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Norman B. Podhoretz (born January 16, 1930) is an American neoconservative pundit and writer for Commentary magazine.
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The son of Julius and Helen (Woliner) Podhoretz, Jewish immigrants from the Central European region of Galicia, Podhoretz was born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Podhoretz's family was leftist, with his elder sister joining a Socialist youth movement.
Podhoretz received Bachelor's Degrees from both Columbia University — where he studied under Lionel Trilling — and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He later received a BA with first-class honors and an MA from the University of Cambridge. He also served in the United States Army (1953–1955) where he worked for the U.S. Army Security Agency.
Podhoretz served as Commentary magazine's Editor-in-Chief from 1960 (when he replaced Elliot E. Cohen) until his retirement in 1995. Podhoretz remains Commentary's Editor-at-Large. In 1963, he wrote the influential essay, “My Negro Problem — And Ours," in which he described the oppression he felt from African-Americans as a child, and concluded by calling for a color-blind society, and advocated "the wholesale merging of the two races [as] the most desirable alternative for everyone concerned."
From 1981 to 1987, Podhoretz was an adviser to the U.S. Information Agency. From 1995 to 2003, he was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2004. The award recognized Podhoretz's intellectual contributions as editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine and as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Podhoretz is married to author Midge Decter, and is the stepfather of Rachel Abrams (née Decter, Elliott Abrams' wife) and father of syndicated columnist and current Commentary editor-in-chief John Podhoretz.
Norman Podhoretz was one of the original signatories of the "Statement of Principles" of the Project for the New American Century.
Podhoretz received the Guardian of Zion Award from Bar-Ilan University on May 24, 2007.
He served as a senior foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani in his 2008 presidential campaign. The same year, he publicly advocated an American attack on Iran.
Podhoretz's 2009 book Why Are Jews Liberals? questions why American Jews for decades have been dependable Democrats, often supporting the party by margins of better than two-to-one, even in years of Republican landslides.
Podhoretz has downplayed the importance of American history to his political beliefs. When Gore Vidal was writing his play On the March to the Sea, based on General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea during the U.S. Civil War, Podhoretz asked him:
"Why are you writing a play about, of all things, the Civil War?" When Vidal explained that this was/is "the great, single tragic event that gives resonance to our Republic" Podhoretz replied, "To me, the Civil War is as remote and irrelevant as the War of the Roses."
In the leadup to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Podhoretz argued strongly for military intervention, claiming that Saddam Hussein posed a direct threat to the United States. After the 9/11 attack and more than a year before the start of the War in Iraq, Podhoretz wrote in February 2002 that "There is no doubt that Saddam already possesses large stores of chemical and biological weapons, and may ... be 'on the precipice of nuclear power.' ... Some urge that we ... concentrate on easier targets first. Others contend that the longer we wait, the more dangerous Saddam will grow. Yet whether or not Iraq becomes the second front in the war against terrorism, one thing is certain: there can be no victory in this war if it ends with Saddam Hussein still in power."
In 2007, Podhoretz argued that the United States should attack Iranian nuclear facilities. According to The Sunday Times, Podhoretz believes that "Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are merely different fronts of the same long war." Podhoretz describes diplomatic efforts with Iran as similar to appeasement of Nazi Germany prior to World War II. He also contends that the War on Terror is a war against Islamofascism, and constitutes World War IV (World War III having been the Cold War), and advocates the bombing of Iran to preempt Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons. His book on that subject, entitled World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, was published by Doubleday on September 11, 2007.
In a more recent article, Podhoretz explicitly stated his view that Iran should be attacked: "In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force." He then went on to consider the consequences of bombing Iran:
In an editorial to the Wall Street Journal on the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Podhoretz contends that the retreat from Iraq should not be similar to the retreat from Vietnam. He argues that when the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam, it sacrificed its national honor.
In 1982, James Fallows wrote a review of Podhoretz's book, Why We Were in Vietnam, for the New York Times, in which he accuses Podhoretz of "changing his views" and "self-righteousness" on the subject of Vietnam, noting that in 1971 Podhoretz wrote that he would "prefer just such an American defeat to a 'Vietnamization' of the war."
A larger quote from Why We Were in Vietnam which was included in the review is as follows:
In the early 1980s, Podhoretz was extremely sceptical that fundamental reform was possible in the USSR, and sharply criticized those who argued that U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union should be one of détente. In his 1980 book The Present Danger, Podhoretz predicted that the United States was in danger of losing the Cold War and falling behind the Soviet Union as a global power. Later he would express anger with President Ronald Reagan for "not establishing sufficiently strong policies toward the Soviets."
Podhoretz has praised Bush, saying "George W. Bush (is) a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it." He goes on to claim that Bush has been "battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other [president] in living memory."
In a Wall Street Journal editorial titled "In Defense of Sarah Palin," Podhoretz wrote, "I hereby declare that I would rather be ruled by the Tea Party than by the Democratic Party, and I would rather have Sarah Palin sitting in the Oval Office than Barack Obama.
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