Defending The Bush Doctrine

With a full page in the Wall Street Journal at his disposal, Norman Podhoretz takes on all the President's critics, including the neocons, and finally, himself:

In thinking about George W. Bush's neoconservative critics, I am guided by the lesson I learned from the fate of my own very similar criticisms of Ronald Reagan: not the hagiographical Reagan celebrated in conservative song and story, but the real Reagan, the Reagan who both did and failed to do many things that his idolatrous admirers have chosen to forget....

Rereading these pieces today, I am amazed to discover that they were right in almost every detail even though they were dead wrong about the ultimate effect. For what these acts of Reagan's turned out to be was a series of prudential tactics within an overall strategy that in the end succeeded in attaining its great objective.

Print it out and save it. You'll want to read it again in ten years.