Michael Ledeen Loses it

Michael Ledeen wonders why Tony Blair left Iraq off the list of countries plagued by terror in recent years, and compares Iraq to Israel.

Some thoughts:

(1) The most obvious reason for not including Iraq is that Iraq is, essentially, a war zone. Terrorism in Iraq is qualitatively different because it is part of a guerilla war, rather than occurring in an otherwise peaceful context, as happened in the US, Spain, and Britain. Moreover, in Iraq it is not foreign terrorism in the same way as it is in the West. Moreover, on some level we are encouraging terrorist attacks to occur in Iraq. I mean, that was the whole point of "bring 'em on!" The coalition is supposedl tryng to get the terrorists to come to Iraq so they won't come here. So to the extent that our being in Iraq is part of defeating terrorism, it is, at least according to the rhetoric, more to reduce terrorism here than to reduce terrorism there.

(2) As for Israel, yes, I'll agree that Israel should be included among the countries scourged by Islamic terrorism. Moreover, I will agree that the antipathy and blame that many Europeans feel for Israel probably accounts for some of the reason it was not mentioned.

(3) "Yet I don't know any country this side of the Levant in which there has been so much anti-Semitism, so many complaints that "Zionists," "Likudniks," "Jewish hawks," and — the single epithet that sums up all of the above — "neocons" had manipulated America and its poodle Blair into the ghastly blunder of Iraq."

Actually, other than a few people with some reflexive loyalty to the Republican Party (e.g. Pat Buchanan) I think the general consensus is becoming that Bush is a neocon, not that Bush is a puppet.

(4) "The Iraqis are viewed much the same way, and are at some risk of becoming the new Jews of the Middle East. In the enormous hate literature directed against the neocons, Ahmed Chalabi is part and parcel of the anti-Semites' hateful vision. No matter that he is a Shiite, and no matter that he was rudely dismissed by the Israeli government before Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was in cahoots with the Jewish cabal, and was therefore 'one of them.'"

In other words, if you don't trust Ahmed Chalabi, you are an antisemite. Notice the usual neoconservative have-it-both-ways argument; "neoconservative is a code word for 'Jew' even though there are neoconservatives who are not Jewish." The logic of this argument is that anyone criticizing anyone who is associated with the neoconservatives is an antisemite. In other words, the goal is to take criticism of our policy in Iraq, or of the people in Iraq whom he likes, out of the realm of polite discourse.

In any case, the idea is not so much that Chalabi is in cahoots with Israel and got us into the Iraq war on their behalf; it is that he managed to ingratiate himself with several pro-Israel Americans by making unrealistic claims about how friendly Iraq would be to Israel under his direction. That Richard Perle may view Israeli interests as identical with, or more important than, American interests, does not mean that he is in agreement with Israelis about what Israeli interests are. In other words, the problem with Perle vis a vis Chalabi is not that they are working for Israel. It is that Perle is willing to give to much credit to anyone claiming to be pro-Israel (i.e. he is too gullible) and that he is willing to ignore all other considerations (i.e. does Chalabi have much support from Iraqis outside of exiles and some Kurds) other than the person's statements about Israel.

That is all for now.