Iran: Exposing Appeasement

Last week I said that the Baker-Hamilton report 'may be useful as a microcosm - or a Rohrshcach - of the Iraq debate. Perhaps, too, it will give the public a chance to consider, and reject, the empty and failed policies of the past.'

Michael Ledeen writing at AEI seems to be thinking along the same lines:

The Surrender Commission Report underlines the basic truth about the war, which is that we cannot possibly win it by fighting defensively in Iraq alone. So long as Iran and Syria have a free shot at us and our Iraqi allies, they can trump most any military tactics we adopt, at most any imaginable level of troops. Until the publication of the report this was the dirty secret buried under years of misleading rhetoric from our leaders; now it is front and center. Either deal effectively with Iran, or suffer a humiliating defeat, repeating the terrible humiliation of Lebanon in the Eighties when Iran and Syria bombed us out of the country (thereby providing the template for the terror war in Iraq).

The Surrender Commission members do not shrink from humiliation. They want American troops out of Iraq, and therefore they advocate appeasing the Syrians and Iranians. But a considerable number of Americans don’t want to be humiliated by the clerical fascists in Tehran, and I think it’s fair to say the recommendations have largely bombed, despite the flattering photos in Vogue, and the fawning attention from the MSM, including Time’s respectful parroting of (what they must know is) mullah disinformation, and reporting, with an obvious tone of sadness, that the Baker/Hamilton call for talks is more popular in Tehran than in America.

Time Magazine, by the way, most certainly does know what it is doing. In January I posted on Time's article by Azadeh Moaveni about Iranian dissidents. Moaveni's article itself was quite good, but as I noted at the time, a link that was meant to go to Regime Change Iran (I know this for a fact because I confirmed it by telephone with Doctor Zin) somehow appeared as "regimechange.blogspot.com" in the article - a left-wing blog, and not an Iranian opposition blog.

The error remains uncorrected to this very day. I know this because I just went back to the Time article, and there it is. I do not believe this happened by accident, but regardless of that, I contacted Time by e-mail several times requesting that they fix the error. Doctor Zin told me he had contacted Time as well. So even if the error was an accident, its perpetuation is not. Well-meaning journalists may write what they please, but what gets printed is up to the editors, as the neoconservatives interviewed by David Rose for Vanity Fair found out the hard way. (My post is here.)

Back to Ledeen.

Most Americans are disgusted at the thought of an American president kissing the Supreme Leader’s turban, as are Jim Woolsey and Jon Kyl, who put it very nicely in an open letter to President Bush. Talking to the mullahs is wrong for many reasons, they say:

First, such negotiations will legitimate that increasingly dangerous regime and reward its violent and hostile actions against us and our allies. We should rather endeavor to discredit and undermine this regime. Second, such a course will embolden our enemies who already believe they are sapping our will to resist them. Third, such an initiative would buy further time for the Iranian mullahs to obtain and prepare to wield weapons of mass destruction. Fourth, entering into negotiations with Tehran’s theocrats will create the illusion that we are taking useful steps to contend with the threat from Iran--when, in fact, we would not be. As a result, other, more effective actions--specifically, steps aimed at encouraging regime change in Iran--will not be pursued.

The ideological ground in America is shifting in many ways that cannot be reduced to red and blue numbers. The American people do not want to go back to the world of September 10. Ledeen concludes: '... Iran is waging war against us and our allies throughout the region, and a real debate about Iran may, at long last, force us to face the real (regional) strategic problem. If that happens, we can take the Woolsey/Kyl letter as a starting point for a serious war-winning policy, which must have as its basic mission the removal of the regimes in Tehran and Damascus.'

This is what I've been saying all along, and I think that when Americans are conftonted with naked appeasement, they will be disgusted. This is part of a national awakening to the media's lies, and to the truth of what is at stake in the Middle East. It's an awakening to act on our own highest values. As Ledeen is fond of saying: Faster, please.