Marble Composition

Ledeen In Clear View

I can't let this one pass, it's way too good. James Wolcott, a writer for Vanity Fair, lays into Michael Ledeen but good. Ledeen has been pushing for war with Iran ever since I can remember (we're talking back in the Reagan years).:

Me Tarzan, You Hagel

Posted by James Wolcott

Being the astute Machiavelli fan that he is, Michael Ledeen would seem too intellectually sophisticated to drag in Hitler's name as a rhetorical silencer--I mean, that's just so bush league. But responding to unseen hordes regarding his dis of Chuck Hagel, Ledeen pipes up from NRO's The Corner at those pipequeaks who believe those "with military experience have special authority on the subject of war and peace" thusly:

"I usually write back and ask them if they think that Hitler--who was wounded in the First World War--has special standing for them."

Well, that'll shut them hecklers up! He's a regular Don Rickles. Hagel, Hitler, what's the dif really? Point is, when Ledeen flings around the word "appeaser" as he's done more than once at Hagel and countless times at others, he isn't disparaging Hagel's military or geopolitical acumen, he's impugning the man's guts. He's saying, I'm willing to stand up to the enemy (or, in Ledeen's case, slouch in front of him), whereas the Senator from Nebraska is "a man who has rarely met or even thought [my italics] about a tyrant he did not want to appease." So now Ledeen's a mind-reader too?

Ledeen also encourages his emailers "to read The War Against the Terror Masters, in which I said it was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, and predicted the current situation."

I have no intention of reading The War Against the Terror Masters, limiting my pornography intake whenever possible, but I will concede that Ledeen's bloodshot focus has been obsessively on Iran, not Iraq. However, I will also note that when George Bush made his famous speech on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln with the "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him, Ledeen's joy was unbounded. He could barely contain himself, and didn't. Here is what he wrote in the afterglow the following day. Prepare to flinch.

"Wow! Great scene, great speech, who could ask for anything more? He has it exactly right. We won a battle, we made military history, and we've changed the nature of warfare (the guilty are at greater risk than the innocent), the better to fulfill our national mission of spreading freedom. The tide has turned in the war against the terror masters, but there are many battles ahead. And the war remains what he said it was from the beginning: a war for freedom against tyranny.

"May I brag? Is this not what The War Against the Terror Masters says?

"It was time for this speech, because the contemporary attention span is so short. The world has largely forgotten September 11, and many of the chatterers have forgotten what this war is about, and it was good that he reminded them all. It was also good that he drew the lessons from the battle of Iraq so that the tyrants in Damascus, Tehran, Tripoli, Pyongyang, and Riyadh could understand them clearly. Now they know, if any of them doubted, that they are all on the list. And I particularly enjoyed his appeal to the Arab street — for that is what it was — when he said that anyone who fought for freedom would have a friend in America.

"George W. is the most amazing president. How could anyone have imagined that such a man, who lacks all the credentials to conduct foreign policy (he hasn't traveled, he hasn't studied foreign cultures, he doesn't speak foreign languages, his knowledge of world history is skimpy, and he hasn't memorized the last decade of the New York Times) would turn out to have the best foreign-policy instincts imaginable? He reminds me more and more of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan. He has the most important quality of a great leader: He instinctively finds the words to express what the American people believe. And his are simple words, not fancy ones.

"What a pleasure.

Now let's get on with the war. Faster, please."

I don't quite understand The War Against the Terror Masters could give Ledeen bragging rights two years ago when he was feeling giddy ("The tide has turned") and two years later serve as an Unheeded Warning now that he's feeling glum. I guess he's trying to claim Amazing Kreskin powers of clairvoyance no matter how well or badly the war goes. He is a student of Machiavelli, after all.

This one came from Ledeen pissing himself over Senator Chuck Hagel's comments over the weekend:

The Squawk of a Chickenhawk

Posted by James Wolcott

Senator Chuck Hagel has never been high on NRO's The Corner's Hit Parade of favorite Republicans. While it's true that he lacks the stature and intellectual rigor of a Rick Santorum or WFB's hunky heart-throb Bill Simon, it does seem a trace unfair to call him the Senator from France, as some Cornerites have done in the past, and hint that his loyalities lie other than in the land we all love.

His patriotic steadfastness was questioned yet again after his Sunday appearance on Meet the Press, where he made the dread comparison between Iraq and Vietnam, and brought Michael Ledeen out of his badger hole.

"RE: HAGEL [Michael Ledeen]
Senator Hagel has certainly earned the Jimmy Carter Appeasement Award for 2005. As I've noted before, the man has never met a tyrant he didn't want to negotiate with. Maybe he should run for president with Jesse Jackson as his mate.
Posted at 11:31 PM"

Let's review, shall we?

Chuck Hagel, two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for his Vietnam War service.

Jimmy Carter, seven years in the Navy, including serving under Admiral Rickover in the development of the nuclear submarine program.

Michael Ledeen? Let's just say he won't be regaling them at the VFW lodge anytime soon. Indeed, the closest he's come to combat has been listening to Roger L. Simon's Hollywood war stories from his heroic screenwriting days.

Memo to Ledeen: There's a stature gap between you and Hagel/Carter that puts you in the pygmy shade.

Moreover, accusing anyone at this point of "appeasement" is just so dated, so played-out, so 2002. And dragging the puffy, irrelevant Jesse Jackson into your insult train--truly, truly stale.

The appeasement slur won't work anymore, nor will invocations of Neville Chamberlain and quislings. Give it up, pack it in, put it away.

Two years ago, Ledeen sneered about Hagel's "wimpery" about Iraq (a sneer I'd wager Ledeen wouldn't dare be man enough to repeat to Hagel's face), but it's Hagel who's been vindicated. The fact is that Ledeen and his neocons got the war they wanted, it was waged according to their blueprints, and it's their fuck-up, their moral responsibility, their historical bloodstain, their arrogant, ignorant, blundering, inexcusable mess. It says something about Ledeen's depraved indifference toward the consequences of his own lobbying efforts that he still thinks at this late date that he can get away with being droll.

One man's sheer eloquence, armed with all the facts, can expose a perenial American huckster in short order. Sweetnesss does live....

posted by FuzzFinger @ 8/23/2005 11:49:00 PM