Leading neo-conservative Norman Podhoretz delivers some telling words in February's Commentary Magazine.

In an analysis of those pitching themselves against George Bush's second term neo-con agenda, he turns to a group he calls the "Superhawks":-

With no mass audience to lose, no such worry bothers the exponents of another line of attack on the Bush Doctrine that has emanated from a neighborhood on the Right where utter ruthlessness is considered the only way to wage war, and where the idea of exporting democracy is thought to conflict with conservative political wisdom. On the Right though it obviously is, this neighborhood of superhawks is as distant from the precincts of paleoconservatism as it is from the redoubts of the anti-American Left.

The most prolific member of the group is Angelo M. Codevilla who, in a series of essays in the Claremont Review of Books, has accused the Bush administration of "eschewing victory" by shying away from "energetic policies that might actually produce" it, and who makes no bones about his belief that we are losing the war as a result. In the same vein, and in the same magazine, Mark Helprin writes that we have failed

adequately to prepare for war, to declare war, rigorously to define the enemy, to decide upon disciplines and intelligent war aims, to subjugate the economy to the common defense, or even to endorse the most elemental responsibilities of government.

In then piling a commensurate heap of scorn on the idea of transforming "the entire Islamic world into a group of peaceful democratic states" (Helprin), these two eloquent and fiery polemicists are joined by the more temperate Charles R. Kesler, the editor of the Claremont Review. If democratization is to succeed in the regimes of the Islamic world, a necessary precondition is to beat these regimes into "complete submission" and then occupy them "for decades—not just for months or years, but for decades" (Kesler). Even then, our troops may have to "stay and die . . . indefinitely on behalf of a mission . . . concerning the accomplishment of which there is little knowledge and less agreement" (Codevilla).

Of all the attacks on the Bush Doctrine, this set of arguments is the only one that resonates with me, at least on the issue of how to wage war. I have no objection in principle to the ruthlessness the superhawks advocate, and I agree that it would likely be very effective. The trouble is that the more closely I look at their position, the more clearly does it emerge as fatally infected by the disease of utopianism—the very disease that usually fills critics of this stripe with revulsion and fear.

When these critics prescribe all-out war—total mobilization at home, total ruthlessness on the battlefield—they posit a world that does not exist, at least not in America or in any other democratic country. To the extent that they bother taking account of the America that actually does exist, it is only its imperfections and deficiencies they notice; and these, along with the constraints imposed by the character of the nation on its elected leaders, they wave off with derisive language, as when Codevilla refers sarcastically to "the lowest common denominator among domestic American political forces."

Yet while Codevilla, writing in his study, is free to advise ruthless suppression of these limiting conditions, no one sitting in the Oval Office can possibly do so. And even so, the wonder is not, contrary to Mark Helprin, how "irresolute" and "inept" Bush has been but how far he has managed to go and how much he has already accomplished while working within those constraints and around those imperfections.

It is interesting to note that Podhoretz is not against the idea of "pounding the regimes into complete submission, occupying them for decades, and troops having to stay and die on behalf of a mission concerning the accomplishoment of whish there is little knowledge and less agreement" on the basis that this is the wrong thing to do, but on the basis that it is "utopian"! The implication is that ideologically the neo-cons would love to get as far towards this Utopia as possible - only political expediency limits how close to they can get to this, their ideal world.

I have been surprised to see how many are predicting a softer, more diplomatic approach from the Bush regime in the second term, as if their policy is driven by political pragmatism rather than extreme ideology. Of course Bush will talk up negotiation and discussions with allies, and military action as the last resort. Regardless of his goals, what exactly do people expect him to say? Nothing can be read into these words other than normal diplomatic protocol. As Podhoretz himself points out:-

These signals, however, such as they are, surely amount to nothing more than diplomatic politesse, no more portending a second-term retreat than the President did when, late last November, he declared that "A new term in office is an important opportunity to reach out to our friends," or announced that the first "great goal" of his second term was to build "effective multinational and multilateral institutions" and to support "effective multilateral action." That Bush was here practicing a little diplomatic politesse of his own was acknowledged by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. The President, Milbank reported, "made clear that such cooperation must occur on his terms, and he did not retreat from the first-term policies that angered some allies."

In Bush's second term we should expect nothing other than a continuation of the first term's agenda. His home agenda will be to dismantle Government obligations to the welfare state to pay for further aggression against Iran, Syria and whoever else fits the ideological agenda of this most extreme of regimes.