Why Do Academics Downplay Repression?
Michael Rubin 2013-06-09The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—the NGO of the Society of Friends or Quakers—won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947, largely for its work with refugees, children, and prisoners of war during both World Wars I and II. The AFSC stayed neutral—a principle which it embraced strictly at the time—but by the 1970s, the AFSC had allowed leftism to trump pacifism. Perhaps nothing symbolizes the politicization of the AFSC and its moral unbearing than how it shilled for Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge—an episode discussed at length in Guenter Lewy’s Peace and Revolution, until evidence of that group’s murder of a million citizens became insurmountable. Why politics blinded AFSC officials to the brutality of the Khmer Rouge up until that group’s public exposure, however, is something that the Society of Friends has never adequately explained.
Another episode—albeit one not involving genocide—involves the many American foreign policy thinkers who were willing to give the Islamic Republic of Iran if not a pass on human rights prior to the 2009 post-election unrest than at least a blind eye. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen—who traveled to Iran and wrote many columns more critical of American policy than that of the Islamic Republic—only had his epiphany about the true rottenness of the Islamic Republic after he witnessed the 2009 unrest. Likewise, prior to 2009, anti-Iran sanctions activist Trita Parsi hardly even paid lip service to Iranians’ human rights and only after the elections did he decide he would no longer dine with Iran’s Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In reality, however, there has been no substantive difference between the Islamic Republic pre-2009 and post-2009. Evin Prison might be full now, but it was not empty in the 1980s, 1990s, or 2000s. While many liberals and progressives mark 2009 as the turning point in their assessment of Iran, there has been little introspection as to why they were willing until then to give such a repressive government the benefit of the doubt.
The current unrest in Turkey continues the pattern. The protests which have now spread to dozens of Turkish towns and cities have deeper roots than the destruction of a small urban park. Perhaps it’s understandable that so many former U.S. ambassadors to Turkey pooh-poohed the erosion of basic freedoms in Turkey; after all, so many used their Turkish connections as golden parachutes after their retirement from the Foreign Service or, perhaps they feel more nobly, as sources to fundraise for various think tanks or academic programs in which they now sit. Others say quite openly—in private—that the need for access or worries about family remaining in Turkey leads them to temper criticism of the AKP. Some Turks self-censor out of fear for their jobs, while others cravenly act as propagandists, providing cover for the Turkish government’s war on the press in exchange for privilege and access.
When political Islamism is added to the mix, too many are willing to dismiss the erosion of liberty in order to stay on the correct side of political correctness. Here, for example, are two Turkey analysts a week before the nationwide protests began lamenting how analysts—with special snark reserved for yours truly—might utilize news of Erdoğan’s war on beer to promote the narrative (which they believed false) that Erdoğan might be trying to impose his social will and Islamize secular Turkey. Since the protests erupted, there has not been subsequent introspection about why they were so anxious to dismiss a repression which so many Turks so clearly felt and which so many now protest against.
It is a tragedy that so many American officials and analysts equate acquiescence to the erosion of liberty with sophistication and prioritize heeling to conventional wisdom with open and honest analysis of data. Too many countries—Iran, Turkey, China, Iraqi Kurdistan and Russia—use access as leverage to temper the criticism of analysts and academics.
When it comes to Iran and Turkey, there is also the bubble factor: Many of those traveling to Tehran remain in relatively cosmopolitan northern Tehran rather than Islamshahr or the Western neighborhoods in which so many Revolutionary Guardsmen live. And when it comes to Turkey, there is nothing more corrosive to good analysis than those congressional delegations or tourists that might visit central Istanbul or Ankara, but never visit Sultanbeyli or Kayseri where few tourists venture but Islamism is on full display.
Let us hope that after Cambodia, Iran, and Turkey, those enjoying Western freedoms will understand how tenuous such freedoms are. Whether motivated by some perverse form of Communism as in Cambodia or by political Islam as in Iran or Turkey, or by some other ideology, it does not take much for politicians to grow impatient with resistance to their ideology or agenda. The Khmer Rouge made no secret of their disdain for democracy, but both Ayatollah Khomeini—in the months before his return to Iran—and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan understood how powerful the rhetoric of democracy could be when trying to achieve the opposite aim and so cultivated a coterie of useful idiots along the way.
Perhaps if there’s any lesson, therefore, the default position for analysts should be skepticism: Analysts of Turkey, Iran, Egypt, or anywhere else should always assume liberty to be under threat unless the governments’ actions prove the opposite. Nor should analysts ever acquiesce to constraints against individual freedoms in the name of religion.
Iran and, alas, Egypt may now be too far gone, but the Turkish Spring provides hope that liberals will fight for their rights. Let us hope that they will have as much support for the cause of liberty as their opponents did when they sought to roll back freedoms.
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“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
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Victor Davis Hanson
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Elliott Abrams
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Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
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“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
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Why Do Academics Downplay Repression?
Must-Reads from Magazine
America’s Secret Boots on the Ground
Max Boot 2016-04-06
Ever since President Obama sent U.S. forces back to Iraq in August, 2014 to fight ISIS — a terrorist group that grew up in the vacuum that he left by pulling U.S. troops out at the end of 2011 — the president has repeatedly promised that U.S. troops would not go into combat. By last fall, he had uttered some variation of the phrase “no boots on the ground” at least sixteen times. On September 10, 2014, for example, he said: “I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.”
Perhaps the president would like to — as they say in Congress — go back to “revise and extend” his remarks? Because it sure looks by any reasonable standard that the U.S. has “boots on the ground” and, indeed, in combat.
Last fall, the Defense Department moved a Joint Special Operations Task Force to Iraq to begin targeting ISIS leaders. Last month, the commandos captured a man described as head of ISIS’s chemical weapons program. It goes without saying that when the “operators” — whether Delta Force or SEAL Team Six or some other unit — go onto the “objective,” they are in combat: they are likely to be inflicting and risking casualties.
More recently, a U.S. Marine Corps staff sergeant was killed in Iraq. Only his death prompted the Pentagon to announce that the Marine Corps had now established a fire base in northern Iraq, now known as the Kara Soar Counter Fire Complex. The stated rationale for this fire base is to provide artillery fire in support of U.S. advisers. In reality, it is providing artillery fire in support of an Iraqi army advance on Mosul. The Marine artillery can provide all-weather targeting even when aircraft are grounded. Providing fire support is definitely a combat mission, and the Marines are definitely at risk of retaliatory action by ISIS.
This is only the combat action that we know about, of course. The odds are that there are more Special Operations Forces and CIA paramilitaries on the front-lines, with the military personnel possibly “sheep dipped” (i.e., temporarily transferred) into the CIA so that they can operate under the spy agency’s secret authorities.
Just how many U.S. troops are in Iraq? The official story is that the number is limited to 3,870. But the Washington Post reported that the real figure is around 5,000. Apparently the U.S. command has played some cute arithmetic with “temporary” and “permanent” deployments to limit the number that is publicly divulged.
In short, there is a substantial and growing U.S. combat commitment on the ground in Iraq, to say nothing of all the aircraft flying an average of 14 strike sorties a day. This is not President Bush’s deployment of more than 100,000 troops to Iraq, but it’s a lot more than Obama initially promised.
Apparently President Obama has quietly decided to ramp up the U.S. commitment against ISIS by relaxing the rules limiting how many U.S. personnel can be in Iraq and what they can do. That’s a good thing. He should show more flexibility by sending even more troops to accelerate the anti-ISIS campaign. But it’s unfortunate that he is doing so in secret because there is no good reason for secrecy unless he is simply afraid of the political blowback at home.
If Obama were to come clean about what he’s doing, he would have to admit that the Iraq War didn’t end when he pulled U.S. troops out in 2011. In fact, that decision restarted the war and, as critics of the pullout warned, led U.S. forces back into combat in Iraq under less advantageous circumstances. The president would have to admit, moreover, that all of his previous assurances about U.S. troops not engaging in ground combat are — in in the Nixonian formulation — “inoperative.” And that is something very hard to imagine the cocksure president doing.
But Obama should swallow his pride and level with the American people. Most Americans would, I think, support this war effort, but it needs to be explained to them rather than hidden from view like an ugly stain on the president’s antiwar record.
Everyone worth reading avidly reads COMMENTARY. Can you afford not to?
“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
Arthur Herman
“ There’s an enormous amount of shouting in the wild west of conservative media. That has its place, and is often a sign of the energy on the right. But amidst the cacophony there’s a special need for serious, considered, and compelling argument, presented in the hope of persuading, not just punishing. This is where COMMENTARY has always shined, perhaps more now than ever before. It aims to tackle the best arguments of its intellectual opponents, not just the easiest targets. It’s a journal I’ve read for nearly 30 years and I can’t think of a time when I’ve valued it more. „
Jonah Goldberg
“ For decades, COMMENTARY has opened its pages to the most serious uncompromising defense of the American creed—exemplar of ordered liberty at home, pillar of the free world abroad—in an era when it has been most under attack. From the exceptionally influential manifestoes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick to today's counterattack against the empowered advocates of the entitlement state and of American decline, COMMENTARY remains what it has been for more than a generation: fearless, informative, indispensable. „
Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
“ COMMENTARY has played an invaluable role in American political discourse for decades, offering thoughtful analysis on issues rather than sound bites or bumper stickers. Especially when it comes to U.S. foreign and defense policy, COMMENTARY has time and time again been ahead of the crowd, anticipating trends and developments that others react to only after the fact. I can't imagine not being a COMMENTARY subscriber. „
John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
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Is Cruz More Than Just Non-Trump?
Jonathan S. Tobin 2016-04-06
Donald Trump didn’t surface in the wake of his drubbing last night in Wisconsin. But last night and then this morning, Trump did send forth campaign aides to trash the man who beat him. The attacks, which attempted to depict Cruz as “worse than a puppet” and a “Trojan horse” being used by “the Bush people” to steal the nomination from Trump didn’t do much to lessen the sting of what turned out to be a landslide loss for the frontrunner. But this is more than just the usual bad loser routine for Trump. The irony here is that Trump’s new line of attack on Cruz shows us how far the Texas senator has come. He entered the presidential race as a niche candidate who seemed unable to appeal to voters outside of the Tea Party or evangelicals. But after his latest victory, the question is whether GOP voters are starting to think of Cruz as something more than just the lesser of evils as the leading non-Trump in the race. The outcome of the GOP contest will probably hinge on whether Cruz can transcend what we all assumed to be his limitations and give Trump a real run for his money in the remaining primaries.
Trump’s trashing of Cruz as a favorite of the dreaded GOP establishment is more than just an insult. It shows that he’s worried that mainstream and moderate Republicans may actually start coalescing around Cruz. If indeed that were to happen, Cruz would not only wind up stopping Trump from getting the majority of delegates he needs to wrap up the nomination before the Cleveland convention. Putting a dent in Trump’s expected dominance of the Northeastern state primaries would set him up for more victories in the West. It would also put Cruz in a position to arrive at a contested convention as the candidate around whom Trump opponents would coalesce.
But there are two key obstacles to such an outcome and neither have anything to do with the avalanche of Trump vitriol that will be directed at Cruz in the coming weeks.
The first problem for Cruz is John Kasich. The Ohio governor has been on the receiving end from a lot of flack lately from both Cruz and Trump because both see him as preventing a one-on-one confrontation that could settle the race once and for all. Kasich continues to point to general election polls that show him as the Republican left in the race that would do the best against Hillary Clinton. But he continues to flop in Republican primaries. Wisconsin was just his latest disappointment as he got a disappointing 14 percent there. Kasich hopes to do better in New York, Pennsylvania, and other Northeastern states, and he can make an argument that he is the most moderate as well as the most electable GOP candidate.
But Kasich has no path to the nomination except in a scenario in which a deadlocked convention turned to him. Stranger things have happened in American history, but it’s more likely that he will be a kingmaker than a king since he may be able to barter his delegates for the vice presidential slot with either Trump or Cruz. In a year in which we may have the first contested convention in a generation and the first multi-ballot contest since 1948, Kasich is another throwback in that he is, for all intents and purposes, a favorite son candidate from Ohio, the only state he has or is likely to win.
So long as Kasich stays in the race, he makes it difficult if not impossible for Cruz to consolidate moderate Republicans behind him. By running a competitive race in some New York congressional districts and in Pennsylvania he could wind up being the difference that allows Trump to win. Yet Kasich’s increasingly poor showings could make him more of an annoyance than an obstacle. Right now, he is still finishing fourth in a three-man race since he still has fewer delegates to his credit than Marco Rubio and will be hard pressed to win any more. Yet the question of whether he is a true obstacle or merely an increasingly irrelevant third wheel depends on Cruz.
That’s because the main obstacle to the senator becoming the kind of national candidate who can beat Trump in the remaining primaries and then win the nomination at the convention is named Ted Cruz.
Cruz is, after all, the man who entered GOP contest seemingly intent only on securing the votes of the most conservative voters, be they evangelicals or Tea Partiers. That made sense in a 17-person race, but it is a problem for Cruz as he attempts to persuade the most moderate Republicans that they should throw in with him rather than wasting votes on Kasich. Cruz’s crack about Trump representing “New York values” may have made sense when he was appealing to Christian conservatives in Iowa but, now that he is hoping to win voters in New York, it isn’t quite so clever.
Cruz has changed his tone since Iowa as we saw with his speech last night in Wisconsin in which he appeared to be channeling the trademark optimism of Marco Rubio if not Ronald Reagan. But Cruz is still the same man who led Republicans off the cliff to a government shutdown in 2013. That quality comes out every now and then in statements like his ill-advised comment about sending the police into Muslim communities in this country. A lot of Republicans also think he is only slightly more electable than Trump and may be reluctant to embrace him solely out of a desire to stop the frontrunner. That was reflected in Marco Rubio’s decision not to endorse Cruz, which was reportedly the result of the influence of his key donors and supporters.
Either or both of these factors could be enough to prevent Cruz from breaking out in the upcoming primaries. But there are another two reasons to believe he can beat Trump and become the nominee.
The first is Donald Trump. Trump has already shown us that he is either incapable or just unwilling to play the frontrunner and begin acting in a presidential manner. Had he been able to do so, the GOP race would probably have already been decided. With Cruz placing even more pressure on him, there is every reason to believe the Trump campaign will continue to implode. A couple of more bad weeks from Trump and/or more Trump temper tantrums won’t persuade the 30-40 percent of the GOP electorate that are his loyalists to abandon him. But it will make it impossible for him to get beyond that mark and ultimately doom his hopes.
The second is also Ted Cruz. For all of his liabilities and rigid ideological blinders, Cruz has also already shown us that he is not a man to be underestimated. Few thought he would get this far. He is a fighter and no fool. If Trump is calling him a puppet of the Bush machine that’s because he is genuinely afraid that Cruz is capable of persuading moderates that he is the best alternative to Trump. Exit polls from Wisconsin showed that he broke through among moderates for the first time while holding his own with conservatives. If he can continue to do that, it’s a formula for victories in a lot of states that are now assumed to tip to Trump.
We won’t know if Cruz is more than just a non-Trump until the next states vote. But against all the odds he now has a chance to start beating Trump in primaries that are not ultra-conservative strongholds. If he does, it would be foolish to think he has no chance to win the Republican nomination.
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Jonah Goldberg
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Charles Krauthammer
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William Kristol
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Victor Davis Hanson
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Mark Steyn
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John Bolton
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Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
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Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
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Yuval Levin
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
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The Trump Campaign’s Identity Crisis
Noah Rothman 2016-04-06
As the unsettled political earth shifts again under the nation’s feet, the latest iteration of the dominant conventional wisdom – that nothing Donald Trump could say or do would compel his core voters to reassess their support – is under threat. This is all rather jarring. The commentary class only recently, and under protest, accepted this unnerving truth despite the fact that it contradicted virtually every lesson gleaned from the study of decades of electoral politics. This disorienting state of affairs is, however, nothing compared to the befuddling behavior in which the Trump campaign is engaged. There are not merely “two different Donald Trumps,” as the celebrity candidate’s hapless surrogate Ben Carson famously said; there are two different Trump campaigns. Both exist simultaneously and in a state of conflict, with one continuously undermining the other.
On Monday, an “internal memo” intended for Trump campaign consumption only – wink! – found its way into the hands of reporters. In that document, the real estate mogul’s senior campaign advisor Barry Bennett admonished the press for indulging the idea that Trump had just endured his “worst week ever.” The Trump campaign had been dogged by stories about its mismanagement, its terrible organization, and its failure to secure the loyalty of the delegates it supposedly won at the polls. If the campaign was a mess, the candidate was worse. From appearing to criticize Heidi Cruz’s appearance to his own campaign manager having been arrested for an alleged physical attack on a young female reporter, the Trump campaign’s behavior resulted in hemorrhaging support from women voters. Without them, he would likely be unable to win the GOP nomination outright.
To combat this unwelcome narrative, Bennet noted that the reliably pro-Trump Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll reacted to the Trump campaign’s “worst week” by showing the reality television star’s lead over Ted Cruz expanding. The timing of this memo was inauspicious. Less than 48 hours later, the Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll revealed that Trump had lost his lead for the first time since September. Even according to their own metrics, the Trump campaign’s prospects were dimming.
Though it continued to act as though all was going according to plan, Team Trump has been behaving abnormally. Those members of the professional political class and media personalities invested in Trump’s success have for weeks been advising their candidate to display more presidential behavior. Trump has made it clear he has no intention of striking a sober and serious pose. He’s proudly declared, in fact, that “for just a while longer … I’ll be a little bit unpresidential.” Finally, it seems Trump’s advisors have convinced him to go on a maturity tour. Trump is reportedly preparing to deliver a set of scripted policy speeches focused on education, the military, and his judicial nominating philosophy.
On its face, this is a smart move for the Trump campaign. Never did the candidate receive so many accolades from his skeptics as he did after delivering a scripted speech to AIPAC conference attendees. As our own John Podhoretz noted, Donald Trump has lowered the bar for himself to such an extent that even displaying the ability to read a prepared text from a teleprompter compels some political analysts to coo over Trump’s “presidential” comportment. It is certainly true that another display of basic literacy may force some columnists to make their peace with Donald Trump as the likely Republican nominee. But that person — the rational, reassuring, policy wonk – is a fabrication. The real Donald Trump, who reveals himself in the candidate’s extemporaneous ramblings, refuses to be stifled. Candidates set the tone for their campaigns; not the other way around. The Trump campaign is a reflection of the reality of their candidate, and the reality is just nuts.
In a roundabout and paranoid declaration released to the press on Tuesday night, the Trump campaign set out to plumb new depths in a statement conceding their loss in Wisconsin to Cruz. It may be a tad generous to call this a “concession” statement because there was no concession involved. Instead, the Trump campaign penned a screed in which they directly and without any ambiguity accused the Cruz campaign of engaging in a criminal conspiracy consisting of their illegal coordination with an allied super PAC. Again, the standards for Trumpian discourse are so low that such a baseless accusation may dominate a news cycle or two, but it will soon be dismissed as just another example of the eccentric candidate’s trademark excess. “Ted Cruz is worse than a puppet – he is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump,” the statement read. Even beyond its gracelessness, this conspiratorial manifesto is utterly unconvincing – unless you are inclined to believe that the architect of the 2013 government shutdown is, in fact, a Manchurian candidate for the so-called “Republican Establishment.”
This — not the teleprompter-reading affectation on stage at AIPAC – is the real Donald Trump. This is a campaign that no number of consultants or polished Washingtonians with their eyes on the fantastical prospect of a Trump administration can mold into anything even remotely resembling “presidential” material. What’s more, Trump’s schizophrenic tactics come at a cost. Trump allies may not show it yet, but they’re quietly panicked. They know that a first ballot loss means that their man likely fails to win the nomination at the convention, and their candidate just can’t help himself but alienate potential converts to the cause. As for committed Trump voters, they are attracted to the celebrity’s trademark obstinacy and belligerence. They have no affinity for the man behind the teleprompter. What use to them is Donald Trump, the politician, when they came to see Donald Trump, the big top ringmaster?
While it is not quite yet “imploding,” the Trump campaign has hit a rocky patch. As Jonathan Tobin observed, their candidate is finally being held to account for the cascade of nonsense and insults that torrent out of his mouth on a daily basis. Their effort to shift gears is long overdue, but there is a reason for that. Their candidate is incapable of a change in tactics, and to attempt one is an uncomfortable fit. These last two weeks have been bewildering for the Trump campaign. It no longer seems to know what its identity is.
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Arthur Herman
“ There’s an enormous amount of shouting in the wild west of conservative media. That has its place, and is often a sign of the energy on the right. But amidst the cacophony there’s a special need for serious, considered, and compelling argument, presented in the hope of persuading, not just punishing. This is where COMMENTARY has always shined, perhaps more now than ever before. It aims to tackle the best arguments of its intellectual opponents, not just the easiest targets. It’s a journal I’ve read for nearly 30 years and I can’t think of a time when I’ve valued it more. „
Jonah Goldberg
“ For decades, COMMENTARY has opened its pages to the most serious uncompromising defense of the American creed—exemplar of ordered liberty at home, pillar of the free world abroad—in an era when it has been most under attack. From the exceptionally influential manifestoes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick to today's counterattack against the empowered advocates of the entitlement state and of American decline, COMMENTARY remains what it has been for more than a generation: fearless, informative, indispensable. „
Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
“ COMMENTARY has played an invaluable role in American political discourse for decades, offering thoughtful analysis on issues rather than sound bites or bumper stickers. Especially when it comes to U.S. foreign and defense policy, COMMENTARY has time and time again been ahead of the crowd, anticipating trends and developments that others react to only after the fact. I can't imagine not being a COMMENTARY subscriber. „
John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
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War of the Damaged Candidates!
John Podhoretz 2016-04-06In this week’s COMMENTARY MAGAZINE Podcast, we (Noah Rothman, Abe Greenwald, and I) examine the bizarre fact that all four of the leading candidates for the presidency are in problematic shape—Trump (Mr. High Negatives) and Clinton (Mrs. Lost Six In A Row) having been shellacked in Wisconsin by contenders who have significant weaknesses of their own. They say Clinton can’t lose, but on the other hand, she keeps losing. And now people say Trump can’t win, but does that mean Ted Cruz can win? Will the madness never end? Enjoy!
And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes.
Everyone worth reading avidly reads COMMENTARY. Can you afford not to?
“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
Arthur Herman
“ There’s an enormous amount of shouting in the wild west of conservative media. That has its place, and is often a sign of the energy on the right. But amidst the cacophony there’s a special need for serious, considered, and compelling argument, presented in the hope of persuading, not just punishing. This is where COMMENTARY has always shined, perhaps more now than ever before. It aims to tackle the best arguments of its intellectual opponents, not just the easiest targets. It’s a journal I’ve read for nearly 30 years and I can’t think of a time when I’ve valued it more. „
Jonah Goldberg
“ For decades, COMMENTARY has opened its pages to the most serious uncompromising defense of the American creed—exemplar of ordered liberty at home, pillar of the free world abroad—in an era when it has been most under attack. From the exceptionally influential manifestoes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick to today's counterattack against the empowered advocates of the entitlement state and of American decline, COMMENTARY remains what it has been for more than a generation: fearless, informative, indispensable. „
Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
“ COMMENTARY has played an invaluable role in American political discourse for decades, offering thoughtful analysis on issues rather than sound bites or bumper stickers. Especially when it comes to U.S. foreign and defense policy, COMMENTARY has time and time again been ahead of the crowd, anticipating trends and developments that others react to only after the fact. I can't imagine not being a COMMENTARY subscriber. „
John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
Never again miss another issue or article. Not a subscriber yet? Join the intellectual club, today.
Unlock the rest of this article and all other COMMENTARY articles, including our entire archive dating back to 1945, and featuring so many classic, epoch-defining articles by some of the very best minds of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Enjoy every new issue—either in print, on our responsive website, or on our beautiful, hand-crafted iPad edition, enriched with multimedia and other web-exclusive content.
Already a subscriber? Sign in to unlock this article.
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The Islamist Threat beyond ISIS
Max Boot 2016-04-06
This week, I traveled to Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, to take part in a student-organized international affairs symposium featuring a discussion on what happens next in the fight against ISIS. It’s a natural subject — and the students did a great job of organizing this event, now in its 54th year. I and other national security types spend a lot of our time these days opining on the future of ISIS. That also remains a leading topic in the media and the halls of power in Washington. In the process, however, I fear that we are losing sight of the big picture.
Don’t get me wrong. ISIS is important. It is the number one terrorist group in the world, and it is an immediate threat to the U.S. and our allies. It needs to be defeated, and we need to be doing more than we are the moment to destroy its self-proclaimed caliphate. We should send more military forces to Iraq and loosen those forces’ rules of engagement. But beating ISIS is not the be-all and end-all of U.S. foreign policy.
Just think: Three years ago, before the fall of Mosul and Ramadi, hardly anyone was talking about ISIS. Even as recently as two years ago, President Obama was dismissing ISIS as the “JV” team — meaning that he did not regard it as a threat on the same order as al-Qaeda, the terrorist group we had been obsessed with (for understandable reasons) since 2001. Even as Obama was uttering those ill-advised words in early 2015, ISIS was usurping al-Qaeda’s position as the most feared terrorist group on the planet.
But just as there was nothing foreordained about al-Qaeda remaining as the top terrorist group, there is nothing inevitable about ISIS staying on top either. I’m not suggesting that ISIS is about to disappear anytime soon. Even though it has been pushed out of Ramadi and Palmyra, it retains control of a quasi-state stretching from Raqqa to Mosul, and it is expanding abroad, most notably in Libya.
But even with the rise of ISIS, other Sunni terrorist groups have hardly disappeared. Groups such as the al-Nusra Front (Syria), al-Shabaab (Somalia), Boko Haram (Nigeria), al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Libya, Algeria), the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and many others remains active, as well. They are being temporarily eclipsed by the rise of ISIS, but one of them — or an entirely new group — could easily arise to grab more attention if ISIS goes into eclipse.
And let’s not forget that there is also a whole universe of Iranian-backed Shiite militant groups that are, in some ways, even more threatening. Groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Alawite militias in Syria, the Badr Brigades, Khataib Hezbollah, the Popular Mobilization Forces, the Houthis in Yemen, and so on. Iran even has links with the Kurdish PKK group in Turkey and its Syrian offshoots. All are directed and organized by the Iranian Quds Force, and they are becoming more powerful than ever, thanks to the influx of funds and weapons that Iran is receiving as a result of the nuclear deal.
To the extent that ISIS is losing territory in Iraq and Syria, it is at the expense, for the most part, of the Iranian proxies. Palmyra, after all, was recently taken by Bashar Assad’s forces with help from the Russian air force and special forces, as well as an international Shiite jihadist contingent organized by Iran. In Iraq, while Ramadi fell to the Iraqi army, the pullback of ISIS has allowed the advance of Iranian-backed militias into areas such as Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, where they are waging an ethnic cleansing campaign against Sunnis.
Indeed, President Obama’s strategy to fight ISIS seems to be premised on tacit cooperation with Iran. In northern Syria, for example, we are providing air support and Special Forces to help the Iranian-backed YPG Kurdish militia. In Iraq, we have bombed in support of Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces.
As I have argued in the past, that’s a bad bet. It’s premised on the false notion that ISIS is the one and only threat that we face. The reality is that Iran’s revolutionary regime is still dedicated to “Death to America,” and allowing its forces to establish a new Persian Empire sprawling from Tehran to Beirut represents a major blow for American interests. Iran, unlike ISIS, has a nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and a lot of other high-end military capabilities — and it is going to buy a lot more weapons with the proceeds from the nuclear deal. Our security is not served if Iran advances at the expense of ISIS.
As long as Iran continues to engage in this power grab, Sunnis in the affected countries will continue to push back. ISIS has been, in some ways, a Sunni vehicle for resistance to Iranian domination. If ISIS is defeated, another terrorist group, such as al-Nusra, could easily step forward into the vacuum — unless the U.S. and its allies can establish more durable political arrangements that protect the rights of all of the major groups on the ground, including Shiites, Sunnis, Alawites, Kurds, and Turkmen.
It is a major defect of American foreign policy that we seem able to focus on only one threat at a time. Thus, during World War II we were so focused on beating the Nazis and Japanese that we gave insufficient attention to how to prevent the Soviet Union and its proxies from filling the power vacuum left behind by the retreat of the Axis. The result was communist domination of Eastern Europe, China, North Vietnam, and North Korea — and fresh wars that claimed tens of thousands of American lives. I fear that we are repeating that mistake now by being overly focused on ISIS while paying insufficient attention to other threats, from both Sunni and Shiite jihadist groups.
While I’m happy to talk about ISIS (a subject that I also spent a lot of time writing about), I would be happier still if there was more focus on the threat from Islamist militant groups more broadly. ISIS is just one brand name for a deeper, underlying threat that has been of growing importance ever since 1979 and will continue to bedevil us long after the Islamic State lies in ruins.
Everyone worth reading avidly reads COMMENTARY. Can you afford not to?
“ In 1975 the Economist said of COMMENTARY: “The world's best magazine?” Take away the question mark and that statement still stands, thirty-eight years later. It's still the magazine America's liberals dread most, and the one America's enemies can't afford to ignore. It's the point of the conservative spear in the never-ending fight against the insanity of the left, whether it's in foreign policy or economic policy, social and cultural issues, or the arts—and no one does a better job standing up for Western culture and America's interests and those of its allies, including Israel. In fact, surviving the next three years—the Obama administration home stretch—and building the foundations for an American resurgence afterward will be impossible without reading COMMENTARY in print and online. „
Arthur Herman
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Jonah Goldberg
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Charles Krauthammer
“ COMMENTARY isn’t just an important magazine. It’s an indispensable one. It’s been indispensable for half a century, and it is today. It’s indispensable for understanding the moment we live in, and it’s indispensable for laying out a path forward. The challenges we confront are great, but COMMENTARY is used to facing grave challenges without fearful cowering or wishful thinking. So we need COMMENTARY today as much as we ever have, and we need it to be as strong as it’s ever been. „
William Kristol
“ COMMENTARY’s writing is predictably engaging and edgy, but its content is anything but homogeneous. Center-right perspectives characterize contributions, but not predictably so. Jewish affairs are thematic, but not always. Controversies of the day are the usual subjects, yet offered only with reflection well apart from the frenzied 24/7 news cycle. Intellectual honesty and analytical rigor characterize COMMENTARY and that is why even its political critics concede that they are still enlightened by the very arguments they often oppose. „
Victor Davis Hanson
“ COMMENTARY is an indispensable read on the Arab Spring, the Afghan war, the future of American conservatism, and all the other crazy stuff out there. But you already knew that. What I really love about it is that it’s a full-service operation, and its back-of-the-book guys—the fellows who write about music, literature, and all the things that make life worth living as the world goes to hell—are the best in the business. There is an observation in a Terry Teachout piece on the wonderful singer Nancy LaMott about “Moon River” that has stayed with me for almost two decades. I fished it out from the back of my mind to impress a gal at a Goldwater Institute reception only the other day, and it worked a treat. So thank you, COMMENTARY! Likewise, my differences with the arts’n’culture crew unsettle me far more than the geopolitical ones: reasonable people can disagree on how large a nuclear arsenal those wacky mullahs should be permitted to own, but I’m still agog at the great Andrew Ferguson’s mystifying praise for the New York Times obituaries page a couple of issues back. That’s COMMENTARY for you—provocative to the end, on matters large and small. In these turbulent and dismaying times, we can all use a huckleberry friend waiting round the bend, in the mailbox each month and on the computer screen every morning. For any journal of opinion, as “Moon River” teaches us, there’s such a lot of world to see. COMMENTARY sees most of it with piercing clarity: it can’t know all the answers, but it asks all the right questions, and with great farsightedness. It deserves your wholehearted support. „
Mark Steyn
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John Bolton
“ In the midst of today’s political rancor, COMMENTARY Magazine provides a rare venue for thoughtful discussion. COMMENTARY’s talented writers provide insightful analysis of foreign affairs, domestic policy, and the politics of the day. COMMENTARY is a treasure not only for conservatives, but for anyone looking for in-depth exploration of the issues that influence America’s public dialogue and shape the nation’s future. „
Karl Rove
“ It's notorious, and true, that government officials hardly read anything. Memos, sure; nowadays, emails and tweets as well. But magazines? People barely have time to eat lunch or see their kids, so how can an intellectual monthly affect public affairs? The question is a good one. How did COMMENTARY do it? The answer is that officials, like all citizens following American foreign policy, need a way to understand the world around them. When prevailing theories fail, when conventional wisdom is clearly at variance with what they see before their eyes, the outcome for senators and congressmen and White House officials is what the shrinks call cognitive dissonance. They may say one thing but believe another, or simply be unable to square previous beliefs and policies with the clear effects of U.S. conduct. They've lost the ability to explain the world. And then came COMMENTARY, offering month after month of piercing, bracing analysis—and value judgments of right and wrong, and clear writing about American gains and losses. Here was an insistence on looking reality in the face. Here was plain argument, seeking no quarter intellectually and giving none. And it mattered. It shamed some people, and emboldened others; COMMENTARY demanded that we conform policy to the opportunities and dangers that really faced America. In years of confusion and obfuscation, that striking clarity changed policies, and changed American conduct, because it changed the way we understood the world. „
Elliott Abrams
“ For more than 60 years, COMMENTARY has been a go-to source on matters of the greatest importance to our nation and our civilization. Today, its full-throated defense of the United States and freedom is as eloquent as it was a half-century ago, and no less urgent. Issues of the day will change, news cycles come and go, but COMMENTARY remains an indispensable authority in the battle of ideas that help to shape our world. Its continued success is both an indication, and source, of the country’s intellectual health. „
Donald Rumsfeld
“ COMMENTARY is America's most important monthly journal of ideas, period. For nearly seven decades it has published the best and most exciting writing from the most important thinkers: Saul Bellow and Lionel Trilling; Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick; Paul Johnson and Ruth Wisse; Cynthia Ozick and—of course—Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Is there anything remotely like it? No. It is the lamp by which America, and Israel, and the Jewish people, may find their way to safety. I'm proud to be published in its pages. „
Bret Stephens
“ Irving Kristol once called COMMENTARY the most influential magazine in Jewish history. Certainly, no publication had a greater influence on me as I evolved from adolescent reader (arguing over its articles with my father and older brother) into a “frequent contributor” who made it my intellectual home. The magazine did not exploit American freedom to escape from civilizing duty but rather activated the intertwined responsibilities of citizens and members of a group. American Jewry can boast of many contributions to the welfare of this country and the Jewish people, but few as fortifying as COMMENTARY. „
Ruth R. Wisse
“ Edward Shils noted that there are four means of education in the modern world: the classroom, bookstores (especially used-bookstores), the conversation of intelligent friends, and intellectual magazines. For me intellectual magazines were more important than any of the other three, and no magazine among them more so than COMMENTARY. I first happened on COMMENTARY as a student browsing in the University of Chicago Bookstore in 1957. I have not missed an issue since. The magazine spoke to my intellectual interests and passions, and still does. As a reader and as a writer, I should be lost without it. „
Joseph Epstein
“ Why does COMMENTARY matter? Since 1945, no other monthly magazine has so consistently published serious, provocative argument and analysis. No other monthly magazine has viewed America and the world through such a wide angle, encompassing economics, politics, society, culture, religion, and diplomacy. No other monthly magazine has published such a celebrated and wide-ranging list of editors and contributors. Cerebral, critical, and committed, the point of view found in its pages is as unique as it is formidable. And in a world of Iranian nukes, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, American disarmament, bipartisan neo-isolationism, and disintegrating institutions, reading COMMENTARY is more than a pleasure. It is a necessity. „
Matthew Continetti
“ COMMENTARY has long been an unmissable landmark on the American intellectual landscape. These days it shapes debate, propels argument, and explains society with renewed vigor and force. It is one of the small group of essential reads for anybody engaged in politics, Judaism, foreign policy, national manners, and morals. „
David Brooks
“ Anyone looking for a definitive exposition of a significant historical moment—whether UC Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, say, or the battles over "general education" at Harvard—has at his fingertips an inestimable gift: COMMENTARY's archives, which contain countless gems of reporting and analysis. Today's generation of COMMENTARY writers is building an equally invaluable store of knowledge for future researchers and scholars. „
Heather Mac Donald
“ I first subscribed to COMMENTARY in 1973, as a recovering liberal who had invested four years of my young life in writing speeches for a constellation of McGovernite candidates and office-holders. Living in Berkeley at the time, I relished COMMENTARY as a guilty pleasure, feeling grateful that the magazine arrived each month discreetly disguised in a plain, brown wrapper that concealed its suspiciously neo-conservative content. In the militantly leftist community in which I functioned forty years ago, receiving regular monthly installments of the most degrading porn would have produced far less embarrassment than my growing devotion to the persuasive prose of Norman Podhoretz and Co. Yes, my personal journey from left to right-center involved the usual biographical factors, including the three P’s: paychecks, parenthood, and prayer. Paychecks, because they arrived with shocking subtractions in the form of onerous and incomprehensible taxes; parenthood, because responsibility for a new generation forced a longer-term perspective; and prayer, because my own growing Jewish observance led to the conclusion that my “idealistic” ’60s generation, with all its narcissism and preening self-regard, might not provide life’s ultimate answers after all. Fortunately for me, reading COMMENTARY with near-religious regularity helped to organize my onrushing insights and experience into a more coherent world view. In a dark time in our nation’s history, while surviving (temporarily) in the most unhinged corner of the continent, this incomparable publication persuaded me that I wasn’t alone. „
Michael Medved
“ Just as one begins to despair of hearing the strong voice of sanity and courage, leavened with charm and good humor, in our modern polity, COMMENTARY arrives, and once a month one can be reminded that there are indeed some clear-sighted and articulate people who seem actively to enjoy the battle for truth. „
Andrew Roberts
“ Every month in print, and every day online, COMMENTARY somehow manages to pull off a dazzling balancing act: intellectual but unpretentious, serious but never boring, timely but not fleeting. On the leading questions of the day, it offers fresh and unfamiliar insights. And on the emerging questions that will dominate the years to come, it often sees things first and clearest. It is simply indispensable. „
Yuval Levin
“ In a time of passion, COMMENTARY champions reason. Against lies, COMMENTARY speaks for truth. Confronting those who would doom to death the Jewish people, COMMENTARY is a magnificent continuing achievement of American Jewish life. „
David Frum
“ COMMENTARY has become my new go-to website for news analysis because it is measured, substantive, thoughtful, and written for news consumers of all shapes and sizes. When juggling all the issues of the day and thinking them through, I find myself going back to COMMENTARY again and again to see if there’s anything more that can help me add the ingredients needed to finalize an argument. I like the mix of foreign policy and national political news, as well as the discussions about America’s place in the world and what it should be. I’m a print subscriber and a frequent website visitor, and I follow all of the writers on Twitter. Thank you, COMMENTARY, for providing such consistently helpful content. „
Dana Perino
“ There is more commentary in the world than ever before—whether in print, on the air, or on the Internet. But there is still a dearth of serious, informed commentary that reports, analyzes, and argues without ever stooping to name-calling or vitriol. If you further narrow down the segment of the commentariat that looks at the world from a conservative and Jewish perspective—well, you’re left with only one choice. The magazine you are now reading. COMMENTARY has changed over the years—for instance, it now publishes this blog—but one thing that has not changed is its steadfast commitment to providing the best analysis from the most informed writers of the most important ideas in the world, all written in clear prose that appeals to a general audience. There is nothing else like it. Never has been, never will be. „
Max Boot
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