Bush, Sharon, Podhoretz, his daughter, and me. I've rarely, if ever, found such as strong echo of my feelings and views about an issue as in this long essay about Sharon, and Bush, and the Gaza withdrawal plan.

Difficult to summarise, and not easy to select quotes from, it is a fascinating meander through one of this century's great foundational dilemmas. Podhoretz thinks that in the end it might come down to a question of faith, but then again, his discourse is one where reasoning, wrestling one might even say, abounds.

It's the travail of a principled thinker and writer.

Podhoretz defends his faith in Bush, whose motives and Sharon's form a kind of nexus out of which Podhoretz believes that security, and eventually peace, ought to come. Explaining his faith in Bush he refers to the kind of historical disappointment only a man of maturer years can have felt:

'I had expected Moynihan [Patrick Moynihan, hero of the Democrat right in the 70's, apparently] to persist in the battle we had all been waging against the steadily leftward drift of the Democratic party. But when he broke our hearts by joining in that drift himself, I resolved that from then on I would abide by the words of the Psalmist: “Put not your trust in princes.”
...

[of his misplaced trust] Is it now flying out again in relation to George W. Bush? I cannot in all honesty dismiss the possibility. And yet neither can I dismiss the possibility that this is one prince who, on the basis of repeated demonstration, deserves to be trusted.'

Here I think is where Podhoretz can rest easy, and on that rest can found his confidence, 'cause Bush ain't no Prince. Terrific article; took a long time to read.