Reply #14: Quotes from a National Review Online article by Ledeen

[DemBones DemBones]

These paragraphs are from the Sept. 2 article, "The Latest Horrors," dealing with the bombing of the mosque in Najaf, the UN embassy in Baghdad, and bombings of the Jordanian embassy, all of which he blames on "Hezbollah's infamous chief of operations, Imad Mughniyah, the same man who organized the terrible mass murders at the U.S. Marine barracks and the American embassy in Beirut in the mid-1980s." Ledeen claims Mugniyah is now in Iraq.

Midway through the article, there's this:

"Many of our analysts are currently falling into one of those linguistic traps that Ludwig Wittgenstein used to warn us about. They constantly ask, "which organization do these terrorists come from?" But they should be asking the empirical question: "Does it still make sense to talk about separate terrorist organizations?" I have been arguing for the better part of two years that we should think of the terrorists as a group of mafia families that have united around a single war plan. The divisions and distinctions of the past no longer make sense; the terror mafias are working together, and their missions are defined by the states that protect, arm, fund, and assist them: Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia."

(Is he right? And, if he is, do we have to go to war against all the countries he says are supporting the "terror mafias"? And why do I think the phrase "terror mafias" will enter the lexicon?)

<snip>

"Which leaves us with the usual questions for the secretary of state and his henchmen who are supposed to design an effective Iran policy: Why are you still negotiating with this evil regime? How many Iranians, Iraqis, Americans, and Englishmen have to be murdered by the mullahs before you accept the plain facts about the Iranian regime, and commit this country to the liberation of the Iranian people? Or do we have to await even greater catastrophes, and then have to confront religious fanatics armed with atomic bombs?

Faster, please."