BOOKS: ‘Accomplice to Evil’

ACCOMPLICE TO EVIL: IRAN AND THE WAR AGAINST THE WEST
By Michael Ledeen
St. Martin’s Press, $24.99, 224 pages
REVIEWED BY JOHN R. COYNE JR.

Michael Ledeen sets his central theme with a quote from “The Generous Gambler” by Baudelaire: “[The Devil] avowed to me that he had been afraid, relatively as to his proper power, once only, once only, and that was on the day when he had heard a preacher … cry in his pulpit: ’My dear brethren, do not ever forget. When you hear the progress of Enlightenment praised, that the loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.’”

That, Mr. Ledeen thinks, is precisely the problem with our relationship with Iran and the extremists of the Middle East. They openly swear to destroy us, as did the Nazis, fascists and communists, their 20th-century predecessors. To that end, Mr. Ledeen writes, they have actively supplied Iraqi and Afghan insurgents with training and weaponry, especially increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs, the insurgent weapon of choice. Our response, Mr. Ledeen says, just as it has been over the years, is to talk but not to listen, hearing only what we want to hear.

“More often than not,” he writes, “we downplay the implications and consequences of their words, as if they were some Islamic or Arab version of ’politics,’ intended for internal consumption, and designed to accomplish domestic objectives.”

This, Mr. Ledeen points out, is precisely what happened with Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini and one of the reasons our victory in World War II was a close-run thing — much closer than it would have been had we listened to — and heard — what they were saying. (Mr. Ledeen, reminding us of just how complicit the press can be in all this, reviews the cases of such journalists as Walter Duranty, the New York Times’ man in Moscow, a Stalin apologist who called reports of famine in the Soviet Union “malignant propaganda,” and another N.Y. Timesman, Herbert Matthews, who worshipped both Mussolini and Fidel Castro.)

“So we need to ask the old questions again. Why are we failing to see the mounting power of evil enemies? Why do we treat them as if they were normal politicians, as Western leaders do when they embrace negotiations … with a regime that daily calls for our annihilation?” The short answer, he writes, is Baudelaires: “We comfort ourselves with happy thoughts about human nature, and we fall prey to the Devil’s trick of fooling us into believing he doesn’t exist.”

Mr. Ledeen lays out his case in four chapters, with self-explanatory titles: “See No Evil, Speak No Evil,” “None So Blind As They Who Will Not See,” “To See Evil,” and “Defeating Evil.” In a concluding section titled “Iran and the War Against the West,” he points out that for the past three decades, while various U.S. administrations have tried to reach accommodation with Iran on a variety of issues — the latest on nuclear development — Iran pays lip service to negotiations while continuing to call for the death of “the Great Satan” and backing up that call with support for radical Islamic terrorism.

Mr. Ledeen lays out a variety of actions, both overt and covert, that we can take to counter the threat. Yet none is more important than “open political support from top American officials” for those Iranians who are brave enough to stand up to the regime and demand basic human freedoms and a say in their government.

He writes, “Were morally and strategically obliged to support those fighting for freedom within tyrannical societies. It’s morally right and strategically sound.” What would such support entail? “Basically, the same strategy we used to support Soviet dissidents and groups like the Solidarity trade union in Poland.”

Finally, he concludes, “Some American president is going to have to call for an end to Iranian Islamic fascism.”

Mr. Ledeen has written prolifically and spoken eloquently on political extremism, terrorism and America’s role in the world. He accurately predicted the theft of this past summer’s Iranian elections and was denounced on the front page of Tehran’s leading government-run daily newspaper; in this country, he has been attacked routinely by liberal accommodationists. But whatever the grounds for attack, there should be no question of his profound patriotism and sense of duty.

Mr. Ledeen is a man whose life matches his words. In his acknowledgements, he salutes his children: “Ours is now a military family. Simone has spent many months in Iraq and Afghanistan for the Defense and Treasury Departments, Gabriel was twice deployed to Anbar Province with the Marine Corps, and Daniel is now a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marines. It’s an honor to have such children.”

Indeed it is — as well as a ringing tribute to their parents.

• John R. Coyne Jr., a former White House speechwriter, is co-author with Linda Bridges of “Strictly Right: William F. Buckley and the American Conservative Movement,” published by Wiley.