His Toughness Problem—and Ours, By Ian Buruma

On Norman Podhoretz -- neocon fanatic extraordinaire and Giuliani foreign policy adviser -- and his newly minted, 9/11-released screed.

It does seem silly that we all have to suffer because Poddy's weak masculinity was so terribly threatened by his own bookish predisposition and various (to him) more manly specimens of the dusky variety.

Could it be that Poddy lusts after our darker brethren? Given his and his wife's diatribes against homosexuals, well...you do the math.

I really would rather Poddy come out and join the limp-wristed legions of those men who like to fool around with other men from time to time (you know, big-time shrinking lilies like Alexander and Caesar), get himself a big, handsome, brown-eyed Arab man, and retire from the scene.

In any event, see Joseph Heller's classic, Good as Gold, for more insight into this particular psychological illness -- neoconservatism in self-doubting Jews, not homosexuality, which (gasp!) isn't an illness.

In fact, the most dangerous creature on earth is the human male (of whatever ethnicity, etc.) who is beset by crushing insecurities about his masculinity, with or without some kind of homosexual panic thrown in. Viz., Bush, and any number of faux-tough-guys who scream for blood from their living room couches. Here and around the world.

Ah, I see Saint Rudy has Daniel Pipes on board, too. Oh, goody. Look what this fascist suggests -- collective punishment, Lidice-style:

In a Jerusalem Post piece six years ago, “Preventing war: Israel’s options,” I called for shutting off utilities to the Palestinian Authority as well as a host of other measures, such as permitting no transportation in the PA of people or goods beyond basic necessities, implementing the death penalty against murderers, and razing villages from which attacks are launched. Then and now, such responses have two benefits: First, they send a strong deterrent signal “Hit us and we will hit you back much harder” thereby reducing the number of attacks in the short term. Second, they impress Palestinians with the Israeli will to survive, and so bring closer their eventual acceptance of the Jewish state.

Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Giuliani suggests that the US bring Israel into NATO, and that any attack -- conventional included -- by Iran, Hezbollah, or, I guess, anybody a President Giuliani deems is connected in any way to Iran, would be met with a "cataclysmic" response from NATO.