October 21, 2009 | The National Review

The Problem of Evil

Since 9/11, Michael Ledeen has been warning that this war against America was never about Afghanistan or Iraq, but has always been a regional war, with malefactors are up to no good around the world. In his book, Accomplice to Evil, he again focuses on Iran, but also on the historic nature and sources of the evil that drives America's enemies. Ledeen, now Freedom Scholar at the Foundation of the Defense of Democracies, discusses the new book with National Review Online's Kathryn Jean Lopez.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Is there still an Axis of Evil?

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Yes, and it's growing. It lost Iraq, but now counts Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Russia.

LOPEZ: Are we an “Accomplice to Evil”?

LEDEEN: That's the whole point of my book. We have once again failed to see evil – Iran is the prime example – when it was right in front of us, and we have deliberately blinded ourselves to the war that the Islamic Republic has been waging against us for 30 years.

LOPEZ: How do you know it's a “war against the West”?

LEDEEN: Because they announce it and wage it.

LOPEZ: Why don't others seem to know it?

LEDEEN: There are several reasons. First, we like to believe in the (false) Enlightenment theory of human nature: We are all the same, and we are all basically good. Machiavelli is more accurate: “Man is more inclined to do evil than to do good.” Second, to recognize Iran for what it is would demand that we react, and our political leaders don't want to do that. Fighting back against Iran is difficult and costly. No American president from Carter to Obama has been willing to take it on. Third, the Iranians are very clever and have managed to convince all those presidents that a “grand bargain” was in the offing.

LOPEZ: Is it possible to oppose Israel and/or Israeli actions without being “evil”?

LEDEEN: Why the quotation marks? It is evil to oppose the existence of Israel, but there are certainly legitimate criticisms.

LOPEZ: What is Islamofascism? Why “fascism”?

LEDEEN: If you look at the scholarly literature on fascism, you will find – in books written in the 1950s and 1960s – that there is a variety of fascism called “clerical fascism.” The textbook example was the “Legion of the Archangel Michael” in Romania. Jim Gregor at Berkeley and the late Laurent Murawiec have each written a lot about contemporary versions of fascism, including Muslim movements. I wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal back in 1979, before Khomeini seized power, calling him a theocratic fascist. I think that was right.

LOPEZ: How are Khamenei and Ahmadinejad “Hitler's heirs”?

LEDEEN: Both because they want to destroy the Jews, and, especially, the Jewish state, and because they want to create a global empire that will dominate and enslave the inferior peoples. In the Iranian case, “inferior” is a religious category, not racial, but that isn't a very important distinction to their victims.

LOPEZ: What do Rwanda and Cambodia have to do with Iran?

LEDEEN: They are examples – Accomplice to Evil is full of them – of our unwillingness to see evil and do something about it, thereby becoming accomplices to it.

LOPEZ: In your last book, you said there was an Iranian “Time Bomb.” How much time do we have left?

LEDEEN: If that question refers to Iranian nukes, I don't know. I'm surprised they don't have them already, frankly. Maybe some day we'll learn that there was a brilliant covert sabotage operation against Iran, or maybe some day we'll marvel at the Iranians' incompetence. But the Iranian bomb has already exploded, long since. They've been killing Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, both directly and via proxies. And we either play defense or pretend we can negotiate an end to it.

LOPEZ: Can there be any negotiating with Iran?

LEDEEN: That's like the old joke where one guy asks, “Do you believe in baptism?” And the other guy says, “Believe in it? Of course; I've seen it done!” Everybody has negotiated with Iran, every president since Carter has done it; contrary to the conventional wisdom, George W. Bush did it avidly, and Obama's carrying on the tradition. The simple answer to the question is that, as Swift said, you can't reason a man out of something he didn't reason himself into in the first place. We're dealing with true believers who believe Allah, through the Twelfth Imam, has put them on earth to destroy the infidels. And we're the prime target. You're not going to talk them out of that.

LOPEZ: What lessons should the Obama administration be taking from the Bush administration vis-à-vis Iran?

LEDEEN: Defend the United States against this evil enemy. If you want to talk, go right ahead, but you have to fight back.

LOPEZ: So what can and should we do about Iran?

LEDEEN: We should support the Iranian revolution, which just a few weeks ago put tens of millions of people in the streets to demand an end to this evil regime. It's relatively rare that a policy is at once strategically sound and morally right, but this is one of those cases.

LOPEZ: How did we misunderstand Khomeini and why does it matter today?

LEDEEN: We deluded ourselves into believing that he was a “religious man,” and therefore basically good. Andrew Young, Carter's U.N. ambassador at the time, called him “some kind of saint.” That delusion has echoes today, when some argue that we've really misunderstood the mullahs. Obama seems to believe some version of that, even though he surely knows by now that these men of faith are killing our guys daily.

LOPEZ: How dangerous is Hugo Chávez's friendship with Ahmadinejad?

LEDEEN: It's extremely dangerous. All that oil money goes into the pool of funds for terrorism, and Chávez has provided a base for Hezbollah in our hemisphere. You can be sure that Venezuela is now part of a global money-laundering network that makes it harder for us to keep track of terrorist finances. And there is now nuclear cooperation as well. Iran helps Chávez advance his dream of dominating Latin America, and Venezuela helps Khamenei and Ahmadinejad advance their plan to dominate the world.

LOPEZ: “It is . . . only a matter of time before Iranian-sponsored terrorists strike within the United States.” Why hasn't it happened yet?

LEDEEN: I'm not sure it hasn't. Remember that the Justice Department indicted al-Qaeda back in the '90s, and the indictment stipulated that Iran was a supporter. Moreover, FBI director Moeller has said publicly that Hezbollah terrorists are crossing our southern border. We regularly expel Iranian “diplomats” from New York when they act suspiciously (like taking pictures of tunnels, bridges, and subway stations in the middle of the night). They are certainly here.

LOPEZ: For about two weeks we all paid attention to Iran this summer. Are they still protesting? Are they still Tweeting?

LEDEEN: Press coverage is atrocious, in part because many foreign correspondents have been thrown out of Iran. Those that are there are very careful about what they write, and they are pretty much limited to Tehran. Yes, they are still protesting. Yes they are still Tweeting (try #iranelection, for example). And there's another monster demonstration called for November 4.

Permit me one brag, please. I wrote Accomplice to Evil about a year ago, when hardly anyone thought there was any hope for democratic revolution in Iran. But I argued it was all ready to happen. Now it's undeniable. So I think my analysis was right. Jim Woolsey thinks it was remarkably prescient.

LOPEZ: What has new media technology done for democracy activists/dissenters in Iran?

LEDEEN: It's helped them get information, both about foreign fecklessness (so far as I know, no Western government has even contacted the opposition leaders of the Green Path of Hope movement) and about events inside Iran. The regime is frantically trying to shut down cell phones, Internet, and above all the “social networking” like Twitter and Facebook. We could and should do more to help the people communicate with one another.

Issues:

Iran