Michael Ledeen, Re: Iran: "We're back at September 10"

If by chance you are not familiar with investigative writer Michael Ledeen, then use this article of his to make your acquaintance. He is one of our most knowledgeable writers about the social and political situation inside Iran and involving Iran. The real fright comes less from what he has to write than the fact that the relevant members of our government are not heeding what he has to present. As a result, as Mr. Ledeen points out, our government is putting us back to 10 September 2001 in our readiness against Iran. You and I will be forced to pay a horrible price for this.

Mr. Ledeen's article is too long to reprint fully here, but some tidbits excerpted should catch your attention and, hopefully, encourage you to read his entire article. (All emphases are mine)

Michael Ledeen, Jewish World Review May 5, 2005 / 26 Nisan, 5765, The Hand of the Mullahs

Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2004. Its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security were involved in the planning and support of terrorist acts and continued to exhort a variety of groups to use terrorism in pursuit of their goals.

As Coalition fighters repeatedly report, Iran's claw marks — often side by side with the Syrians' and the Saudis' — are all over innumerable terrorist strikes, from Fallujah and Hilla to Baghdad and Mosul in Iraq, and, with the melting snows, across Afghanistan as well. It is not hard to get this story; I have abundant first-hand testimony to these facts from military and civilian sources in both countries. Any serious news organization could get it, but none seems to want it.

The State Department knows it, and says so in its own peculiar convoluted way... Had the State Department been interested in expanding its context [in a recent statement about Iran] ever so slightly, it could have added, "and its support for the terrorists is coordinated with the Syrians." A few months ago, American forces in Iraq captured photographs and documents about a meeting in Syria between Iraqi terrorists and Syrian and Iranian intelligence officials. Similar information was found in Fallujah.

T]his raises some very embarrassing questions for President Bush and his top strategists. We know this is going on, yet we are fighting a purely defensive war in Iraq alone. The Iranians, Syrians, and Saudis have all heard the president say he wants an end to tyranny in the Middle East, because he understands the passionate embrace between the tyrants and the terrorists. The Iranian, Syrian and Saudi terror masters know that those words are aimed at their rule, and they are rightly afraid, afraid that Bush's vision will inspire their own people to become the gravediggers of the old regimes.

...[F]rom the standpoint of the terror masters, the ultimate threat — freedom — is growing stronger, just as the president wishes, and freedom is spreading even though, despite his constant promises to support democratic revolution, he is doing virtually nothing to help it. He, along with Secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld, has not rallied to the side of the Iranian people, even though the Iranians have abundantly demonstrated their desire to be rid of the mullahs....[N]o one in the American Government spoke a word of support for the demonstrators, and no one has yet endorsed the one thing that unites the overwhelming majority of Iranians, whatever their political proclivities: a national referendum on the legitimacy of the regime itself. If there were a national ballot on the single question — Do you want an Islamic republic? — the regime would pass into history overnight. But there is silence in official Washington.

All of this [the myriad details Mr. Ledeen presents in this article] is public information, yet we do not hear it from our leaders, and the silence in Washington must be terribly discouraging to the Iranian people. It is long past time for the president to show that he is serious about winning the war against terror; it can't be done by speeches alone, and it doesn't require armed invasion. But it does require action: political action to support and aid the forces of democratic revolution in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

We dawdle at our peril, and yet we dawdle.


To continue to say "faster, please" is like spitting into the wind. We're back at September 10, waiting for our enemies to rouse us from our contented torpor.

The Kerry approach to such problems was to talk them incessantly until the Iranians attacked us, then respond. Bush said he must be proactive on such matters. Where, then, does the actual behavior of the Bush Administration toward Iran differ from what Kerry believes and proposes?