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When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism: Robert Fisk
by Imad Khadduri, July 8, 2005
"We will not allow violence to change our society and values.." Blair said
"A fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Michael Ledeen has become the driving philosophical force behind the neoconservative movement and the military actions it has spawned. His 1996 book, "Freedom Betrayed; How the United States Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War and Walked Away," reveals the basic neoconservative obsession: the United States never "won" the Cold War; the Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight without a shot being fired. Had the United States truly won, democratic institutions would have been sprouting wherever the threat of communism had been rife. Iraq, Iran and Syria are the first and foremost nations where this should be happening, according to Ledeen. The process by which this should be achieved is a violent one, termed "total-war”. "Total-war not only destroys the enemy's military forces, but also brings the enemy society to an extremely personal point of decision, so that they are willing to accept a reversal of the cultural trends," Ledeen writes. "The sparing of civilian lives cannot be the total war's first priority. . . . The purpose of total-war is to permanently force your will onto another people." The journalist Thomas Friedman, on a tour of Iraq wrote in the New York Times in May 25, 2003, "The best thing about this poverty: Iraqis are so beaten down that a vast majority clearly seem ready to give the Americans a chance to make this a better place." Ledeen depravedly expects to be vindicated. The Iraqi people will prove him otherwise. Ledeen's ideas are repeated daily by such figures as Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. His views define the stark departure from American foreign policy philosophy that existed before the tragedy of September 11, 2001. He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America's manifest destiny. Ledeen has become the philosophical legitimizer of the American occupation of Iraq and the wanton destruction of its society. " Quoted from my book, "Iraq's Nuclear Mirage", page 21. Imad Khadduri |
