The Mullahs’ Murder of Americans

The Mullahs’ Murder of Americans

 by Jamie Glazov

 

Michael Ledeen sheds light on how Iran kills our troops – and why nothing is said or done about it....


Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Michael A. Ledeen, a noted political analyst and a Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. He is the author of The Iranian Time Bomb, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership and Tocqueville on American Character, and he is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal. His latest book is Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West.

FP: Michael A. Ledeen, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.

I would like to talk to you today about how Iran is killing our troops and why nobody is really doing anything about it.

Share with us what is going on.


Ledeen: They have been killing Americans for 30 years. That’s what the chants of “Death to America!” are all about. From the Hezbollah suicide attacks on the US Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in the early 1980s, to the use of Iranian-made roadside bombs and mines in Iraq and Afghanistan by terrorists trained in Iran, to armed assaults against American troops by members of the Quds force, Iran is at war with us.
 
Every so often a military leader calls attention to this fact, but no publication, and no political leader, makes it a central theme of our national debate. Why? Because if you accept the fact that the Iranian regime is killing Americans almost every day, you are compelled to do something about it. And hardly anyone is willing to do anything effective. The only evil action by the mullahs that interests the West is the nuclear program, even though they have demonstrated very clearly that they don’t need nukes to murder and maim thousands of Americans.

FP: Why did Iran declare war on us? Why is it waging war on us? Is there anything we can do to get them to stop?

Ledeen: Declaring war on us is at the heart of the Iranian Revolution; war on the modern world was Khomeini’s dream. That’s why he called us The Great Satan. I don’t think we can talk them out of their core values. As Jonathan Swift said, you can’t reason a man out of something he didn’t reason himself into in the first place.


FP: Can you expand for us a bit on the process by which Iran kills our troops today? You mention Iranian-made roadside bombs and mines in Iraq and Afghanistan and armed assaults against American troops by members of the Quds force. Tell us some more what’s happening here.


Ledeen: Thousands of Americans have been killed and wounded.  Those who plant the mines and bombs–the IEDs and the EFPs–are often trained by Iranians in Iran.  And many of the suicide bombers are also trained by Iranians.

FP: Let us suppose someone like Newt Gingrich becomes President in 2012 and gets the courage to make this a central theme of our national debate. He calls you and says, “Michael, what can and should my administration do about this?” What do you tell him?


Ledeen: Support the Iranian opposition. Talk to them, ask them what they need, and then get it to them.


FP: What are the prospects, do you think, of Iranians overthrowing the tyranny that oppresses them? In other words, can a revolution against the Mullahs succeed in the near future?


Ledeen: Yes it can succeed. The overwhelming majority of Iranians want it to succeed, and it would have succeeded long since, IMHO, if the opposition had had some outside help. But no Western country has helped.


FP: Your thoughts on Obama?


Ledeen: I think of him like a typical Ivy League undergraduate, gulled by political correctness, who doesn’t understand American greatness, and instead blames us for most of the world’s problems and injustices.  He wants to cut America down to size.


FP: Looking back at your career and experiences, what are some of the key lessons you have learned that you think are crucial for an American administration to absorb and act upon?


Ledeen: There’s a lot to learn, and I’ve only learned a small part of it.  But the main thing is what Machiavelli says to leaders:  you will be judged on whether you win or lose, and everybody hates a loser.  Unfortunately we have a generation of Western leaders who prefer to be nice losers.  The other big thing is that the world looks to America for guidance; there is no escape from our role as a superpower…like it or not.

FP: Your perspective on Russia’s role vis-à-vis Iran?


Ledeen: Hah! My favorite mystery. There is no doubt that the Russians played a significant role in the creation of the Islamic Republic’s terror apparatus and intelligence services. That said, we (or at least I) don’t know nearly enough. I can’t believe that the Russians want the mullahs to have nuclear weapons; they know that the ayatollahs are constantly stirring up jihad in the Balkans. So, for example, when I hear about this computer “worm” I wonder if it’s the Russians…I think the Russians work very hard to get control over at least part of the Islamic Republic, but the Iranians do not trust them, and so there’s a kind of “balance of paranoia.” It’s a great subject. Ask Pacepa about it.


FP: Your thoughts on the Left’s behavior in our terror war in general?


Ledeen: What can I say?  Too many of them want us to lose.


FP: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about our civilization’s will and capacity to defend itself from radical Islam?

Ledeen: I’m an optimist by nature, as my father was. I cannot imagine losing to a group that is locked in the 12th century. We are more adaptive, and stronger by orders of magnitude. They will lose every major battle, and eventually they will lose standing with the umma. When Iran finally comes down, the whole world will change for the better, and we will have a much easier time of it. It’s maddening to see that our leaders don’t seem to see the war whole, and don’t agree that regime change in Tehran is the best single stroke in the war against the terror masters. As it has been from day one. Somebody said that.

FP: Michael A. Ledeen, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.


Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He is the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and is the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. His new book is United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror. Email him at jamieglazov11@gmail.com

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Psycho in Town

Psycho in Town

by Rich Trzupek



Ahmadinejad enlightens the UN about his longing for the return of the 12th Imam — and his solidarity with 9/11 Truthers.



The United Nations played host to the latest version of the president of Iran’s road show yesterday. This was a subtly different Ahmadinejad than we’ve seen addressing world leaders in New York heretofore. His trademark mixture of insufferable smugness and blustering defiance was on display to be sure, but this speech was more about the former than the latter and that’s something of a change. It appears that there’s no need to spew much vitriol at the president of the United States any longer, for the leader of the Great Satan has rendered himself all but impotent without much Muslim assistance. Why would Ahmadinejad waste his breath denouncing or threatening the paper tiger currently occupying the White House?
 
Instead, Ahmadinejad used the global stage that the UN provided in order to show the world that nobody understands the problems confronting humanity better than he does. Religious scholar, champion of the poor, master of geo-politics, economic guru – these are but some of the many facets that define the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and if you have any doubt about that, just ask him.

Ahmadinejad, if not quite declaring Islam victorious, seems more confident of the final outcome than ever. He said that the era of capitalism is coming to an end, after “one hundred years of domination.” Selling Adam Smith short by a couple of centuries, Ahmadinejad would – in typical fashion – later contradict his confused understanding of world history by asserting that the Western powers were responsible for ravaging the rest of the world through colonialism and slavery. The fact that colonialism and slavery were features of Western societies before the “one hundred years of domination” seemed to be entirely lost on him.

The solution to the world’s problems, he declared, was to turn to God, a sentiment that tens of millions of Americans would agree with in the broadest of terms. But of course when Ahmadinejad speaks of God, he’s really referring to the only acceptable version of the Deity that Islam tolerates. He parroted the Qur’an’s assertion that the people who refuse to accept the God of Muhammad deny the most obvious of truths because of selfishness and greed. Every prophet was confronted by similar unbelievers, were they not? Moses had Pharaoh and Jesus had the Pharisees. What’s the analogous group when it comes to Muhammad? Well, that would be us: we stubborn, egotistical Westerners who can’t bring ourselves to understand that God appointed a succession of prophets and that it is our duty to keep up with the program.

He asked the UN to proclaim 2011 the year of nuclear disarmament, and even helpfully provided a slogan: “Nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none.” The first half of that couplet has a certain attraction, especially in the third world countries desperate for cheap power. But, it makes no sense in a nation like Iran, where the billions that Ahmadinejad has invested in his nuclear program could have provided so much cheap power if it were used to turn its vast oil supplies into domestic electricity and gas. The Iranian president is as comfortable with the Big Lie as any Democrat and he repeated it once again: his nation has no interest in building nuclear weapons. The sanctions that the UN has imposed as a result of his nuclear ambitions clearly chafed however, no matter how ineffective those measures have been. Ahmadinejad chided the UN for maintaining its five nation security council and mused about how much more effective the body would be if only Iran had veto power too.

Though he tried very hard to appear statesmanlike, Ahmadinejad couldn’t help but lapse into being Ahmadinejad, which is to say that the crazy bubbled over at times. Talking about the 9-11 attacks for example, he declared that there was little evidence that Islamic terrorists were involved. Instead, he revealed his version of the true nature of the attacks:

[S]ome segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.

The supposition that the American economy was in decline in 2001, or that toppling the Twin Towers, attacking the Pentagon and crashing an airliner into a field in Pennsylvania was the formula to fix our supposed fiscal ills is certainly a unique view of history. How those attacks strengthened our position among our tenuous allies in the Arab world, or how 9/11 “saved” Israel are two equally mysterious concepts. The events of September 11, 2001 emboldened Islamic fanatics rather than cow them. And the only people who benefited economically from the attacks were those Muslims “in the know” who sold short on United and American stocks. The rest of us dealt with a recession.

The “plight” of the Palestinian people is never far from the Iranian president’s aggrieved heart, and he once again cried crocodile tears over their fate before the UN. Ahmadinejad doesn’t care about Palestinian refugees any more than he cares about the tens of millions of his countrymen wallowing in poverty in Iran while the mullahs live like royalty. Palestinian refugees are however useful pawns that can be played as he pursues his ultimate goal of destroying Israel. He said that Palestinians are being “deprived of food, water and medicine in their own homeland,” although he did not complain that Hamas or Hezbollah lacks for AK-47s, mortars or RPGs. Ahmadinejad rather stuck to the script, even if he didn’t call for the outright destruction of Israel this time. Instead, he said that Palestinians should be awarded jurisdiction over their “homeland,” which sounds a little nicer than “nuke Israel,” even if it achieves the same result.

Ahmadinejad’s true feelings and motivations were revealed on the cover page which accompanied the official transcript of his remarks. This quote appears on it: “Oh, God; hasten the arrival of Imam Al-Mahdi and grant him good health and victory and make us his followers and those who attest to his rightfulness.” Shia’ Muslims believe that Al-Mahdi is the legendary “twelfth Imam” who has been in hiding for over a millennium, but who will reappear to lead the righteous to victory over evil when the world is in chaos. Appealing to Al-Mahdi is therefore to wish for chaos – a world in flames which only the ultimate holy-warrior can rescue. Ahmadinejad is a fanatic who longs for that kind of righteous victory, but his contradictory, disturbing and delusional remarks before the UN have revealed once again that he yearns for the chaos that must proceed Islam’s ultimate triumph.


**Write to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at http://www.president.ir/en/ **

The Beslan Massacre

The Beslan Massacre

  by Bosch Fawstin

It’s been six years since the Beslan Massacre – what some have referred to as Russia’s 9/11 – where over 1,000 men, women and children were taken hostage at a school for three days. In the end, nearly 400 of them were murdered, 156 of whom were children. The particular details of this atrocity have the power to silence me, so I’m going to step aside and make way for the words of once innocent children who have forever been scarred by Islam’s jihad.

For more, I refer you to this harrowing documentary.