Not really ... not even close. But I'm running out of clever titles.

The following is from Axis of Logic, a cute play on Axis of Evil:

Some people look at the situation in Iraq and profess to believe that things are going just fine. But they are looking through a retro-lens; when they see Iraq, they see a different war altogether. And it's hard to win a war in the present day if you're lost in the fog of the last fight.

Exhibit A: in this gallery of non-Clausewitzians is Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. He is widely regarded as the leading strategist among the neoconservative clique that dominates Bush administration policymaking. Don't worry, this article is not going to be a rant about weapons of mass destruction, or lack thereof. Similarly, others can ponder the accuracy of Wolfowitz's predictions that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq. Instead, we will focus on one specific argument he made, in which he drew a specious parallel from 60 years ago.

So what does Wolfowitz think about the current warring in Najaf? He thinks that it's like World War Two--that armed Shi'i are like armed Nazis. In testimony to Congress on August 10, he asserted that "radical Islamic extremists . . . remind you of the notorious Nazi groups like the SS that proudly wore the death's head as their symbol."

The notion that Muslims, both Saddamist seculars and Bin Ladenist believers, are like Nazis or fascists is popular in neocon circles, in part because it tends to throw opponents of neocon policies-including the war in Iraq-on the defensive. This polemical tactic, sometimes called "Reductio ad Hitlerum," may be effective in politics, as the argument can be squeezed into the pages of thin magazines, or even talk radio. But "effective" is not the same as "true," or even "useful." As George Orwell--who knew something about lies, big and small-once wrote, sometimes words fall upon facts like snow, blurring their outlines and covering up all the details. Today, as America attempts to make sense of Iraq, it doesn't help that the facts on the ground over there are buried under a blizzard of hackneyed clichés: Saddam-as-Hitler/Muslims-as-Nazis, etc.

It's ironic that the author tries to flay Wolfowitz with the reductio ad hitlerum, failing to note that Wolfowitz is most often flayed for being a Straussian, and that Strauss coined the phrase reduction ad hitlerum in Natural Right and History.

The phrase does not refer to comparing the actions of militants to that of National Socialists, but rather to refuting a position by the argument that Hitler shared that position. Strauss was criticizing the illogical rhetorical game of attacking ideas on the basis of who else might share them. (The Axis has a ways to go on the Logic front.)

What the author is actually talking about is a kind of ad hominem attack, and this abuse of Nazi comparisons has been treated better here.

Not only is the the comparison of militant muslims with National Socialists not an instance of the reductio ad hitlerum, it is not invalid. The fundamental issue for the proponents of National Socialism was race, or nation (in the truest sense of nation), which the militants share.

The characterization of Wolfowitz as non-Clausewitzian is puzzling and I wonder whether the author even knows what the term means. Then again, it's a very shadowy subject, and one would be hard pressed to find ten people who agree about what Clausewitzian (i.e. trinitarian) war properly is, or how the term non-Clausewitzian is generally used.

As in this recent CIA article, America has been described as non-Clausewitzian because it is a nation unaccustomed to war without end or clear victory. This view would seem to explain the root cause of unrest over Vietnam, as well as the use of Vietnam as a paradigm by those who oppose U.S. involvement in any modern military conflict.

The non-Clausewitzians today are actually those people who oppose our involvement in Iraq because they are 'not accustomed to the concept of a war that is necessary and waged with good reason but offers no prospect of ending with a clear peace and especially a clear victory.'

The author of this article, then, in addition to unwittingly misquoting Leo Strauss, is non-Clausewitzian. The argument is really about the fact that people are still dying in Iraq, and there must be some other solution. I wonder what else Wolfowitz had to say in the article cited on Axis of Logic:

The 9/11 Commission report, Wolfowitz told committee members, noted that radical Islamic fundamentalists possess an intolerant, non-negotiable ideology and world view that has no regard for human rights or the rule of law.

Global terrorism is another manmade evil "that needs to be eradicated and discarded," Wolfowitz said, "just as piracy and the slave trade were de- legitimized and driven to the margins of civilized life in the past."

Terrorists' extremist ideology, he said, must be "replaced by a hopeful vision of freedom."

That bastard!

Personally, I'd rather see us just come to understand how it's all our fault, and apologize to the terrorists for wanting to live.

And then we'll all sing and laugh under the magical rainbow, making merry fun.