|
CounterPunch
March 13,
2003
A $25 Million Finders Fee?
Ledeen's Big
Score
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
David Frum had some good news for Michael Ledeen
in the March 4 edition of his National Review Online diary.
"Michael Ledeen has earned his $25
million after all. TIME reports that members of bin Laden's family
found refuge in Iran after 9/11, though it insists (despite Michael)
that the Evil One himself continues to hide in unpoliced areas
of Pakistan."
That could be true. Who can say? That's
the problem with what Washington called "foreign entanglements";
they eventually become indistinguishable, and the inevitable
result is that every country in the world is an adversary. Ledeen
has a habit of finishing columns with reminders that America
is under mortal threat by "murderous mullahs" in Iran,
and therefore he is an important cog in the machine facilitating
direct US control of Southwest Asia. Frum comes about as close
as one can in polite society to actually saying that when he
says the following:
"Remember how after 9/11 we were
treated to a whole flood of expertise all aimed at convincing
us that it was impossible that the various terror-states could
cooperate? Sunni Muslims, we were told, don't cooperate with
Shiites, secularists don't cooperate with religious extremists,
and so on and on and on. But nobody seems to have informed the
Shiite Revolutionary Guard that it cannot cooperate with al Qaeada.
It seems to be cooperating with a will. So can we hear, please,
fewer glib assertions that al Qaeda would never, ever cooperate
with Iraq?"
"Cooperating with a will",
runs Frum's phrase, as if there is any other way to cooperate.
It never occurs to Frum that true international cooperation stems
from the ability to believe that there are shared goals. Perhaps
that's because Frum, Ledeen, and others believe that there is
no difference between convincing a party that the US shares its
interests and the US paying that party off for the sake of superficial
compliance.
Or, better still, for the sake of appearance.
If the Bulgarian leadership gets paid enough, they appear to
be allies. Same with the Qataris and the Kuwaitis, and Spain's
President Lopez, who looked more like a hostage than a head of
state when he shared a stage with Bush last month to endorse
the Iraqi operation.
A trickle-down approach to coalition
building if I've ever seen one. Buy off the elites, let them
enforce the would-be international consensus. Let the people
of the less significant nations know that the US has every right
to use their resources for causes they violently oppose. This
isn't your father's conservatism. Is it?
Such lofty philosophical concerns really
don't matter to men like David Frum, however. Frum asserts that
Ledeen has earned his $25 million, and one has to suppose he's
right. If Ledeen gets his way and the US military goes into Iran
for regime change, the profits for US contractors undoubtedly
will dwarf what Ledeen has made for spinning the myth of the
murderous mullahs.
That $25 million? A finder's fee, really.
Ledeen found a country on which he could focus neocon ire and
then found a pretext for it. If Ledeen's words are heeded, and
the US military turns Iran into a battlefield, then his paymasters
likely will conclude that the aforementioned sum would be a bargain
at twice the price.
ANTHONY GANCARSKI is a regular contributor to CounterPunch, and
accepts emails at anthony.gancarski@attbi.com
Yesterday's
Features
Bill and Kathleen Christison
On
the Road to Iraq: First Stop Amman
Uri Avnery
An Approaching Emergency
Ray Close
A CIA
Analyst on Forging Intelligence
Michael Neumann
An
Unfounded Rush to Cynicism: a Rebuttal of Perry Anderson
Gary Leupp
Bush's
"Press" Conference
Kurt Nimmo
Perle's Slurs: Smearing Sy Hersh
Terry Jones
Bush
Goes in for the Kill
CounterPunch Wire
Vietnam 2 Pre-Flight Check
Alexander Cockburn
What Will the US Find If It Invades Iraq?
Robert Fisk
Blix
Undermines Bush War Plan
Website of the Day
The
Blix Report
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax--Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
Take a Bite Out of Phil Knight's Bottom Line: Buy No Sweat Apparel!
March 8 /
9, 2003
Edward Said
Who's
In Charge?
Bruce Jackson
Elegy
for Two Giraffes and a Zebra
Perry Anderson
The Casuistries of Peace and
War
Joanne Mariner
Patriot
Act II's Attack on Punishment
William Lind
A Warning from Clausewitz on 4th Generation Warfare
Sam Husseini
Why
So Long for Iraq to Comply? Follow the Policy
Forrest Hylton
Business as Usual in Bolivia?
David Lindorff
Race and the Death Penalty in Pennsylvania
Ben Tripp
Is There
a Eurologist in the House?
Anthony Gancarski
W's Personal Jesus
Jon Elmer
An Interview with William Blum
Douglas Valentine
The Clash of the Icons
Norman Madarasz
Radical Politics and the Writer:
Maurice Blanchot
Gordon Solberg
There's
Got to be a Better Way
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Engel, Bernard
Weekend Website
The
White House
February 28,
2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Meet
the New Yorker's Chief Hack: Jeffrey Goldberg
Saul Landau
Now
It's Personal
Michael Neumann
A Plea for Hysteria
Karima Bennoume
The UN: Tool for Peace or War?
The Black
Commentator
The Rev. Sharpton and the Soul of the Democrats
Jennifer Loewenstein
Don't Turn Off the War
Richard Levins
Cuba's Biological Weapons: Why the World Needs More of Them
M. Shahid Alam
Is This a Clash of Civilizations?
Clay Conrad
Juries
and Judges: What's Relevant?
Ben Tripp
Speaking in Tongues: a Guide to Gibberish in the Age of Bush
Eliot Katz
To Declare Preemptive War is to Declare a Bankrupt Imagination
Kurt Nimmo
Paying Through the Nose to Kill Iraqi Kids
Matt Vidal
George W. Bonaparte
Mark Zepezauer
Why the Right Hates America
Mickey Z.
The Anti----War Talk I Never Gave
Jerry Kroth
Jung and the Space Shuttle Revisited
Shyam Oberoi
Chronicle of a War Foretold
Ron Jacobs
What If the Firebombing of Baghdad Were a Nightclub Fire?
Poets' Basement
Eliot Katz and Jim Cohn
Website of
the Weekend
Defense
Tech
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|