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AMP Book Review – December 28, 2004
The War Against the Terror Masters
by Michael Ledeen revisited
Most Americans have never heard of Michael Ledeen, but if the United States ends up in an extended shooting war throughout the Middle East, it will be largely due to his inspiration, says William O. Beeman author of "Language, Status and Power in Iran,".
Ledeen's ideas are repeated daily by such figures as Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. His views virtually define the stark departure from American foreign policy philosophy that existed before the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America's manifest destiny. Consequently, he has become the philosophical legitimator of the American occupation of Iraq.
Now Michael Ledeen is calling for regime change beyond Iraq. In an address entitled "Time to Focus on Iran -- The Mother of Modern Terrorism," for the policy forum of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) on April 30, 2003 he declared, "the time for diplomacy is at an end; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon."
With a group of other conservatives, Ledeen recently set up the Center for Democracy in Iran (CDI), an action group focusing on producing regime change in Iran.
In an article on Middle East Forum, Ledeen wrote on May 20, 2004: Prior to the liberation of Iraq, there were four "terror masters" in the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, of which only two had Islamist governments: Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Syrian and Iraqi regimes secured and maintained their power precisely because they were the opposite of Islamists. Their strong secular backgrounds allowed them at various points in their existence to gain support from Western powers in the consolidation of power in the Middle East. It is wrong, therefore, to qualify all terror as simply radical Islam.
Quotes from Ledeen's works reveal a peculiar set of beliefs about American attitudes toward violence. "Change -- above all violent change -- is the essence of human history," he proclaims in his book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago. In an essay in the National Review Online he asserts, "Creative destruction is our middle name. We do it automatically ... it is time once again to export the democratic revolution."
Mr. Ledeen seeks to apply Machiavellian principles to the modern world when he says that as we wage this war (against terrorism), we must constantly remind ourselves of five basic rules of successful political and military leadership, as defined half a millennium ago by Machiavelli. They are as true today as they were during the Renaissance, at the beginning of the modern era:
1. Man is more inclined to do evil than to do good.
Good people are rare, and are constantly threatened by the evil-minded. Peace is not the normal condition of mankind, and moments of peace are invariably the result of war.
Since we want peace, we must win the war. Since our enemies are inclined to do evil, we must win decisively and then impose virtue, until the people learn the rules of civil society.
2. The only important thing is wining.
Machiavelli tells us that if we win, everyone will judge our methods to have been appropriate. If we lose, they will despise us.
3. If we have to do unpleasant things, it is best to do them all at once.
Strike decisively, get it over with quickly. The diplomats will always say that we can achieve our goals with a little bit of nastiness and a whole lot of talking, but they are wrong.
4. It is better to be feared than loved.
We can lead by the force of high moral example. It has been done. But it’s risky, because people are fickle, and they will abandon us at the first sign of failure. Fear is much more reliable and lasts longer. Once we show that we are capable of defeating our enemies, our power will be far greater.
5. Luck can wreck the finest plans.
Machiavelli played cards whenever he had the chance, and he know that a bad run can ruin the finest player. Machiavelli ruefully admitted that the best one can hope for is to have good luck about half the time. But that should be enough for us. We’re a lost stronger than the terror masters.
Wall Street Journal - September 4, 2002
The war on terror won't end in Baghdad
By Michael A. Ledeen
A Terrible Evil: Saddam Hussein is a terrible evil, and President Bush is entirely right in vowing to end his reign of terror. But this is not just a war against Iraq, it is a war against terrorist organizations and against the regimes that foster, support, arm, train, indoctrinate and command the terrorist legions who are clamoring for our destruction. There are four such regimes: in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia….
Contrary to much of the conventional wisdom, this war is not new in any meaningful sense. Indeed, it is a very traditional sort of war, one at which the U.S. has always excelled: It is a war against tyrants and in the name of freedom. Our greatest weapon in this war is the people oppressed by tyrannical regimes. They constitute a lethal dagger aimed at the hearts of their rulers. And knowing this, the tyrants fear us.
Despite all the talk about growing anti-Americanism in the Middle East, we inspire their people. We inspired the Iraqis at the end of the Gulf War to rise up against Saddam, only to be abandoned by the American leaders of that unhappy time. We inspired the Iraqis again when we supported the democratic Iraqi National Congress in Northern Iraq until the mid-1990s, only to abandon them again. We inspire the Iranian people today -- there have been nearly constant demonstrations against the Tehran regime over the past year. There were also deeply moving pro-American demonstrations on Sept. 11, and again on July 4 of this year.
If we come to Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran as liberators, we can expect overwhelming popular support. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put it well the other day when he encouraged his media questioners to think about the people in such places as prisoners, not as free men and women. They will join us if they believe we are serious, and they will only believe we are serious when they see us winning. Our first move must therefore show both our power and our liberating intent.
Of the four terrorist tyrannies, Iran seems the easiest to liberate. The president has eloquently described the circumstances there: The Iranian people have clearly and repeatedly demonstrated their desire to be rid of their self-appointed rulers. They deserve our support just as did the Yugoslavs in their desire to be rid of the Milosevic tyranny. We must support them as we supported the Solidarity free trade union in Poland in their desire to be rid of communist tyranny and as we supported the Filipino people in their desire to be rid of the Marcos tyranny.
We know how to do it: broadcasting the truth and funding others who do the same, denouncing the oppression, defending the political prisoners by name, encouraging private American and international organizations to provide money, communications and guidance to the people on the ground. As serious political thinkers like Peter Ackerman keep reminding us, politically savvy and nonviolent internal resistance movements have brought down several tyrannical regimes in the recent past. There is every reason to believe the same can be accomplished quite rapidly in Iran, where such a movement already exists.
The fall of the mullahs in Tehran would dramatically change the Middle East and give us an extremely potent political weapon against the surviving terror masters. We could then address the Muslims of the world: Islamic extremism has now been attempted in both its versions, the Sunni in Afghanistan and the Shiite in Iran. Both failed on all counts. They wrecked the countries, earned the hatred of the people, and fell to the West. Such will be the destiny of all those who emulate them. It is exactly the message we want to send to those tempted by the likes of Hezbollah and al Qaeda.
With a triumph in Iran, the democratic revolution would quickly gain allies in Syria and Iraq, and transform our war against Saddam Hussein from a primarily military operation to a war of national liberation against a hated regime. We should first recognize the democratic Iraqi opposition as the legitimate government of the country, and call upon the Iraqi people to leave Saddam's territory to find freedom in the zones we control in the north and south of the country. It is hard to imagine that Saddam could long resist such a massive challenge to his authority, and our military power would do the rest.
This strategy, or something like it, should be adopted even if we decide to begin the war with Saddam Hussein. And just as a successful democratic revolution in Iran would inspire the Iraqis to join us to remove Saddam, it is impossible to imagine that the Iranian people would tolerate tyranny in their own country once freedom had come to Iraq. Syria would follow in short order. (Bashar Assad's fear of his own people was once again demonstrated last week, when he rounded up three of his muted critics on the usual charges of unpatriotic behavior.)
The Saudi terror masters are somewhat different from the others, for there are pro-Western, antiterrorist elements within the royal family who will almost certainly gain strength once the tyrants fall in Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran. The destruction of the tyrants will also gravely weaken the attraction of the wildly extremist Wahhabi doctrines now in vogue, and the liberation of Iran, Iraq and Syria will greatly encourage liberal forces within the kingdom, some of whom, like the son of the former oil czar, Sheikh Yamani, are even now openly calling for a considerable democratization of the kingdom's politics.
A Just War: This war cannot be limited to national theaters; we face a regional challenge and must respond accordingly. But it is both a just war and one for which we are marvelously well suited. We are the one truly revolutionary country on earth, which is both the reason for which we were attacked in the first place and the reason we will successfully transform the lives of hundreds of millions of people throughout the Middle East….
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