Remember when Michael Ledeen was running wild in the lead-up and early days of the Iraq War? He was really in his element, calling for creative destruction in the Middle East and Iran. In The War Against the Terror Masters he wrote:
Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence—our existence, not our politics—threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.
Too bad the Bush administration listened to him. In a 2002 article that the National Review appears to have archived, Michael Ledeen responded to Brent Scowcroft’s warning that “to attack Iraq while the Middle East is in the terror that it is right now and America appears not to be dealing with something which to every Muslim is a real problem [the Israel/Palestine conflict] but instead go over here I think could turn the whole region into a cauldron…”
Scowcroft has managed to get one thing half right, even though he misdescribes it. He fears that if we attack Iraq “I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a [sic] caldron and destroy the War on Terror.”
One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists.
That’s our mission in the war against terror.
So, basically, things may not have gone exactly as planned, with the Syrian, Iranian, and Saudi regimes still more or less intact. But the region has definitely been cauldronized. So, congratulations. Mission accomplished.
“…we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria…”
And they will automagically be replaced with free market, democratic governments, run by educated, well-intentioned, freely-elected public servents. The people will greet our troops as liberators and forevermore gather their families around bounteous tables of thanksgiving to sing the praises of the great emancipator George W. Bush.
And when the flying pigs run into thunderstorms, it will rain bacon.
This is interesting: “..and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists.”
The Bush clan had already been tongue kissing the Saudis for 40 years at that point. What’s up with that?
The “Bush clan” has served its purpose. It is yesterday’s news, unless…as looking increasingly doubtful…young Jeb is drafted into the fight. He’s even less acceptable to the RatPup electoral far right than was Cantor.
AG
This issue is, how could anybody let him get away with writing that while the preeminent political family of the day was and had been washing the Saudis balls for decades. The issue is the Dems and the corporate media being afraid to speak truth to power.
Oh, absolutely! And why? Because “power”…corporate, financial power…owns and operates both parties. Speak up effectively to that power and you lose the next election. It takes money to get elected to a position of real consequence in the U.S. Big, big money. With the exception of very few big time pols here…the Rockefellers, Bloomberg, etc., people who have already proven their fealty to big money and are therefore allowed to buy their positions themselves without serious consequences…everybody else is just a hired hand who can be fired…witness Nixon…if the controllers are really disappointed in their work.
I wrote the following here (or elsewhere…I really don’t remember) years ago. It’s how things are,unalloyed and straight from one of the controllers mouth.
Believe it.
AG
It’s always easy from the comfort of your personal den, studio, or office, to write what that douche-canoe Ledeen did.
He doesn’t have to live in the area that’s going to be ‘constructively destroyed’ by his psychopathic blood-drenched wet-dream.
But, thank goodness we decided to look forward, and not back!
Because the same psychopaths and douche-canoe’s are now clamoring for America to go back into Iraq.
THE SAME ONES!!!
I wish we had a functioning “Fourth Estate,” so that these people would be exposed and mocked to such a degree, that they’d never open their fucking stupid, ignorant, and bigoted mouths, ever again!
But we don’t.
Our “Fourth Estate” makes me drink a fifth a day.
Ok – a liter…
I think we all know, as well, how Ledeen and his ilk treated the 9/11 attacks on the citadels of capitalism in New York and militarism in Washington. That wasn’t constructive destruction, it was terrorism! Yet we permit ourselves to do the same and worse. And hand out medals to its practitioners.
Oh yeah, it’s our freedom that inspires loathing of the U.S. around the world.
God, what repulsive psychotic swill. Is there any way to parachute this conservative white male turd into, say, Mosul?
cund has already made the main point, that these evil militarist “creative destructionists” are never the ones who will have to live in their cauldron(s) of ecstasy.
As for Ledeen’s hyperbolic view of our mindlessly consumerist, deeply religious, reactionary, highly unequal, corporatist, class ridden, wealth worshiping and economically static (if not downwardly mobile) Gilded Age society as one that “tears down the old order every day[!!]”, I guess there’s no need for a propagandist to consult reality. Or an imbecile.
It would be better if he was black and female, like say Condi Rice?
So what does his race and gender have to do with it? Besides your own prejudices, that is.
Oh, hardly better. But highly unlikely, as I’m sure you’re aware. If Condi didn’t exist, the Right would have had to manufacture her.
Remember, the only difference between Obama and Ledeen is one of degree, and remember that ‘virtue’ isn’t the same thing as ‘lack of opportunity.’
Because you know he wants to invade Iraq again.
I have no actual evidence for this, but I don’t need any. You can just tell.
Demonstrating again what immoral sick fucks Ledeen and the rest of the chickenhawk warmongers are.
Here’s an irony.
What if the US sends in drones and a few special forces guys while the Iranians send in more substantial units? Because it’s not like the Iranians like a Sunni theocracy on their border compared to weak Shiite state.
US military and Iranian Guards working on the same purposes like in Afghanistan in 2001.
Remember the 1980-88 Iran Iraq War. We may be setting up for part 2…which was really the Saudis fighting the Iranians. Iran may get help from Turkey this time as they may tire of this mess slipping across their boarder. Turkey has the air power to shut the whole thing down and we can just keep our drones on the ground.
It is Irony!
Leaving aside the Iranian Revolution, Iran was always a more natural ally than any of the Arab states. More urban, more educated, more business-friendly.
The alliance with Saudi Arabia with it’s reprehensible Wahabbi awfulness never made any sense at all. Except Oil. Yeah I know but still, they are really an awful country, and the sooner we stop needing them as an ‘ally’ the better.
My new diary –
○ Michael Ledeen from Trotsky to Mussolini – Our Freedom Betrayed
The buzzphrase “creative destruction” is the most absurd and dishonest of oxymora. Anyone who takes it seriously or who pretends to take it seriously — whether speaking/writing it or hearing it — discredits themselves, completely and irredeemably.
The West Should Just Stop Intervening
ISIS is a deeply problematic organization, as is the Taliban, but here’s what they have going for them: they believe and they’re willing to fight and die.
The situation in Iraq will be determined on the ground, by those people willing fight and die: the Kurds, ISIS, various non ISIS aligned Sunni militias, and the Shia militias. It will be determined by Iran, who is the only country which could intervene and maintain the peace otherwise.
If the US chooses not to accept this, not to allow this to play out, it will be stuck in Iraq for another ten years, and during that time Iraq will stay destabilized and more and more people will die
There are no good options here, but whatever solution is come to, it must be determined by people who have a real stake in the area, who are willing to fight and die for their beliefs. Only they can impose a peace. There’s a very good chance that it will be a very ugly peace, much like the Taliban imposed in Afghanistan.
So be it. I don’t like it, but there are NO other solutions which are better. American intervention again is not a better option.
If you want to support someone on the ground, support to the Shi-ite militias. They and the Peshmergas, are the ones who will defeat ISIS, if ISIS is defeated. Forget the government, it’s failed. It failed on day one, because it could never keep the peace because no one believed in it.
Let us not forget this:
http://www.worldsecuritynetwork.com/Iraq/Galbraith-Peter-W/The-Case-For-Dividing-Iraq
Dividing and conquering works well for corporations. It seemed to work in the former Yugoslavia, and it seems to be the plan for Ukraine. So maybe that was the plan in Iraq all along.
○ NY Times Op-Ed: Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq (2006)
Biden-Gelb 5 point plan for Iraq – Senator Joe Biden and Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations developed a plan for Bosnia-style “federalism”–that is, the soft partition of Iraq into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish areas.
From my earlier post – False Promises and Missed Opportunities In Iraq.