Giddiness is not the proper response

Regarding Mona Charen’s Sept. 23 column, “Bush Doctrine receives a powerful, overdue defense”:

It is ordinarily uplifting to see someone so happy. When you suspect that person is a psychopath, not so much.

For instance, Mona Charen’s gleeful exuberance over Norman Podhoretz’s “full-throated” (her metaphor) defense of the Bush Doctrine.

She’s happy because Podhoretz has also finally clarified that the war against Islamofascism is actually World War IV. Whereas inarticulate George Bush only declared the war. World War III was the cold war, just in case you missed it.

The Middle East is now the focus.

Iraq has been shocked and awed.

The neo-cons and Podhoretz are making the case for bombing Iran’s suspect nuclear sites with nuclear bunker busters, lest they some day have the intimidating threatening power of nuclear weapons. It’s official: intimidating and threatening is our job.

That’s because the Beloved Bush Doctrine of preemptive war also has elements of Dick Cheney’s “One Percent Doctrine” and Michael Ledeen’s “Throw ‘em against the wall” Doctrine.

They form an interlocking chain:

1. A pre-emptive attack is actually just a proactive righteous self-defense and besides,

2. when the stakes are high, killing the wrong guys 99 percent of the time is necessary and a good thing because

3. killing/scaring/intimidating people gets respect .

One should now ask, Are these people lying, stupid, or crazy?

The psychopathic giveaway is when they drool with pride at the number of young Americans who have “donned the uniform” to needlessly kill or be killed, to prolong the exposure of neo-con lying, crazy stupidity.

Wayne C. Evans

Bothell