Inconvenient Facts: Michael Ledeen's The war Against the Terror Master
Babbin, Jed
"Inconvenient Facts: Michael Ledeen's The war Against the Terror Master" Uncomfortable Analyses influence on such organizations as the Roosevelt War Department and the CIA. Sons of the WASP elite all, the men in question clearly valued their Bones...
...Bones today, Robbins reports, "chases down minority candidates—the juniors who, rather than sitting at the top of their class, instead fill certain society niches...
...Thus he succinctly identifies both the impulse and its general means of expression...
...Ledeen is equally blunt in identifying other terrorists and their sponsors...
...Where We Are Now...
...How We'll Win...
...Bush's Axis of Evil, many nations—particularly Saudi Arabia—are deeply involved in training, funding and planning terrorist operations...
...But Ledeen's personal credentials—his decades of service in the State and Defense departments and on the National Security Council, and his resident scholar's position at the American Enterprise Institute—establish a credibility few of his detractors will be able to muster...
...Inconvenient Facts, Uncomfortable Analyses influence on such organizations as the Roosevelt War Department and the CIA...
...Ledeen does this by recounting many facts we find it inconvenient to recognize and drawing from them conclusions we may find it uncomfortable to act upon...
...One of the puzzles of 9/11 is that the terrorists were able to resist assimilation in American culture, even though some of them lived here for several years and took advantage of everything they were not permitted in their homelands, even such corrupt things as American movies...
...Radical mullahs in the Middle East—and the American Midwest—preach their own version of the Soviets' Brezhnev Doctrine, which stated the irreversibility of communism...
...Ledeen is unsparing of former presidents Bush and Clinton...
...The only common factor linking the terrorist network is the number of dedicated Islamic fundamentalists found in every Middle Eastern nation, in Europe and—in considerable numbers—right here in the United States...
...To the contrary, modern Islamic terrorists have constructed a global network that, though not organized like a military force with a regular command structure, does in fact cooperate regularly in training, arming and sometimes even in planning...
...Once again, the Saudis figure prominently...
...If you read the news carefully, you will see that members of the Saudi royal family . . . are actively engaged in the operations of the terror network itself...
...America has always responded, as we did in World War II, by gathering ourselves up, dusting ourselves off and moving out to defeat decisively some nation that has attacked us...
...Ledeen proves this point by quoting NATO forces that found—in the offices of the Saudi high commissionerfor aid to Bosnia—documents showing that the Saudi philanthropic offices were a front for al-Qaeda operations in the Balkans...
...The first belief that Ledeen demolishes is that Islamic terrorist organizations operate separately and with little state support...
...Even more, those who will attack this work will have to find greater consistency for their theories than Ledeen's in the facts of the last two decades, of last September and of what came after...
...This book doesn't say what Kerry—a '66, by the way—is called, but according to Robbins, George W.'s alias among fellow Bonesmen is "Temporary...
...He writes the "Loose Canons" column for The American Prowler, and frequently appears as a military analyst on the Fox News Channel and MSNBC...
...More than 20 years of denying inconvenient facts such as those, as Ledeen demonstrates, is why we now have to fight a war that is unlikely to end in our lifetimes...
...Michael Ledeen's new book disabuses us of many wrongheaded notions about who the enemy is, and who he isn't...
...Ledeen's strategy to defeat the terror masters is twofold: use military force, and simultaneously prove Islamist success is neither irreversible nor irrevocable...
...Bush is chastised for failing to finish off Saddam in 1991, which left us with the dangerous mess we face now...
...If you made a list of the 15 most ambitious and accomplished juniors at an elite university, throwing in the occasional scion of a powerful family, how else do you think most would turn out in 25 years...
...Martin's Press/262 pages/$24.95...
...We are left wondering just why our leadership cannot label the Saudis for what they are...
...That's a prospect that we nonmembers ("barbarians" to them) might relish, if only in hope that the candidates will blurt out esoteric jargon under the pressure of debate...
...Sons of the WASP elite all, the men in question clearly valued their Bones membership, but as one of many cultural, institutional and familial ties binding them together...
...That network is both wide and deep...
...FEELING SUPERIOR Looking down is the best revenge Snobbery The American Version BY JOSEPH EPSTEIN New York Houghton Mifflin/274 pages/S25.00 REVIEWED BY S. T. Karnick here is no learning experience quite so delightful and memorable as the discovery of another person's flaws...
...The desire Epstein describes has been common throughout human history: the wish to have others look up to us...
...Ledeen's book will be rejected both by those who cannot admit the misjudgments of the past, or won't recognize the facts of the present...
...Though Ledeen labels Iran as the "mother of modern Islamic terrorism," he debunks the idea that only Shi'ites contribute to terror and that one religious sect doesn't cooperate with terrorists of another...
...To defeat the terror masters, America must—in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia—prove that Islamist repression is neither inevitable nor irreversible...
...If it's true that he considered making Frederick W. Smith (Bones '66) secretary of defense, was it due to Smith's being a "friend of General Russell...
...We will have to defeat many parts of the terrorist network by military action, but as Ledeen shows, freedom is our greatest weapon and the key to lasting change in the Islamic world...
...The means of fulfilling this craving are multifarious, but fall into two basic categories: the association of oneself with ostensibly fine things, activities, ideas and people...
...REVIEWED BY Jed Babbin Wars usually don't begin with a debate over the identity of the enemy...
...Academics will pronounce it heresy, because many of his sources are unnamed, as you would expect of people in the intelligence community, the FBI and other government agencies...
...The War Against the Terror Masters should be used to reshape the debate—in the White House, in Congress and in the media—about who we must fight and how, no matter how inconvenient that may be...
...Nothing about Skull and Bones is less mysterious than the success rate of its members...
...As we move toward action against Saddam Hussein's regime, it is not at all clear that we have decided just who the terrorist enemy is, or what we have to do to defeat him...
...Ledeen drives this point home: "His first DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) James Woolsey was a man of high intellect and impeccable character...
...Hamas and Islamic Jihad—next to al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, the most dangerous terrorist organizations—have operated here very successfully, raising money, recruiting terrorists and even planning terrorist attacks...
...Or did it have more to do with his being the founder of Federal Express...
...and the denigration of other people's attainment of these...
...The surveillance information on them was the reason that so many were arrested so quickly after 9/11...
...Clinton's non-response to the growing number of murdered Americans taught Saddam and the other terror masters a lesson they have not yet forgotten: Even if you strike America, the reprisal may hurt, but not enough to drive you from power...
...The woman who is also gay and outspoken, and preferably Native American, is likely to be considered...
...If we had acted decisively during Clinton's presidency, many of the terrorist regimes would likely have fallen by now...
...Ledeen's view of Saudi Arabia sounds much like the recent Rand Corporation briefing to Pentagon officials, which the State Department and even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld felt compelled to disavow...
...The white male scholar, unless he is truly Old Blue, is not...
...That is probably what makes snobbery such a fundamental constituent of human relations...
...A free Iran or Iraq, with a democratic government, a thriving economy and profitable relations with the West would provide a lever to move the entire Islamic world...
...Ledeen says that the terror masters were confident of maintaining psychological Jed Babbin was a deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration...
...SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 69 control over their operatives because the mosques and schools "reinforced the incantation of jihad and supported a community of fundamentalist believers in which the terrorists could immerse themselves...
...In two years on the job at Langley (CIA Headquarters), Woolsey managed exactly two private conversations with Clinton, a record for futility...
...Their members can be found in considerable numbers across the United States and have been of passing interest to the FBI...
...But Woolsey was . . . no doubt astonished to discover that the president didn't want to talk to him...
...Ledeen says that the Saudi intelligence agency served as al-Qaeda's liaison to its support network of charities and other funding sources...
...Clinton's inattention to matters of national security was both willful and comprehensive...
...Thackeray's mid-19th-century satire The Book of Snobs, Epstein makes his study a catalog of examples of behaviors he identifies as snobbish, using deadpan humor and self-deprecation of the sort readers of his many essays over the years will find quite appealing...
...Once Lech Walesa and some other brave Poles disproved that, communism was on its way to the trash bin...
...The constant emphasis on jihad maintained the state of passionate commitment with which the terrorists arrived in America...
...The author identifies two types of snobs: "those whose snobbery consists of looking down 70 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002...
...He demonstrates clearly that in addition to Mr...
...Probably the most difficult of Ledeen's conclusions for Americans to accept is that the terrorists have established a highly effective network here in the United States over a period of more than 20 years...
...Epstein defines snobbery nicely as "the art of demonstrating, blatantly or subtly, one's own moral superiority," thereby emphasizing what makes it such an important phenomenon: its status as the basis for an alternative, and decidedly diseased, moral code...
...According to Ledeen, of the nearly 1,200 mosques in the United States, most were built in the last 15 years and mostly with Saudi money...
...That will be a heavy burden, indeed...
...The "hidden paths of power" line gets even more tenuous in regard to George W. Bush, who once worked briefly for a fellow member and took campaign donations from several others, but whose biggest Bones benefactors also happen to be his relatives...
...As essayist Joseph Epstein notes in his new book Snobbery: The American Version, the essence of snobbism is in "arranging to make yourself feel superior at the expense of other people...
...Even after 9/11, when it was clear that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was playing host for bin Laden and his terror gang, we knew where to apply military force...
...Denial of the obvious still reigns in Washington, but not in Ledeen's mind...
...The War Against the Terror Masters Why It Happened...
...Taking a cue from W.M...
...On the other hand, they might start calling each other by their secret names, which wouldn't cheer supporters of the president...
...In fact, the lasting effect of Clinton's inaction is worse than even Ledeen says...
...The cooperation is ad hoc, making the enemy harder to identify and locate...
...Whatever this implies for the future of the society, or of society in general, the present day is certainly a Golden Age for Bones: the next presidential race could well feature patriarchs at the top of both major tickets...
...Recent elections reflect a shift not so much of demographics as of politics...
...It will be interesting to see if Bones' prestige holds up now that its selection criteria have changed...
...MICHAEL A. LEDEEN St...
...Behind nearly all of this is money from Saudi Arabia...
...Which is not to say that Hezbollah hasn't...
...The place long ago ceased to be an exclusive WASP preserve (George W.'s year included a black student and an Orthodox Jew), while continuing to honor traditional standards of merit, by which the captain of the football team and the editor of the Yale Daily News were virtually assured of being "tapped...
Vol. 35 • September 2002 • No. 5
