Boy, is that ever true, Jonah. And I hope our friends at Commentary make available again Norman Podhoretz’s September 2004 trailblazer on this subject, “World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win” — very timely since Norman brilliantly explains Hezbollah’s crucial role, going back decades.

In part it’s because the Cold War analogy is so perfect that I am dismayed. Leaving the anti-anti-Communists, there was really no national ambivalence about inquiring into Communist doctrine on the scale that we have today regarding the enemy’s belief system. There wasn’t hysteria at the mere suggestion that Marxism could (indeed, would inevitably) lead to Stalinism. The McCarran Act (which Jim Woolsey has recently reminded us of) enjoyed such popular support in 1950 that Congress overrode Truman’s veto to pass it. When Reagan called the Soviets the “Evil Empire” in the 80s, there was tut-tutting in the mainstream media and the hard left, but he was giving voice to a sentiment the country shared.

My sense has always been that this “us versus them” mentality, in which people were happy to be part of “us” and didn’t hesitate to acknowledge there was a “them” that was truly dangerous, was key to the perseverence that was so essential to winning the Cold War. I don’t see it today. Of course we despise and clearly divide ourselves from the ACTIONS of the jihadists. But we are remarkably uncurious about what they believe and why. And we want no part any inquiry into the Islamo part of Islamo-fascism. I wonder how you win an ideological, Cold War-type, epic struggle that way.