Not only is it based on a faulty premise, it reveals more about him than he wants you to know.
You might think this jovial looking neoconservative is pretty harmless.
LOL!!!
Posted by: Shakespeare's Sister | August 01, 2006 at 08:03 AM
I'd just love to do a body wax on this guy.
Posted by: Jackie_O | August 01, 2006 at 10:31 AM
A body wax followed by a salt rub, then a dip into a vat of acid!
Posted by: HelenWheels | August 01, 2006 at 10:36 AM
Three cheers for Operation Rest of the Brown Ones!
anyone care to contribute money to the J-Pod campaign for liposuction?
Posted by: Comandante Agi | August 01, 2006 at 11:34 AM
OK, Freude, listen...
Reading the NY Post? My god, YOU'RE OBSESSING!
I prescribe a heavy dose of Noam Chomsky, because if you read too much of this shit, you'll go mad and then you'll be prime raw material for Rush!
Posted by: actor212 | August 01, 2006 at 12:18 PM
Can we get an intervention here, gang?
Posted by: actor212 | August 01, 2006 at 12:18 PM
J-Pod...is that like an iPod for jerks instead of music?
Posted by: actor212 | August 01, 2006 at 12:47 PM
J-Pod is an idiot. As were his homophobe parents Norman-Pod and Midge Dector.
Posted by: raj | August 02, 2006 at 03:11 AM
Reading what he said made my stomach feel strange. What the hell happened to these people? How can they say shit like that? Jesus, when can we expect a little sanity in this country?
Posted by: pissed off patricia | August 02, 2006 at 07:15 AM
That dude is fat, and you dude are
Posted by: Tony | August 02, 2006 at 07:28 AM
dammit
tagged
go here: http://www.virtualp.us/blog/?p=1698
Posted by: Tony | August 02, 2006 at 07:29 AM
Can we expect Tony to release Mr. blogenfreude back into his natural habitat or will we be visiting the dude exhibit at the Blog Zoo?
Posted by: tata | August 02, 2006 at 10:30 AM
Blogenfreude HATES being tagged. Good luck, Tony!
Posted by: HelenWheels | August 02, 2006 at 10:32 AM
"(did you know that haircuts on Friends signalled a conservative resurgence?)"
OMG LMAO
Posted by: denisdekat | August 02, 2006 at 06:02 PM
Can we expect Tony to release Mr. blogenfreude back into his natural habitat or will we be visiting the dude exhibit at the Blog Zoo?
He will be turned over to the proper authorities once he has been "cleansed."
Posted by: Tony | August 03, 2006 at 07:18 AM
OMG. You found a picture of the missing link...
Posted by: Libby | August 05, 2006 at 06:14 PM
It is unbelievable that we have think tankers and military officials woh casually bandy about notions of genocide, oh and implement them. I'm really scared and that's frightening.
Posted by: karena | August 06, 2006 at 08:35 AM