From Robert W. Poole Jr., "In Memoriam: Barry Goldwater, in "Reason" Magazine, Aug/Sep 98, p. 11:

...The left caricatured [Goldwater] as a warmonger for his assertive stance against the Soviet empire -- most egregiously in Lyndon Johnson's famous TV commercial of the little girl blown away by a nuclear blast. Yet how radically extremist -- in hindsight -- are these concluding words from Conscience of a Conservative?

"Either the Communists will retain the offensive; will lay down one challenge after another; will invite us in local crisis after local crisis to choose between all-out war and limited retreat" [not bad as a forecast of the Jimmy Carter years --RWP] "... Or we will summon the will and the means for taking the initiative, and wage a war of attrition against them -- and hope, thereby, to bring about the internal disintegration of the Communist empire." [more or less the Reagan doctrine --RWP] It doesn't sound so radical after the fact, but in the '60s that sort of tough-minded policy prescription was beyond the pale in polite society.