Firebell in the night.(An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror)(Book Review)

An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, by David Frum and Richard Perle (Random House, 304 pp., $25.95)

THIS is a very solid introduction to serious thinking about the War on Terror and the scale of the threat to the United States. In one slender volume, Frum and Perle have outlined an analysis of the danger, a proposed strategy for victory, and a call for the dramatic transformation of many of the key institutions of national security. In judging how out of touch with reality the Democratic front-runners are, one need only read An End to Evil: There is more serious analysis and sound strategy in this book than in the policy positions of all the Democratic presidential campaigns combined.

Frum and Perle warn that "now comes the hardest test of all. The war on terror is not over. In many ways, it has barely begun." In contrast to Gen. Wesley Clark's ridiculous promise that if he is elected there will be no terrorist attacks, they admit that "defeats may well occur, for they too are part of war, and we shudder to think how some of our leaders in their current mood will respond." They speak some highly cautionary words: "We can feel the will to win ebbing in Washington; we sense the reversion to the bad old habits of complacency and denial." Watching the Democratic presidential debates, one feels that Frum and Perle are optimists: There is a substantial and noisy minority that would have the Eagle replaced with the Ostrich as the symbol of American character.

The ostrich-like nature of the isolationist Left is captured in this book's description of our enemies and their deadly serious intent to destroy our society:

 
   There is nothing new about terrorism. 
   What is new since 9/11 is the chilling realization 
   that the terrorist threat we thought 
   we had contained within tolerable boundaries 
   was not contained at all, menacing 
   our well-being as a people, even our survival 
   as a nation. This realization stems, 
   first, from the scale of 9/11, and beyond 
   that, from the apocalyptic vision of the terrorists 
   themselves.... The terrorists kill 
   and will accept death for a cause with 
   which no accommodation is possible. 

These few lines capture the heart of the first great foreign-policy debate of 2004, and it's not just a debate with Howard Dean and the isolationist Left. When General Clark--a putative centrist--asserts that "nothing is going to hurt this country--not bioweapons, not a nuclear weapon, not a terrorist strike--there is nothing that can hurt us if we stay united and move together and have a vision for moving to the future the right way," he is describing a view that is totally incompatible with the Frum-Perle thesis.

In fact, biological weapons are the greatest threat we face, a threat requiring new defense measures. An engineered virus (flu maybe even more than smallpox) or a well-designed anthrax attack could kill so many Americans--and spread such panic--that the impact on our society would be devastating. And the number of nuclear weapons that terrorists might acquire is far greater than most people realize, because there are more than ample supplies of nuclear material stored in research facilities and in power plants. Clark's assurances that Americans don't need to worry about these weapons as long as we are united is as misleading and dangerous as were Henry Wallace's promises in 1948 that Stalin and the Soviet Union were simply misunderstood by the Truman administration. The fact that Clark is a West Point graduate and retired four-star general makes his factually false reassurances vastly more damaging to American security than anything Howard Dean could say.