2,080…that’s the number of hits you get on Google if you a very slight variation on the title of one of the better known songs by the Clash. Never think you can beat a million typewriting monkeys to a clever play on early Gen X/late baby-boom pop culture references in the face of big news. In this case, big news is also good news.

Mayor Giuliani is usually called a moderate, but on foreign policy he is probably the single major politician most in step with the war-crazed, utterly discredited yet seemingly un-killable neoconservative movement. (”You fools! Abject failure won’t stop it!”) Honestly, he’s the Republican candidate I feared the most.

Though he probably would have been easy for any Democrat to beat, I didn’t want to take the chance because a victory would have risked a complete breakdown of civilization, and I think I’m being lowkey when I say that. Sure, the others might abridge our freedoms, continue our ruinous foreign policy and all that. But Rudy was a good bet to start that clash of civilizations that neocons fear could end with Britney Spears in a burkha if we don’t start a new war every few months, but which would much more likely would end with millions of dead civilians all over the world, possibly including me, while most of these brave, brave typers, whose “will” never fails, would be cozy in some nice underground bunker with Miss Foreign Affairs, Dr. Strangelove, and Walter Matthau’s character from Fail Safe.

Do I sound extreme? Well, check out the words of the senior foreign policy adviser of the mayor’s now defunct campaign.

(H/t David Weigel.)

That’s Norman Podhoretz, author of the “The Case for Bombing Iran” and longtime grand poobah of the neoconservative movement, who has been so very right about so many things when it comes Iraq and whose support of some of Latin American best loved fascist regimes still warms the cockles of our hemispheric neighbor’s hearts — at least the ones whose relatives weren’t tortured to death.

Here, he urges war with Iran because, when it comes to wars of choice, there’s always room for one more. And, in any case, all other options for preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon (you know, the one they’re not working on) have proven “sterile.” But don’t worry, he tells us, because most likely we would have been secretly applauded by all kinds of people in the Middle East. I think they’re the same ones who were so (secretly) delighted about Iraq and who have greeted us with well concealed flowers and candies.

Still, thanks to the good offices of Rudy’s very clever strategy for nabbing the GOP nomination, Mr. Podhoretz is going to have to find a different path to causing the kind of mass destruction he prays for.

As for Rudy, since I’ve got the Clash on my mind, here’s a song dedication.

UPDATE: A departure I’m MUCH sorrier to hear about. I guess the choice is becoming more stark, or something.