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Winning Hearts and Minds July 7th, 2008 Way back at the beginning of this war, and continuing through tomorrow, we have debated how to win the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle East. I have always viewed this discussion as important, but perhaps ultimately unknowable, because as Machiavelli loves to remind us, these things are all about winning and losing. The war, not the debate. During the Cold War there was an endless discussion about our enemy, just as there is today. Back then, the main question was: are we fighting a global movement (international communism), and...

Iran, Friend of the Sunni Terrorists (Surprise!) [Michael Ledeen] I guess I've been saying and writing this for more than seven years, but it's always nice to have support, especially when, as in this case, it comes from the general manager of al Arabiya TV, and a columnist in several publications in the Middle East. That is to say, not a neocon. Abdul Rahman al-Rashed states quite categorically: ...Iran, an extremist theocratic Shiite regime with Ahmadinejad at its helm, is orchestrating and funding the activities of extremist Sunnis in the region. The paradox is most striking in the case of...

Ever since World War II, we have been driven by a passionate desire to understand how mass genocide, terror states and global war came about – and how we can prevent them in the future. Above all, we have sought answers to several basic questions: Why did the West fail to see the coming of the catastrophe? Why were there so few efforts to thwart the fascist tide, and why did virtually all Western leaders, and so many Western intellectuals, treat the fascists as if they were normal political leaders, instead of the virulent revolutionaries they really were? Why did...

The Italian Revolution May 1st, 2008 We are in Italy. Sicily, actually. And we are watching something amazing: an Italian revolution. The new Parliament, sworn in yesterday, does not have a single member who calls himself “communist.” That’s the first time since World War II. Gianfranco Fini, the new speaker of the House, announced that the post-war era was over, and he was entirely right. No one knows it better than he, because for most of his adult life he has been called a “fascist,” and scorned by most of the writers, salon hangers-on, and politicians in the country, even...

The Odd Vision of the NY Times Michael Ledeen April 13, 2008 In one of its periodic seizures of narcissism, the New York Times now claims that the American government is working very hard to convince the Iraqi government that Iran is supporting terrorism inside Iraq. As if the Iraqis had not known that. But the Times goes further, arguing that until very recently, Iraqi leaders were actually pro-Iranian. This is like saying that businesses paying protection money to the Mafia are pro-Mafia. It's not only silly, but it flies in the face of recent events, which saw the Iraqi...

Talking Cure Obama’s flawed thinking. By Michael Ledeen April 10, 2008, Senator Barack Obama wants to talk to our Middle Eastern enemies, notably Iran. He can’t imagine a happy resolution of the war without such talks. And he seems to think this desire is something new, maybe even revolutionary. He apparently does not know that it is not at all new, and certainly not revolutionary. It is instead the fully tested “policy” of the United States for the past thirty years, ever since the seizure of power by the mullahs in 1979. We have had high-level and low-level talks, public...

Senator Barack Obama wants to talk to our Middle Eastern enemies, notably Iran. He can’t imagine a happy resolution of the war without such talks. And he seems to think this desire is something new, maybe even revolutionary. He apparently does not know that it is not at all new, and certainly not revolutionary. It is instead the fully tested “policy” of the United States for the past thirty years, ever since the seizure of power by the mullahs in 1979. We have had high-level and low-level talks, public and private talks, talks conducted by diplomats, by spooks, and by...

The Continuing Iran-American War April 5, 2008 Those many pundits and politicians who have insisted on talking about “civil war” in Iraq imagined a sectarian clash, Sunni against Shi’ite, not the recent sort of conflict of radical Shi’ite militias against government troops and police. Meanwhile, on the other side of the sectarian divide, Sunni tribesmen banded together to defeat Sunni terrorists from al Qaeda in Anbar Province, again a seemingly counter-intuitive event. Sunnis and Shi’ites are fighting enemies of their own sects, not one another. What is one to make of it? A big clue to understanding this apparent mystery...

Khamenei is Shooting Craps... Michael Ledeen March 27, 2008 The Shi’ites are killing one another all over Iraq, most notably in Basra. Jules Crittendon, as always, has a fine roundup of the (mis)coverage from the MSM, delivers all the right insults (I particularly enjoyed watching the back of his hand slap the unctious Tony Cordesman) and asks all the right questions. What kicked this off? Who’s fighting whom? Who’s gonna win? Is it good for us or bad for us? The best way to understand these events is to take one little step back, and note that our people are...

Magdi, Ayaan, Salman, and Us. Michael Ledeen March 23, 2008 My friend Magdi Allam, the deputy editor of the Italian newspaper il Corriere della Sera, has converted from Islam to Catholicism and was baptized the night before Easter in a service conducted by the pope in St. Peter’s in Rome. It’s a courageous act, but then Magdi Allam is a brave man. His outspoken criticism of Italian Muslim radicals–especially their support for the Muslim Brotherhood and for Hamas–had already produced threats to his life several years ago, and, ever since, the Italian Government has protected him, his home, and his...

The Circus Is in Tehran Search for meaning in non-elections. March 20, 2008 By Michael Ledeen There were no elections in Iran last Friday, whatever you may read. The “turnout” was shockingly low, even by past standards, as is demonstrated by the obvious panic in Tehran, where the mullahs kept the polls open an extra five hours. This was not, as they said, to make sure the patriotic citizens of the capital could drop their ballots in the box, but because they had to bus the reluctant faithful and the subservient government employees to the election offices, so as to...

Tehran University Demonstrations Michael Ledeen Here is an account of the anti-regime demonstrations in Tehran last week, written by a democracy activist on the ground. I don't know if they have entirely stopped yet. Please note the last lines, the plea that the rest of the world report these events and pay attention to the cause of Iranian people, workers, students, and women. I so wish I had a government that did that, or a candidate who spoke out on their behalf. Here you go: Sunday, Jan. 27, was marked by the third day of protest by Tehran University students...

Vindicating Larry Franklin ELI LAKE January 16, 2007 When President Bush announced the new Iraq strategy Wednesday evening, acknowledging that Iran was effectively at war with us in Iraq by supplying terrorists with advanced improvised explosives, my thoughts turned to Lawrence Franklin. Nearly a year ago, Judge T.S. Ellis III, sentenced this Pentagon Iran analyst to almost 13 years in a federal prison after he pleaded guilty to discussing classified information with two former lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The case, which is thus far the Bush administration's only successful anti-leaking prosecution, illustrates the strategic confusion of...

The Straits of Hormuz January 9, 2008 So now the Iranians have denied “buzzing” American warships. No surprise there; the mullahs always deny any aggressive acts, even when they are caught red-handed. They deny arming, training and guiding terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon. They deny EVER carrying out belligerent acts, even though their armed forces, in uniform, attempted to capture American Special Forces in Iraq in September, 2006. And on and on. The most surprising thing about the Straits of Hormuz event is that anyone is surprised. After all, they’ve been attacking us for nearly 30 years. But that...

At the Foggy Bottom of the Iraq Story December 27, 2007 Michael A. Ledeen The Washington Post provided a luminously clear picture last week of the ongoing, enormously important, battle over the "meaning" of events in the Middle East war, including its own efforts. On Wednesday, December 19 tucked away on the fourteenth page of the front sections, the Post reported the Pentagon's analysis of the recent stunning decrease in attacks against Coalition Forces and Iraqis. Did it mean that Iran--widely viewed as a prime mover in support of terrorist groups in Iraq--had voluntarily cut back on its aggressive role...

The Chinese Economy Hoax and Other Economists' Fables Michael Ledeen A few years ago, when I was a member of something called “The U.S.-China Strategic Review Commission” (or so I remember it), we issued reports on China’s economy, military strategy, and political situation. In each of the first two such reports (I left the Commission before the third came out, and confess that I haven’t kept up with them) we took pains to state that the “official” data issued by the Chinese Government were totally unreliable. Indeed, we stated explicitly that the numbers were simply made up. Now the World...

October 25, 2007, 7:45 a.m. Red Army DreamsYou’re getting colder. By Michael Ledeen If you were Vladimir Putin, what would you think of Iran? You’d worry a lot about it, that’s what. Your own Russia is losing Russians, due to the usual grim demography that characterizes most of Europe. And, like the others, you’ve got a Muslim problem, with surging birthrates both within Russia and all along its borders, from Chechnya to the ‘stans. Lots of those Muslims are under Iranian sway. You know that well, having been trained in, and elevated by, the KGB, which was horrified to...

Why Did Larijani Resign? October 22, 2007 National Review Online Michael Ledeen The mullahologists are all atwitter over the “meaning” of the surprise resignation of one of Iran’s most public officials, chief nuclear negotiator and national-security council chief Ali Larijani. It must mean something, mustn’t it? This is a major figure in the Islamic Republic, who has long harbored presidential ambitions, and has played a key role in some of the regime’s most important policies. He was minister of culture, then head of state broadcasting, then secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. If such a powerful figure steps down...

Dennis Prager show Sep 12, 2007 Half hour interview of Michael Ledeen about Iran. **The single most important thing is for the President and Secretary of State to stand up and say that we are in favor of regime change in Iran. Also - Ledeen says we need to provide: * strike funds for Iranian workers * technological support - laptops, phones, etc so Iranians can communicate with one another and us without censorship and jamming by the regime * we need to broadcast on radio (VOA, etc) as we have done in past with soviets and other countries,: 1)How...

'The Iranian Time Bomb' September 07, 2007 WSJ Book Excerpt Chapter One: The Torture Masters - "At the very least, you could have given me a glass of water. Animals are slaughtered more humanely than this." --Atefeh Rajabi, sixteen years of age, about to be hanged for "adultery," August 15, 2004 "Absolutely, we do have political prisoners. There are those who are in prison for their beliefs." --"Reformist" president Mohammed Khatami, April 28, 2004 In the months following his successful revolution against the shah, the Ayatollah Khomeini consolidated his domestic power through the use of four basic techniques: –The first,...

Tick, Tock, Michael Ledeen on The Iranian Time Bomb September 05, 2007 National Review Online An NRO Q&A Most people…do not realize that, for nearly thirty years, the Iranians continuously attacked us, and, aside from some harsh rhetoric from time to time, we never responded.” So writes NRO contributor and American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Ledeen in his new book The Iranian Time Bomb. The book is an analysis of Iran’s ongoing war with “the Great Satan” and a blueprint for finally fighting back. Ledeen took a few questions on the book and the current scene from National Review Online...

The Iranian Time Bomb - The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction By Michael A. Ledeen The first salvo was the attack on the American Embassy in Tehran in the fall of 1979, leading to the seizure of American hostages, a crisis that lasted 444 days. The war continued with the assassination of American diplomats and military personnel in Europe and North Africa. The latest fronts in that war are in Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. Iran arms, funds, trains, and directs a variety of terror groups, numbering tens of thousands of terrorists, regardless of their religious or ethnic makeup. It...

Biden and Hagel...in 2002 Every U.S. Senator believes he or she should be president. Just listen to them talk, and watch the way they walk; it?s obvious. They?re rarely called to account, but every now and then they write something, and it goes into the record, and then someone googles it out. So take a look at this very statesmanlike op-ed that Biden and Hagel wrote four and a half years ago. Notice they had no clue what would happen after the overthrow of Saddam. Notice that they bought into the Saudi view of life, namely that nothing of merit...

Just Like the Mullahs Taking hostages is just standard operating procedure for Iran. March 27, 2007 National Review Online Michael Ledeen The deep thinkers now torturing themselves for an explanation of the Iranian seizure of 15 British hostages should reread the ancient wisdom contained in the fable of the scorpion and the crocodile. The scorpion is desperate to cross the river, but can?t swim, so he begs the croc to give him a ride. The croc is afraid the scorpion will sting him. The scorpion promises he won?t. The croc gives him the ride. As they get to the far...

The Way We Dealt with the Soviets Is the Way To Deal with Iran By Michael A. Ledeen Posted: Monday, March 12, 2007 ARTICLES Parliamentary Brief (March 2007) Publication Date: March 9, 2007 Of the many errors committed by Western governments and their intelligence services in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, none was so grave as a fundamental error of strategic vision: the failure to recognize we would automatically be involved in a regional war, not simply a battle against the regime of Saddam Hussein. We imagined that Afghanistan was secure and that we could deal with Iraq all...

The Wider War MICHAEL LEDEEN March 3, 2007 (excerpt) "We have decided to fight in one place at a time, secure that area, and then move on. That isn't good enough, because it gives our enemies the luxury of attacking us where, when and how they choose. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan will ever have decent security so long as we only play defense; we have to attack our enemies when we wish, not respond to their initiatives, and their most important operational bases are outside Iraq and Afghanistan." (excerpt) "It doesn't require more boots on the ground or bombing raids....

Beyond Balochistan By Michael Ledeen Among the many peoples who compose Iran, the Baloch are perhaps under the greatest threat, for their “homeland” occupies territory in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and they have long since mastered the arts of both political maneuver and asymmetric warfare against more powerful enemies. The Balochistan People’s Front of Iran, which has claimed credit for several recent attacks on the regime’s security forces in the area, has issued a fascinating and potentially important assessment of these activities. It’s a well written and well argued “lessons learned” from the point of view of an armed resistance...

Iranian Dissident Trapped in Moscow Airport Iranian dissident Zahra Kamalfar has been living with her children under unspeakable conditions in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport for 73 days. A one-time demonstrator against the extremist theocracy with a lengthy prison sentence, she escaped from an Iranian prison when on a two-day furlough to visit her children. BY Michael Ledeen This video documents an all-too common tragedy: Iranian opponents of the regime wandering the world in search of a country willing to let them live in safety. In many ways, it is reminiscent of the plight of the European Jews...

Cognitive Dissonance The Bush administration on Iran. By Michael Ledeen She’s a Renaissance woman, whose talents run from scholarship to music and sport. But in this interview Condoleezza Rice often seems oddly detached from the life-and-death quality of the war against the terror masters. Indeed, she doesn’t even call it a war, and the things she says about it are sometimes striking — headline quality remarks — but more often very peculiar. To begin with, she doesn’t expect us to win this “battle, if you will, or a struggle,” during the Bush presidency. Her mission for the next two years...

It’s notable, I think, that religion — not so long ago pronounced irrelevant by most everyone in proper society — now dominates the global debate. Even a Communist like Hugo Chavez used religious terms to denounce W., perhaps because he is now in a tag team with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who speaks for a theocracy. But despite the fundamental importance of religion, most of our sages and scribblers are poorly equipped to deal with it, as you can see from the awkward coverage of the pope’s speech at Regensberg. It was, as you’d expect from a pope, a religious text, but...

It’s notable, I think, that religion — not so long ago pronounced irrelevant by most everyone in proper society — now dominates the global debate. Even a Communist like Hugo Chavez used religious terms to denounce W., perhaps because he is now in a tag team with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who speaks for a theocracy. But despite the fundamental importance of religion, most of our sages and scribblers are poorly equipped to deal with it, as you can see from the awkward coverage of the pope’s speech at Regensberg. It was, as you’d expect from a pope, a religious text, but...

Michael Rubin The U.S. is losing in Iraq because American politicians and the general public have not decided they want or need to win. Many congressmen look at Iraq through the lens of the 2006 election: They care neither how their words embolden the enemy nor how their grandstanding impacts Iraq. Meanwhile, many commentators have cast accuracy aside to cater to, and cash in on, public ennui. Iraqis are now as pessimistic as they have ever been. Corruption and organized crime run rampant. True, some metrics are positive: Oil production is on the rebound, shops are opening, agricultural production is...

A Window of Opportunity July 20, 2006 National Review Online Michael Ledeen 9/11 happened when Osama bin Laden looked at us, and thought we were ready to be had. We were politically divided, and squabbling over everything. We clearly were not prepared to take casualties in direct combat. The newly elected president seemed unable to make a tough decision. And so Osama attacked, expecting to deliver a decisive blow to our national will, expecting we would turn tail and run, as we had in Somalia, and expecting he would then be free to concentrate his energies on the defeat of...

No one should have any lingering doubts about what’s going on in the Middle East. It’s war, and it now runs from Gaza into Israel, through Lebanon and thence to Iraq via Syria. There are different instruments, ranging from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon and on to the multifaceted “insurgency” in Iraq. But there is a common prime mover, and that is the Iranian mullahcracy, the revolutionary Islamic fascist state that declared war on us 27 years ago and has yet to be held accountable. It is very good news that the White House immediately denounced...

This in from al-Reuters: Iraqi and U.S. troops battled Shi’ite militiamen in a village northeast of Baghdad on Thursday...Iraqi security officials said IRANIAN FIGHTERS HAD BEEN CAPTURED IN THE FIGHTING (emphasis added)...The U.S. military had no immediate comment. In recent days there have been several stories further documenting the Iranian role in the terror war in Iraq, especially in the south, where Tehran has been working assiduously for several years to create a regional Islamic republic. So the al-Reuters report should not be a surprise. But it gives us the opportunity to reflect on three serious questions, none of which...

http://corner.nationalreview.com/print/ Tell the Commandant [Michael Ledeen] I've just sent this letter to General Michael Hagee, the Commandant of the Marine Corps (comrel@hqmc.usmc.mil). You might want to pile on: Dear General Hagee, I'm dismayed by your recent behavior. It seems to me an outrage, and quite possibly illegal to boot, to put Marines in the brig and to shackle them, when no charges have been filed against them. It seems to me an outrage for you to brief the likes of Congressman Murtha before the investigation was complete, and even then you should have told him to wait, to let justice...

“So how exactly do you figure out when something is real, and when it’s a deception?” I was talking via my rickety ouija board with the spirit of James Jesus Angleton, the former chief of CIA counterintelligence, somewhere in the Great Beyond, concerning the much ballyhooed document found in Iraq and published with great gravitas all over the world. Angleton seemed much amused by the document, which he dismissed as a manifest phony. JJA: Well, the assumption about this piece of paper is that it reflects the thinking of at least one important terrorist leader, right? Otherwise it wouldn’t be...

<p>It didn’t take long to start pooh-poohing the significance of eliminating Zarqawi. MSNBC/al-Reuters headline: ‘Zarqawi more myth than Man.’ And of course, the hate-America crowd hinted the ‘timing’ was peculiar (Bush needed a boost in the polls). Zarqawi was a very important man in the terror network and welcomed by the radical Shiite regime in Tehran. he was more than a leader of one faction in a religious war; he promoted religious conflict as a tactic to destabilize Iraq and drive out the Coalition. He and his Iranian backers/masters promoted all kinds of internal Iraqi conflict: Kurds against Arabs, Turkamen against Kurds, anything that worked. The terror masters put aside their differences and made a war plan in which Sunni and Shia, Syrian and Saudi, Iranian and Iraqi cooperated against their common satanic enemy, the United States. Another important fact emerged from the accounts of the attack on Zarqawi: we killed two women in the same house. because they were his key intelligence officers in the jihadist terror organizations, despite endless citations from the Koran demanding their subservience. Theywere important components of the terror headquarters. And second, when our soldiers enter terrorists’ quarters and kill women in the ensuing firefight, it is highly probable the women may be terrorists also. Zarqawi played on a global scale. Reports from Canada recount contacts between the ‘home-grown’ terrorists arrested by the Mounties and Zarqawi: ‘Mississauga News,’ June 7: ‘The arrest of 17 suspects...is said to be the latest stage in dismantling a terrorist network that’s linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi...’).and seem linked to FBI arrests in Atlanta and others in Sarajevo, England, and Denmark. The public announcement a few months ago that Zarqawi was no longer the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, that henceforth the Iraqi Sunni ‘community’ would run the terror war there stated Zarqawi would devote his efforts to the international jihad.</p>

<p>It didn’t take long for the yackers and scribblers to start pooh-poohing the significance of the elimination of Zarqawi. The MSNBC/al-Reuters headline said it all: ‘Zarqawi more myth than Man.’ And of course, the hate-America crowd was hinting that the ‘timing’ was peculiar (Bush needed a boost in the polls), as if killing Zarqawi was just a matter of giving the order, rather than a difficult operation made possible by the great performance of our Special Forces and the active cooperation of Sunni tribal leaders in the Anbar Province, plus the Jordanians, plus the various party leaders in Baghdad.</p>

Torture in Tehran May 20, 2006 National Review Online Michael Ledeen I am sorry to have to post this, a video of the leader of Tehran's bus drivers' organization (it is forbidden to call it a union) after a torture session in an Iranian prison. But it seems otherwise impossible to convince Western leaders that we are confronting a monstrous evil, that seeks to destroy or dominate us by all possible means. The sort of horror you see on this video is repeated every day, sometimes leading to execution, sometimes to further sadism. Secretary Rice: do you really believe...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version April 07, 2006, 5:21 a.m. Your Own Lying Eyes Why aren’t reporters embedded with new Iraqi forces? On March 26, an Iraqi special-forces unit attacked a building on the outskirts of northeast Baghdad, where they had tracked a group of terrorists. They had good reason to do so, because three members of the unit had been kidnapped by the terrorists, and were savagely tortured and killed. Their fingers and toes were cut off, their joints were penetrated with an electric drill, and they were eviscerated while still alive. It later...

February 17, 2006 A Mullah’s-Eye View of the World Iran is acting on its assessment of the West’s strength and resolve. Michael Ledeen Sometime in late November or early December, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gathered his top advisers for an overall strategic review. The atmosphere was highly charged, because Khamenei’s doctors have diagnosed a serious cancer, and do not expect the Supreme Leader to live much more than a year. A succession struggle is already under way, with the apparently unsinkable Hashemi Rafsanjani in the thick of it, even though Khamenei, and his increasingly powerful son Mushtaba, is opposed...

PREPARED TESTIMONY OF DR. MICHAEL A. LEDEEN, RESIDENT SCHOLAR IN THE FREEDOM CHAIR AT THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, TO THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS I am delighted and honored by your invitation to discuss American policy toward Iran, but before I do that, I hope I will be permitted a few personal words in appreciation of the welcome contribution that you, Chairman Hyde, have made to our country and to the tenor of life in Washington. Our national political debate has long been very fractious, and this moment is especially nasty. But you are a rare man, Mr. Chairman....

Michael Ledeem wrote: according to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden finally departed this world in mid-December. The al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Iranians who reported this note that this year's message in conjunction with the Muslim Haj came from his number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, for the first time.

It used to be said that the best hope for an impoverished little country was to declare war on the United States, because the ILC would lose and then receive massive quantities of aid and assistance. Such bits of folk wisdom led to some great comic masterpieces, such as the memorable Peter Sellers movie, The Mouse that Roared, in which the ILC was unlucky enough to win...and then what? Nowadays the process from war to aid and assistance has grown much shorter, because it's no longer necessary to go through the unpleasant business of losing. And if you do have...

Engage! If you want to win the debate, win the war. November 23, 2005 More than three years ago, prior to the liberation of Iraq, I lamented that our great national debate on the war against terrorism was the wrong debate, because it was "about using our irresistible military might against a single country in order to bring down its leader, when we should be talking about using all our political, moral, and military genius to support a vast democratic revolution to liberate the peoples of the Middle East from their tyrannical rulers. That is our real mission, the essence...

In response to Iran's call for the elimination of Israel, Wednesday evening in Rome, thousands, probably tens of thousands, will demonstrate in support of the Jewish state. The demonstration has been organized by Giuliano Ferrara, the larger-than-life editor of the feisty daily newspaper il Foglio, and the demonstrators will range from members of some Italian Islamic organizations to foreign minister Giancarlo Fini (long a bete noire of America's "leading" newspapers and networks), just back from a trip to the Middle East. It takes courage to stand up publicly for Israel against the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, especially in contemporary...

This is what we're up against. It is a frenetic network of fanatical terrorists, supported by a group of mad mullahs hell-bent on our destruction. Forget about the microanalysis of the Iraqi 'insurgency.' This is not primarily a war conducted by angry Baathist remnants of Saddam's bloody regime; it's much bigger than that, and the epicenter of the whole thing is in Tehran, and its ideology is brutally enunciated by Ahmadi Nezhad. Britain, France, and Italy are at least expelling some of the jihadis, along with some of the most fanatical religious leaders. We are not, so far as one...

Now that the president has (finally) conceded that (most of) our enemies in the Middle East are actually fanatical Muslims, he should realize that his initial intuition about the war on terrorism--that we are fighting tyrannical regimes and their murderous footsoldiers--was correct. And this, in turn, should encourage him to unleash our greatest weapon: the people who live there. The tyrannical Islamofascists obviously despise and dread their people; otherwise they wouldn’t be constantly seeking new ways to make sure there is no independent thought and certainly no independent action. All those madrasas, for example, are extended experiments in what used...

Our policymakers have thus far utterly failed to design anything worthy of the name of an Iran policy, even though it is arguably the single most important challenge we face. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley recently answered a question about Iran policy by saying that we did indeed have a policy, but we hadn’t yet written it down. This is reminiscent of the old riddle of whether a falling tree makes a sound if no one is there to hear it: can there be a policy if nobody can define it? Lacking any defined policy, we can only judge the...