Kudos to Michael Ledeen for managing to stuff ten pounds of the intellectual offal that passes for neocon thought into the five pound sausage casing the Wall Street Journal provided. Srsly: Ledeen has squeezed nearly every moronic analogy, utterly batshit conviction, shopworn trope, and demagogic twistification that neocons have had about foreign policy in the last eleventy years into this column. Pretty much the only thing missing is a claim that one or all of the many Hitlers of the Muslim world possess WMDs. But then Ledeen already used that one to great effect, didn’t he?
The first half of the essay is about the history of Western responses to Evil — how stupid liberals refused to see the awfulness that was Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin until it was almost too late. Then, Ledeen tells us, after these menaces were vanquished, much study was devoted to the traits they had in common, so that future Hitlers would be recognized and crushed, hopefully while still in embryo, before they could seriously harm their own societies much less our own. Now having the tools to recognize Evil, stupid liberals of today have no excuse in being deaf to the flagrantly Hitlerian strains of “the familiar rhetoric and actions of movements and regimes – from Hezbollah and al Qaeda to the Iranian Khomeinists and the Saudi Wahhabis – who swear to destroy us and others like us.” Ledeen, his eyes narrowing, is telling us that it’s 1938 all over again, the Muslims being the moral and military equivalent of the Axis powers (with the ideological rigor of the Soviet Union, to boot) but where appeasers of the past could perhaps plead a mitigating ignorance in dealing with Evil Regimes that were unlike any before in history, appeasers of the 2000s must have other reasons for their… umm, treason. And he’s gonna tell us about them.
One is the deep-seated belief that all people are basically the same, and all are basically good. Most human history, above all the history of the last century, points in the opposite direction. But it is unpleasant to accept the fact that many people are evil, and entire cultures… can fall prey to evil leaders and march in lockstep to their commands.
Appeasement because of a hippie, faggoty, Quakery faith in human decency. Appeasement because of a girlish aversion to necessary ruthlessness. Appeasement because of an insistence on reason, instead of the proper course of adopting the enemy’s fanaticism.
This is not merely a philosophical issue, for to accept the threat to us means – short of a policy of national suicide – acting against it. As it did in the 20th century, it means war. It means that, temporarily at least, we have to make sacrifices on many fronts: in the comforts of our lives, indeed in lives lost, in the domestic focus of our passions – careers derailed and personal freedoms subjected to unpleasant and even dangerous restrictions – and the diversion of wealth from self-satisfaction to the instruments of power. All of this is painful; even the contemplation of it hurts.
Appeasement because liberals are too squeamish to entertain — let alone take — the necessary and painful steps to destroy the enemy. Translated from the wingnutese, what Ledeen is saying is that liberals are selfish and pussified for not agreeing to shred the Constitution, send kids off to die, or accept war-instigated economic depression for the sake of a (greatly expanded) War on Terra.
Then there is anti-Semitism… There is little if any condemnation [of it] from the West, and virtually no action against it, suggesting, at a minimum, a familiar Western indifference to the fate of the Jews.
Appeasement because liberals are anti-Semites and, no doubt, huge fans of the Holocaust.
Finally, there is the nature of our political system. None of the democracies adequately prepared for war before it was unleashed on them in the 1940s. None was prepared for the terror assault of the 21st century. The nature of Western politics makes it very difficult for national leaders – even those rare men and women who see what is happening and want to act – to take timely, prudent measures before war is upon them….
Then, as now, the initiative lies with the enemies of the West. Even today, when we are engaged on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little apparent recognition that we are under attack by a familiar sort of enemy, and great reluctance to act accordingly. This time, ignorance cannot be claimed as an excuse. If we are defeated, it will be because of failure of will, not lack of understanding. As, indeed, was almost the case with our near-defeat in the 1940s.
Finally, appeasement because of the goddamned democratic system we have. If only we had a system where a strong man — you might even say as steel man — could sweep aside public opinion and a slow-moving bureaucracy, ignore dissent and parliamentary obstacles in order to freely exercise his will, then we’d triumph over our freedom-hating, democracy-loathing enemies!
