When Kissinger Met the Bloggers - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog

 

February 12, 2008,  3:28 pm

When Kissinger Met the Bloggers

By Jennifer 8. Lee

It was a bit like the great-grandson having a party for the patriarch. On Monday night, the six-year-old conservative blog Power Line gathered a group of luminaries — including Henry A. Kissinger, William Kristol and Paul D. Wolfowitz (with his companion, Shaha Ali Riza, in tow) — to honor Norman Podhoretz with a book award.

It was the kind of crowd that applauds when a speaker calls for military action against Iran. Some other highlights: There were calls to fight “Islamofascism” and praise for John McCain’s stance on the Iraq war. Mr. Podhoretz predicted that George W. Bush’s presidency would one day be held in the same high esteem as Harry S. Truman’s. Mr. Kissinger, perhaps in deference to his hosts, discussed digital media for a bit but admitted he didn’t know what a blog was.

Power Line is a blog that drew national attention for helping to hasten the departure of Dan Rather from “CBS Evening News” in the debate over the authenticity of documents over President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. The award, for Mr. Podhoretz’s “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” was $25,000 — more money than the National Book Critics Circle Award or the Pulitzer, the bloggers noted.

Mr. Podhoretz, a former editor-in-chief of Commentary and a founder of the neoconservative movement, said he would donate the money to Soldier’s Angels, a nonprofit group that helps members of the military. (Where does a blog get money like that, City Room wondered. The answer: From an anonymous donor, where else?)

With the attendance of contributors and editors from National Review, The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the dinner was a merging of the old and new conservative media establishment — perhaps too new for some people’s metabolism. (We should note that at least one blog — Gateway Pundit – live-blogged from the event.)

As Mr. Kissinger said in his remarks: “I don’t know what a blog is. I don’t know how to find a blog.” His computer, he said, is used to read newspapers. (Though the blog/newspaper line is becoming more blurred over time, City Room notes. The most e-mailed list of The Times often includes items from the newspaper and its blogs.)

Mr. Kissinger said he was skeptical about the digitalization of media, for if his words and sentences “get shortened for cyberspace, there is no telling what will come out.” (Though, City Room points out, traditional forms of journalism are not immune from misinterpretations of Mr. Kissinger’s remarks, either.)

The world is undergoing three types of transformation, Mr. Kissinger argued: the collapse of the state system, the shift of the global center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and an emerging set of problems that can only be dealt with on a global basis. And he largely agreed with Mr. Podhoretz’s assertion that the most important global conflict, which was once the cold war, is now the struggle against terrorism by Islamic radicals.

“This is a war against radical Islam that has to be won,” said Mr. Kissinger, who was national security adviser and then secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations, from 1969 to 1977.

The country cannot try to escape the battle with Islam by withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, he said, for such a withdrawal would have “not just long-term consequences, but immediate consequences.”

(Mr. Kissinger noted that he had been asked to limit his remarks about Mr. Podhoretz to 10 minutes. “If I do, you can all say you were present at a historical event,” he said. Indeed he made the cutoff.)

Upon accepting the award, Mr. Podhoretz expanded on the themes of his book, about the need to take an aggressive military stance around the world to counter what he and other conservatives call Islamofascism, and particularly the government of Iran. He also said the United States should “stop defining torture down” to the point that meaningful interrogation of terrorism suspects becomes useless.

The audience was made up of, as one attendee put it, the kind of people who would be rounded up by the fiscal conservatives and social conservatives and told, “Look where your war got us,” should the Democrats win the White House in November. Or, in other words, it was a crowd who literally applauded at talk of military action against Iran, despite the recent intelligence assessment that says Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. (A typical comment by Mr. Podhoretz in answer to an audience question: “If we let Iran get the bomb, people will look back and say, how did they let this happen?”)

While the event was billed as the presentation of the “first annual” Power Line book award, John H. Hinderaker, one of the Power Line bloggers, said it was uncertain how the award would look in the future, who would present it, where the prize money would come from — and even if there would ever be another. This one came together mainly because the anonymous donor wanted to honor Mr. Podhoretz’s “World War IV,” Mr. Hinderaker said.

These award categories come and go, he said. “We were Time’s blog of the year for 2004,” he recalled. “There has never been another one.”

When Kissinger Met the Bloggers - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog