And while the advocates of war and militant conservatism are well-financed, people can still read and ask questions. Those not consumed with fanaticism can still ask why Perle and his fellow advocates of war against Iraq were so convinced that Iraq had massive quantities of WMDs. And why, in this book completed near the end of 2003, he seems to show no appreciation of the implications of such a vast intelligence failure, for which he himself is in significant part responsible.
The authors make a telling argument about the Saudi royal family's support for Islamic extremism, again notable for what the silences tell. They argue that support of extremist groups allows the Saudi royals to maintain their corrupt lifestyles in contradiction to the austere version of Islam they defend. But more relevant to American policy is the fact that support to extremists outside Saudi Arabia has allowed the Saudis to divert extremist attention from targeting the Saudi monarchy.
And in a longer-term sense, the United States actively encouraged the Saudis to finance the "anti-Soviet freedom fighters" in Afghanistan.
Keeping those facts in mind makes a difference. Frum and Perle encourage us to see the Saudis primarily as supporters of anti-American Islamic extremism - which they unquestionably are. But if Islamic extremists, Osama bin Laden not least among them, want to overthrow the Saudi monarchy, American policy-makers should be very careful about pursuing an end that coincides with their goals. That's not to say that American goals would never happen to coincide with Bin Laden's in a particular case. Perle and his fellow Iraq hawks, in fact, shared Bin Laden's desire to overthrow Saddam Hussein's secular dictatorship in Iraq. But it does mean that we should have our eyes wide open in those situations.
In a longer-term sense, we need to have a more consistent long-term strategy toward the Middle East and the broader Muslim world. We allowed our fixation on the Soviet threat to let us promote a virulent form of Islamic extremism in Afghanistan - where Soviet intervention, however heinous we may have considered it in itself - was only a marginal risk to vital American interests.
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