Irony or lunacy?

Inspired by Glenn Greenwald's examination of the nutcases that want to bomb Iran, Digby digs up an article from 2003 by Michael Ledeen at the National Review. An excerpt:

So the French and the Germans struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we'll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.
Michael Ledeen is actually taken seriously on by many Republicans and members of the current administration. His grand conspiracy theory is especially ironic, considering today's news:

Three suspects allegedly trained in Pakistan by an Al Qaeda-linked group have been arrested for plotting massive car-bomb attacks on US troops and other Americans near US military bases and German airports, authorities said yesterday...

The trio in Germany allegedly planned simultaneous strikes on three soft targets that might have included nightclubs, bars, restaurants, or airports frequented by American soldiers and tourists, according to German and US law enforcement officials. Because the confiscated materials could have produced the equivalent of about 1,000 pounds of TNT, the casualty toll could have far exceeded the transport bombings that killed 52 people in London in 2005 and 191 people in Madrid in 2004, officials said.

I continue to hold out hope that people like Ledeen are actually engaged in a long-term punking of the right-wing media (National Review, FrontPageMag, WorldNetDaily, etc.). Perhaps they were inspired by Alan Sokal and are engaged in a long-term project to destroy right-wing credibility on matters of national security.

Of course this would have to be an extremely wide-spread Sokal-conspiracy, involving Douglas MacKinnon as well, who has his own crazy ramblings.

5 comments:

Jay@Soob said...

From the linked article:

"If the United States is to win the war on terror, regime change in Iran is a must. How it is to be done can be debated. That it must be done cannot be doubted. Michael Ledeen performs an invaluable service by making that crystal clear."

Right, because the last two Islamic terror attacks on US soil were directly funded and designed by the Iranian terrorist regime, right? Sunni-Arab-Salafist terrorists hail from Shia-Persian-terrorist state of Iran, afterall. Nothing worse than a wahabist-Shia-Sunni-Persian-Arab-terrorist, I always say.

Adrian said...

Well we used to have monolithic Communism, now we have monolithic Islamic terrorism. Much easier than bothering to read stuff and figure out what bin Ladin, etc., actually think.

Jay@Soob said...

Indeed the little details of driving philosophy, cultural identity, history and ultimate goal aren't important. We've got the next Big Bad Enemy. Roll out those F-22's!

Remember General Decker in the film Mars Attacks!?

Anonymous said...

A friend just sent me this -- not an article that gives me great faith in Leeden.

Sorry, but you'll have to look it up yourself.

The Trouble to Come
By Arthur Herman
Wall Street Journal
September 7, 2007

Cheers,

Eli

Adrian said...

Can't find the article - WSJ is really obnoxious about requiring subscriptions to view anything on their site.