Similarly, our reaction to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which "neoconservatives" viewed as further Soviet aggression (!), led us to back Iraq as a secular alternative to Muslim extremism, and as an enforcer of the American-desired order in the Middle East. The upshot of those policies in both Afghanistan and Iraq involved considerable "blowback" against American interests in the long term.
Perhaps those instances should be cautionary examples to us in considering whether we should accept the advice of those who want an American jihad against Syria, Iran, Libya, the Saudi monarchy, France and an endless set of further enemies. All under the name of the "war on terror."
But that kind of pragmatism in pursuit of American goals is alien to men like David Frum and Richard Perle, who write:
For us, terrorism remains the great evil of our time, and the war against this evil [to be fought by the means described in this review], our generation's great cause. We do not believe that Americans are fighting this evil to minimize it or to manage it. We believe they are fighting to win - to end this evil before it kills again and on a genocidal scale. There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust. (p. 9, my emphasis)
A world at peace; a world governed by law; a world in whch all people are free to find their own destinies: That dream has not yet come true, it will not come true soon, but if it ever does come true, it will be brought into being by American armed might and defended by American might, too. (p. 279, my emphasis)
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