Giuliani Delendus est

To the Editor:

Re “Rudy’s Doin’ It!” [Oct. 22]:

Gotham’s cognoscenti may rue the day they underestimated the cult of Rudolph Giuliani.

Blinded by their familiarity with the former mayor’s scorched-earth style of governance, Charles Rangel, Mark Green and others have been lulled into a false sense of complacency regarding Mr. Giuliani’s inability to capture the 2008 Republican nomination, much less the White House.

Not only has America’s mayor morphed into the G.O.P.’s national front-runner, but Mr. Giuliani is poised to forge ahead in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. Thus far, the 2008 Republican nomination is his to lose.

Most Americans have no knowledge of Giuliani as the mean-spirited martinet of Manhattan. Rather, they view New York’s revival, low crime rates and thriving economy as the handiwork of the Churchillian savior of 9/11.

Now is the time for all good men and women of conscience to act. If they truly wish to spare the nation a nasty authoritarian Giuliani administration, Mr. Giuliani’s opponents must expose his hidden agenda: America’s mayor is a warmonger.

A provincial politician with a penchant for pandering, Mr. Giuliani has sold his soul to the same Straussian theoreticians who gave us the quagmire of Iraq.

And it’s not just Norman Podhoretz and his nutty notion of Islamofascism.

The usual suspects include a cadre of neoconservatives in search of a casus belli: Daniel Pipes, Martin Kramer, Stephen Rosen and Peter Berkowitz.

Having sullied his family’s honor and scorned his ethnicity, Rudolph Giuliani could well snooker the nation into the mother of all conflicts: A world war against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, possibly Pakistan. As Virgil warned us in The Aeneid, “Facilis descensus Averno; sed ad auras evadere est labor!” Going to Hell is easy; it’s coming back that’s hard!

Rosario Iaconis
Mineola, N.Y.