The enemies within

Readers old enough to have enjoyed the John Birch Society’s 1950s attacks on the Eisenhower administration -- the suggestions that President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles were conscious dupes of the internationalist communist conspiracy -- will be delighted by the new book “An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror.” Substitute terrorism for communism and we have a wonderfully vulgar screed that explains what Americans must do to win the war against terrorism and fingers all the individuals, organizations and countries that pose obstacles to victory.

According to authors David Frum and Richard Perle, the enemies of a secure America include Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, his deputy Richard L. Armitage, the State Department and U.S. diplomats generally, especially career foreign service officers (who tend to be disloyal), the CIA, the National Security Council (composed largely of men and women seconded from State and the CIA), the FBI, Democrats (except for Sen. Joe Lieberman), the United Nations, the French, Belgians and, worst of all, the Saudis. Let’s not forget those members of the first President Bush’s foreign policy apparatus -- specifically national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and senior foreign policy aide Richard N. Haass -- who dared disagree on policy issues with Perle, then assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, and Frum, a National Review columnist and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. In “An End to Evil,” they describe all of the above as facilitators of terrorism against the United States.

Is this the New McCarthyism? Perhaps the book is meant as red meat for the faithful, but I don’t think so. Surely this is an uncharacteristic effort by Frum, who boasts of having put the words “axis of evil” in the president’s mouth, and Perle, known in Washington as the “Prince of Darkness,” presumably for his insistence on the gravity of the Soviet threat on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union, to be funny, a deliberate parody of what they imagine Roy Cohn, Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s chief prosecutor, would have written.

They assure us we are not alone in this fight against terrorism. Fortunately, President George W. Bush is usually on our side -- at least when he listens to the right people. Among our protectors are John R. Bolton, undersecretary of State for arms control and international security, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and everyone who knows that the answer to our prayers in Iraq is Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the exile opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, and mentor to the Bush administration. Internationally, we have friends in Israel, Taiwan and Britain, as long as it maintains its political distance from the rest of Europe.

Frum and Perle write with a tremendous sense of urgency: We are at a crisis point in the war against terror; the very survival of the nation is at stake; should we fail, the results will be “genocidal,” a veritable “holocaust.” Nonetheless, they are confident that we are on the verge of stopping terrorists thanks to the Patriot Act and our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If we can stay the course, overcome the obstacles mentioned above and strengthen our friends, all will be well. Frum and Perle helpfully devote a chapter to organizing for victory. They go into considerable detail to explain why and how the FBI, CIA, armed forces and State Department must be reformed.

There has long been reason to question the competence of the FBI and the CIA. But Frum and Perle tell us why. The CIA, they explain, performs so poorly because its analysts come from elite schools full of liberal ideas, imbued with political correctness and blinded by liberal instincts. Like too many of the rest of us, they may also be infected with the “lax multiculturalism” that troubles the authors. Some of us knew that the CIA relied on Middle Eastern intelligence agencies for much of its information about the region, but contrary to our assumption that it was Israel’s Mossad to which the agency turned, Frum and Perle point to hitherto unimagined dependence on Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The State Department, they insist, subverts the policies of elected officials. The authors’ principal reform would be to replace career officers in key posts with political appointees who would be more responsive to the president’s wishes. And the armed forces, they contend, must stop resisting Rumsfeld’s plans, fight wars his way -- and buy more B-2 bombers.

At least in part because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- for which Frum and Perle hold the Clinton administration responsible -- the authors are most concerned about militant Islam. They cite evidence of extremism in Muslim communities throughout the world and blame most of it on the Saudis -- who they say are untouchable because their oil riches have bought many unspecified men and women who determine policy toward them. They have little use for Arabs generally and none at all for Palestinians. Generously, they approve of the creation of a Palestinian state, provided it is democratic, strong enough to stop terrorism and weak enough to pose no threat to Israel. Regime change is the only acceptable outcome for Iran, which in their minds may well be the most dangerous country in the world. All they want for Muslims is democracy and the emancipation of women, objectives on which they say all right-thinking Americans would agree.

Frum and Perle also point to the threat from North Korea. They are troubled by the South Korean penchant for appeasing Kim Jong Il and fearful that officials in the U.S. government might revert to the Clinton tactic of bribing Kim to give up his nuclear weapons program. The authors support a military response and would like the South Koreans to do more to defend themselves.

And don’t forget the Chinese, who, they say, must be put on notice that Taiwan will be protected, as the president recently has indicated. The Chinese are somehow responsible for North Korea’s nuclear weapons and must do more to rein in Kim. But let’s hope they will behave, because China is important.

Ultimately the authors conclude that only U.S. power can create a world at peace -- American exceptionalism at its most glorious. They argue for an analog of Theodore Roosevelt’s “corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, in which he claimed the right of the United States in 1904 to exercise police power in the Caribbean. Recognizing that U.S. power has increased enormously in the hundred years since Roosevelt spoke, Frum and Perle would have us police the world. First, of course, we’d best get rid of all those subversives in Washington. *