Hullabaloo

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

 
Serious Madmen

by digby

Glenn Greenwald takes Michael Ledeen downtown today in a thoroughly satisfying fashion. Despite the fact that he is an embarrassment on virtually every level, and almost certifiably nuts, he is considered "serious" by people like Fred Hiatt, who Glenn quotes today:

We're not part of that [bomb Iran]camp, though we consider its members saner than many of the statements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Right-o. Ahmadinejad is a holocaust denier and desires the destruction of Israel. Insane for sure.


What do you suppose he would call this?

March 10, 2003

A Theory

What if there’s method to the Franco-German madness?

Assume, for a moment, that the French and the Germans aren't thwarting us out of pique, but by design, long-term design. Then look at the world again, and see if there's evidence of such a design.

Like everyone else, the French and the Germans saw that the defeat of the Soviet Empire projected the United States into the rare, almost unique position of a global hyperpower, a country so strong in every measurable element that no other nation could possibly resist its will. The "new Europe" had been designed to carve out a limited autonomy for the old continent, a balance-point between the Americans and the Soviets. But once the Soviets were gone, and the Red Army melted down, the European Union was reduced to a combination theme park and free-trade zone. Some foolish American professors and doltish politicians might say — and even believe — that henceforth "power" would be defined in economic terms, and that military power would no longer count. But cynical Europeans know better.

They dreaded the establishment of an American empire, and they sought for a way to bring it down.

If you were the French president or the German chancellor, you might well have done the same.

How could it be done? No military operation could possibly defeat the United States, and no direct economic challenge could hope to succeed. That left politics and culture. And here there was a chance to turn America's vaunted openness at home and toleration abroad against the United States. So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we'll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.

The Franco-German strategy was based on using Arab and Islamic extremism and terrorism as the weapon of choice, and the United Nations as the straitjacket for blocking a decisive response from the United States.

This required considerable skill, and total cynicism, both of which were in abundant supply in Paris and Berlin. Chancellor Shroeder gained reelection by warning of American warmongering, even though, as usual, America had been attacked first. And both Shroeder and Chirac went to great lengths to support Islamic institutions in their countries, even when — as in the French case — it was in open violation of the national constitution.

[...]


It sounds fanciful, to be sure. But the smartest people I know have been thoroughly astonished at recent French and German behavior. This theory may help understand what's going on. I now believe that I was wrong to forecast that the French would join the war against Iraq at the last minute, having gained every possible economic advantage in the meantime. I think Chirac will oppose us before, during, and after the war, because he has cast his lot with radical Islam and with the Arab extremists. He isn't doing it just for the money — although I have no doubt that France is being richly rewarded for defending Saddam against the civilized countries of the world — but for higher stakes. He's fighting to end the feared American domination before it takes stable shape.

If this is correct, we will have to pursue the war against terror far beyond the boundaries of the Middle East, into the heart of Western Europe. And there, as in the Middle East, our greatest weapons are political: the demonstrated desire for freedom of the peoples of the countries that oppose us.

No, that isn't the ranting of some lunatic on late night radio. That's our friend Ledeen, the "Freedom Scholar" at the American Enterprise Institute, writing in the pages of the flagship conservative magazine The National Review.

He's one of the serious people who are now advocating that we must bomb Iran immediately, a "crowd" which Hiatt doesn't consider himself a part of but which he nonetheless doesn't see as insane. Yet this crowd listens to "Iran expert" Michael Ledeen, who as Glenn points out, speaks no Persian and has never set foot in the country. But then why should he? He believes that France and Germany (and God knows who else) are involved in a massive conspiracy with Iran, Iraq and al Qaeda to destroy the United States.

I don't know about you, but that sounds just as insane as anything Ahmadinejad ever said and much more dangerous. We actually do have nuclear weapons. Lots of 'em.

And, by the way, don't think this is just one guy's paranoid fantasy. This notion of taking the GWOT into the heart of Europe is quite fashionable in right wing circles. Here's Mark Steyn making the argument from another angle, with one of the right's premiere journalists:

PAUL GIGOT, FOX HOST: "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" forecasts a dark future in which the nations of Old Europe fall to Islam fundamentalism. And the United States remains the last Western democracy.

Earlier, I spoke to the author, columnist Mark Steyn.

GIGOT: In your book, you write that much of what we loosely call the "Western World will not survive the 21st Century. And much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many, if not most, European countries", end quote. That sounds like a doomsday scenario.

MARK STEYN, COLUMNIST AND AUTHOR OF "AMERICA ALONE": It is. I tried to be cheerful. But it is hard to be cheerful about apocalyptic-type stuff. And this is what it is.

Basically, 17 European countries have what demographers call lowest-load fertility, from which no society ever recovered. That means they are basically not having enough babies.

And the way Europe is set up, they have these unsustainable social programs and welfare. And they imported the babies that they didn't have. They imported them essentially from the North Africa and the Middle East.

So we're seeing one of the fastest population transformations in history, whereby an aging ethnic European population is being replaced by a Muslim population. And the Muslims understand that, in fact, Europe, as they see it, is the colony now.

This pithy remark brings it all together:

You can understand why the Quai d'Orsay is relaxed about Iran becoming the second Muslim nuclear power. As things stand, France is on course to be the third. You heard it here first.

As far as I can tell, these guys are picking them off one by one. First it was Iraq. Now Iran. And as soon as we're done with them, we're going to invade France. What could go wrong?


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digby 9/05/2007 11:24:00 AM |