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by Michael Ledeen

The War Rages, The White House Ducks, Death Abounds

January 15th, 2013 - 6:35 pm

You know all this, of course, because you’ve been reading these blogs all along.  But as my mother used to tell me with her charming smile and melodious voice, repetition is the basis of all learning.

It is no doubt true, as so many wonks intone over and over, that we are targeted by lots of “non-state actors.”  But those “actors,” gangs like al Qaeda, Hezbolah, Islamic Jihad, and Jammaah this-or-that, are state-supported.

My old boss, Alexander Haig, used to growl, “we have to go to the source,” by which he meant the Soviet Union.  And whenever he said it, there were pious cries of “but NO!”  from the usual quarters, such as Foggy Bottom and Langley-on-the-Potomac.  They insisted that we did not “know” that the Kremlin was in any way “behind” terrorist groups, and when it was pointed out that the PLO actually trained IN the Soviet Union, they responded by denying it was a terrorist organization.  They redefined it as a “national liberation front.”

Turns out Haig was right;  we know the KGB and GRU were actively supporting groups including Baader-Meinhof in West Germany, and Red Brigades in Italy, as well as Arafat’s killers.  We know it from their own archives, their own emigres, their own defectors (take PJ Media’s own Ion Mihai Pacepa, for example).

Further confirmation from the real world:  When the Soviet Union imploded, terrorism took a hit.  It revived when the Islamic Republic of  Iran, working with the reconstituted Russian intelligence services, became the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, and waged war against us.

By now, everybody knows about Iran’s activities in the Middle East and South Asia, from its proxies (Hezbollah, the small army around Mookie al Sadr in Iraq, Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, Taliban) to the Quds Force killers at work in Syria and Lebanon.  We also know about Iranian activities in Latin America, from the massacres in Argentina in the 1990s, to the remarkable spread of Iranian agents, including large numbers from Hezbollah, in recent years, starting in Venezuela.  The Defense Department recently published a helpful study of this worrisome phenomenon.  And we are learning about Iranian activities in Africa:

● Iranian weapons have been pouring into Kenya, and are being used by various murderous militias;

● Iranian ammunition is all over the place, from the Ivory Coast to Nigeria.

● Our ambassador in Yemen stood up the other day and announced that Iran is doing its best to foment civil war in that country.  

And I haven’t even mentioned Mali, where thousands of French soldiers are fighting, and we are providing logistics.  If things go badly, which can always happen, American fighters may join in.

It’s what happens when you lead with your behind, which is Obama’s strategery of choice.  Try this:  “AQIM’s creation of a haven in northern Mali was made possible in part by the fall of Libya’s dictator, Moammar Ghadafi, which unleashed a flow of weapons and fighters from Libya into Mali.”

Just to round out the picture, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals recently put some forgotten facts on the record, concerning Iran’s relationship to the Taliban on the eve of our invasion following 9/11:

Khairkhwa admits that he met with senior Iranian officials several times while serving as Herat’s governor. He does not deny that at one such meeting in January 2000, the participants discussed how to protect Afghanistan from United States intervention. Relying in part on these admissions, the district court found that Khairkhwa participated in another high-level meeting with Iranian officials in early October 2001. Id. at 37–38. The Iranian delegation included the deputy commander of the Iranian Foreign Intelligence Service and the head of the Afghan Department of the Iranian Foreign Intelligence Service. Id. at 37. In anticipation of the U.S.-led military operation, the Iranian officials offered military support for the Taliban’s defense, including anti-aircraft missiles, other unspecified equipment, and free passage for “Arabs” traveling between Iran and Afghanistan. Id. at 37–38. The Taliban delegation also included Abdul Manan Niazi, the governor of Kabul and commander of the Taliban forces who committed atrocities at Mazar-e-Sharif in August 1998. Id. at 37.

The court firmly denied an appeal by Mr. Khairkhwa and some of his comrades to be released from Guantanamo.  And we can all be grateful to Judge Randolph for so carefully pointing out that Iranian support for our enemies goes back quite a ways, indeed to a moment when the conventional wisdom among our most celebrated savants insisted that the Islamic Republic was certainly no friend of Al Qaeda, let alone the Taliban.

As with the Soviet-supported terrorists of an earlier generation, there is enormous reluctance to acknowledge the role of evil regimes.  Our policy makers, journalists, and intelligence experts want to consider the terrorists separately, and treat them as products of local circumstances.

The reason is the same today as it was back then:  we don’t want to tackle the central issue (the USSR then, the Islamic Republic nowadays).  Once again, “realists” and leftists tell us that we must find a way to “resolve our differences” peacefully, because the only alternative is…war.

But the war is on, and there is a better way:  just as we subverted the evil empire by supporting the internal opposition, so the same option exists in Iran, where the overwhelming majority of citizens have cried out for American (non-military) assistance, only to be rebuffed in 2003 by Bush and Powell, and in 2009 and thereafter by Obama and Hillary.

Once again, we should go to the source.  Wouldn’t you love to have the archives of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry and the Revolutionary Guards?  A friendly pro-Western government in Tehran would be pleased to share them with us.

And the global war would suddenly get a lot easier.

Maybe some senator has the gravitas to ask Messrs Kerry, Hagel, and Brennan about these matters.

Faster, please.

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