@@ 'Michael Ledeen' is a dangerous animal @@
Arash
August 22, 2003
History Repeating
Michael Ledeen is a dangerous animal, a laptop bombardier, a thug with a
hidden agenda and a security clearance.
Ledeen on the Run
'Faster, Please' Toward the Annihilation of Iran
By Anthony Gancarski
On 'National Review Online', 8/14/03, Michael Ledeen addresses his
apparently controversial dealings with his "old friend Manucher
Ghorbanifar." www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen.asp
Photo of Ledeen: http://www.uscc.gov/Assets/8.3_6.jpg
Nothing quite like seeing Ledeen write from a position of relative weakness,
especially given how much face time he has gotten in the last couple of
years. Ledeen, who David Frum claims has scored up to $25 million for his
advocacy of US action against the Iranian "mullahcracy," feels it necessary
in the safe space of NR's website to address his dealings with Iranian
"private citizens" and how they were misrepresented by unnamed "overzealous
scribblers."
For kicks, let's review some of that "overzealous scribbling," specifically
the August 8 report in the Sydney Morning Herald entitled "Arms Dealers in
Talks with US Officials about Iran." The SMH dispatch reported the claim
that "Administration officials said at least two Pentagon officials working
for the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, have held
"several" meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian middleman in
United States arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the mid-1980s." Along
the same lines, a "senior Administration official identified two of the
Defense officials who met Mr. Ghorbanifar as Harold Rhode, Mr. Feith's top
Middle East specialist, and Larry Franklin, a Defence Intelligence Agency
analyst on loan to the undersecretary's office."
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/08/1060145871467.html
Of the two liaisons mentioned in the Australian paper's report, the most
interesting for Ledeen watchers is Mr. Rhode. As the report points out, "Mr.
Rhode recently acted as a liaison between Mr. Feith's office, which drafted
much of the Administration's post-Iraq planning, and Ahmed Chalabi, a former
Iraqi exile groomed for leadership by the Pentagon. Mr. Rhode is a protégé
of Michael Ledeen, who was a National Security Council consultant in the mid
1980s when he introduced Mr. Ghorbanifar to Oliver North, a NSC aide, and
others in the opening stages of the Iran-Contra affair. It is understood Mr.
Ledeen reopened the Ghorbanifar channel with Mr. Feith's staff."
Now if that isn't a shot across Mr. Ledeen's bow, I don't know what is. The
feisty internationalist gives as good as he gets, however, making out the
Ghorbanifar affair to be nothing so much as a tempest in a teapot. "The
journalists in Washington ran around chasing their own very short tails for
several days until they concluded a) that people talking to people isn't
much of a story and b) it seems to be about turf, not anything serious, and
c) it really doesn't lead anywhere."
A couple of points here from this writer: People talking to people, as
Ledeen so chastely puts it, is very much a story. Consider how many of the
Terror War investigations are predicated on something as simple as some
potential evil doer having some confirmed evildoers phone number in his
address book. We wouldn't hear news dispatches about "terrorist chatter" if
conversations weren't monitored, catalogued, and examined for problematic
tropes. Along those lines, "turf" isn't "anything serious"? Since when? Do I
need to send Mr. Ledeen a copy of the first two Godfather movies, a Mobb
Deep album, and copies of The Art of War and The Prince to show him
otherwise? Turf is everything, whether in the freewheeling world of street
gangs or the more structured milieu of policy discussion. To pretend
otherwise is to play one's readers for marks, but Mr. Ledeen has never had
problems in that regard.
Ledeen's NRO piece very early on becomes an attack on those who would limit
the Pentagon's ability to go into business for itself, without the sanction
of State. "The implication of the complaint about Pentagon officials'
conversations is that it's okay for our diplomats to talk to the official
representatives of the murderous mullahcracy in Tehran, with an eye to
establishing some form of rapprochement, but it's not okay for midlevel Iran
experts at DoD to talk to private Iranians to enhance our understanding
about what's going on inside Iran, and what the Iranian regime is going, or
planning to do, to Americans and our friends and allies. Why should that be
so? One would think that any such conversations should be praised, not
leaked to death."
Disingenuous, but what else can be expected from Ledeen in this case. He
undercuts statecraft as "rapprochement," because it apparently is beneath
the US to negotiate with the "murderous mullahcracy." Meanwhile, Ledeen
makes some hazy claims about what those mullahs intend to do to Americans,
adding that conversations with "private Iranians" should be "praised, not
leaked to death." One question: who would praise those discussions if they
weren't leaked?
Certainly not Richard Armitage, who Ledeen lambastes for never repenting for
his claim that "Iran is a Democracy." Ledeen has it in for Armitage to such
a degree that he embraces "conspiracy theory." intimating that State's
desire for Iran to turn over "captured Al Qaeda terrorists" is prima facie
absurd; after all, those terrorists were operating out of Iran, which to
Ledeen is proof that Tehran sanctioned their actions.
Ledeen knows better than to make this argument. If terrorists operating out
of an area were proof in itself that said area's government sanctioned their
dastardly deeds, then the US regime itself would come under fierce scrutiny.
As would that of Canada and every other country in the world. The bromide
that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" bears a special
relevance here, as there will always be people in the Middle East, Europe,
and even in the US who believe that Al Qaeda operations are legitimate
defenses of personal sovereignty against a Leviathan state and the marauders
under its employ.
More from Ledeen: "We are doing nothing to support the desperate efforts of
the Iranian people to free themselves from the mullahs, despite the almost
daily flow of proof that this is one of the world's most odious tyrannies,
that the regime scorns even minimal standards of human rights and, for
example, recently bludgeoned a female Canadian journalist to death and then
even denied her son the fulfillment of his obligation to arrange for a
proper burial in her own country."
It's regrettable that a "female Canadian journalist" was "bludgeoned," but
is that really the business of the United States? Michael Ledeen is a
one-trick pony, as the above passage illustrates. His specialty is shrill
tub thumping, in which he makes emotional appeals on specious grounds to
justify reckless, untenable foreign policy initiatives. Perhaps it should be
said: if the journalist in question couldn't handle her own business, maybe
she should've stayed out of Iran.
Ledeen saves some of his most bilious language for Secretary of State Colin
Powell, who only months ago mortgaged a good chunk of his soul to assemble
the "Coalition of the Willing." Ledeen "asks" Powell the following,
seemingly rhetorical questions: "Why do you find the Iranian people so
uniquely unworthy of support in their efforts to be free? Why do you use
phrases like "family squabble" to describe mass murder and systematic
repression in Iran, when you used much stronger language to (accurately)
describe a similar regime in Iraq?"
Perhaps Powell understands what much of the military brass does. Perhaps
Powell is aware of how perilously overextended American troops are, and,
rather than starting a fight the US is ill-positioned to finish, he realizes
that the mullahs must be tolerated, because it is damned hard to liberate
the world when the news is full of reports of the disillusionment of
American troops.
But don't tell that to Ledeen, who even now exhorts President Bush toward
more military adventurism. "The hell of it all is that this president has it
right, and has had it right from the beginning. He knows Iran is at the
heart of the Axis of Evil. He knows that America, because of its very
essence as the embodiment of the democratic evolution, must support the
fight for freedom in Iran. He says it all the time, only to have many of the
others gainsay him."
More "conspiracy theory" from Ledeen, who stops short of ascribing
motivations to the "gainsayers." Do they hate America? Are they
Islamofascist dupes? Inquiring minds want to know, but Ledeen realizes that,
with scant proof that the Powell/Armitage wing's willingness to negotiate
with Tehran stems from anything more nefarious than knowing the limits of
the US military, he's better off just throwing bombs and seeing if anyone
blows up in the process.
Michael Ledeen is a dangerous animal, a laptop bombardier, a thug with a
hidden agenda and a security clearance.
It is no coincidence that the 8/14 column, like so many of his others,
closes with an exhortation to the President. "Faster, please," it always
goes. He talks of military confrontation with Iran, which will be ugly like
nothing since the Korean war, like he's a frat boy trying to get laid.
Ledeen is a risible presence on the American scene, and this column hopes
that his enemies in Washington find a way to take him to task for reckless,
foolish talk that will lead to the death of more Americans and further
diffusion of the Administration's credibility. This columnist, however, is
not holding his breath waiting for Ledeen to get his just deserts.
*** Anthony Gancarski, the author of Unfortunate Incidents, writes for The
American Conservative, CounterPunch, and LewRockwell.com. His web journalism
was recognized by Utne Reader Online as "Best of the Web." A writer for the
local Folio Weekly, he lives in Jacksonville, Florida.
http://www.antiwar.com/gancarski/gan082203.html