Commentary: Order now for your free 'world terrorism wall map'

I generally enjoy reading Commentary, and, though I don't often agree with its editorial perspective, I find its essays thought provoking. Unfortunately, I don't think this free gift would be enough to get me to subscribe: We already get the magazine at the office, and I'm just not convinced a terrorism wall map would match the decor of my bedroom.

Whatever happened to a free MP3 player? From The Telegraph:

Order a one-year subscription and we will mail you a free WORLD TERRORISM WALL MAP on payment.

To say “Thank You” for your paid subscription to COMMENTARY, we will send you our full-color 39” x 26” World Terrorism wall map. Features include detailed inset maps highlighting countries battling narco-, Maoist, and Islamist terrorism, icons depicting aspects of world terrorism, political and topographical detail, definitions and facts, summaries of terrorist organizations, and sources and web sites recommended for further research. The World Terrorism wall map, an essential resource for anyone wishing to know more about the growing danger facing us, illustrates the global scope of the terrorist menace.

Click here to order your subscription!

(Hat tip: Bintel Blog)

Huckabee is Kristol's man

New New York Times columnist Bill Kristol -- liberals didn't exactly role out the welcome mat -- used his first paid column to pom-pom Mike Huckabee. This surprised me because, aside from the clear religious and social differences between the two, Huckabee seems to be among the least globally aware of the Republican presidential candidates, and I always thought foreign policy was what neocons prided themselves on.

Then again, with statements like this, maybe Kristol and Huckabee have the same knowledge of what's going on in the Middle East.

Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration. We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.

Who knew we were winning the war in Iraq? At this point, is it accurate to even call the situation over there a "war?" Or is it better to refer to it as a colossal screw-up in reconstruction (though, yes, some progress has been measurable)?

A neocon scion set to takeover Commentary

To some within the neoconservative movement, the announcement of John Podhoretz as the next editor of Commentary magazine -- the same job his father, Norman, held for 35 years -- is the best of all possible choices. It is a model of what Adam Bellow (son of the Nobel-winning novelist Saul) called the "new nepotism," combining the "privileges of birth with the iron rule of merit."

But to others the decision reeks of the "old nepotism," in which the only credential that matters is the identity of your father -- in Mr. Bellow’s cosmology, less like the Roosevelts than like Tori Spelling getting an acting job because her father was Aaron Spelling.

“I think some people are pretty shocked,” said Jacob Heilbrunn, whose book "They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons” is coming out in January. John Podhoretz, movie critic for The Weekly Standard magazine and a political columnist for The New York Post, “isn’t seen as a heavyweight intellectual,” said Mr. Heilbrunn, who has discussed the appointment with several neoconservatives. Rather, “he is seen as being a beneficiary of his parents’ fame in the George W. Bush mold.”

That is the beginning of a piece in today's NY Times. Commentary was once one of the most influential journals in the country and remains an important voice for American Jews and Israel.

The Bintel Blog had links last week to a few revealing stories of JPod, as the younger Podhoretz is known. This one by -- guess who? -- Hanna Rosin is quite revealing.

Another neocon working for Giuliani

Look who Ken Silverstein found on Rudy Giuliani's presidential candidate roster: Daniel Pipes.

Pipes has been attacked by Muslim organizations as a fear-mongering Islamophobic fascist. But this comment from Pipes in a story I wrote about young American Muslims sympathetic to suicide bombings, in which the president of Long Beach's MSA told me he thinks Islam justifies the attacks on civilians, seemed pretty measured:

What you have is a low-wage jihad taking place, but people are not paying attention to it. These sentiments are seething, and at any time might erupt.

I noted last month that Giuliani, who has proven incredibly unpopular with evangelical Christians, had enlisted neoconservative Commentary editor-at-large Norman Podhoretz. Here's what Silverstein, the excellent Harper's Washington editor behind that lobbying story from July, had to say about Pipes:

I think it’s fair to say that Pipes is even further out ideologically than Norman Podhoretz, another Giuliani adviser. Readers unfamiliar with Pipes can check out his profile at Wikipedia. For a representative sampling of his work, consider a 2006 article he wrote in the Jerusalem Post (not available online):

Iraq’s plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition’s responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi’ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one.

Neocons for Rudy

There are people who really like Norman Podhoretz. They're called security hawks.

Podhoretz is an intellectual leader of neoconservatism, the political ideology credited with getting the US into Iraq. Last month, he made the case in Commentary for a preemptive strike on Iran. Yesterday he signed on to be an adviser to presidential-hopeful Rudy Giuliani.

Rudy is starting to look a bit like President Bush with the people he chooses to surround himself with. I wonder if he already has his plan of attack laid out.

Wolfowitz for mayor ... of Iraq

That's what one Republican lawmaker has recommended be done to keep the architect of the Iraq war off public subsidies, according to The Blotter.

"I would like to suggest...that maybe we give Paul Wolfowitz a new job and send him over [to Iraq] as mayor," said Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., "since the neocons got us in over there."

As deputy secretary of defense from 2000 to 2005, Wolfowitz helped develop the strategy and public rationale for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He publicly stated that coalition troops would be greeted as liberators, and the nation of Iraq would be largely capable of financing its own rebuilding through oil revenues.

Wolfowitz, who like Richard Perle and so many other neoconservativees, often Jewish, saw war with Iraq as an inevitability, resigned two weeks ago as president of the World Bank.