Best Buddies

Syria and Iran officially join forces:

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran and Syria, who both are facing pressure from the United States, said Wednesday they will form a "united front" to confront possible threats against them, state-run television reported.

Hmmm, kind of like an "Axis", to coin a term.

This is great news!

What's really interesting about this is that it puts to rest, once and for all, the myth we often heard that the secular tyrants (like Saddam) would never, NEVER ally with religious radicals (like al-Qaeda). Not to mention Syria and Iran are even split further as Sunni vs Shiite, and ethnically as Persian vs Arab, UNLIKE the Saddam/al-Qaeda nexus!

We don't hear much of that argument any more do we, yet nobody is going to 'fess up and say they were wrong about such claims.

It's an amazing blunder on their part to announce this. We've known Iran and Syria have been working together for quite some time -- just read former National Security Council consultant Michael Ledeen's book on the Terror Masters -- but now they lose all plausible deniability, and the anti-war Left loses a key talking point in downplaying the threats we face.

From the product description at Amazon,

The War Against the Terror Masters examines the two sides of the war: the rise of the international terror network, and the past and current efforts of our intelligence services to destroy the terror masters in the U.S. and overseas. Ledeen's new book also visits every country in the Near East and describes the terrorist cancers in each. Among many revelations that will attract wide attention: *How the terror network survived the loss of its main sponsor, the Soviet Union. *How the FBI learned from a KGB defector--twenty years before Osama's bin Laden's murderous assault--of the existance of Arab terrorist sleeper networks inside the United States. *How moralistic guidelines straight-jacketed the FBI from even collecting a file of newspaper clippings on known terror groups operating in America. *How the internal culture of the CIA, and severe limitations on its ability to operate, blinded us to the growth of terror networks.

The write-up by Publisher's Weekly illustrates the difficulties we have in convincing pacifistic dreamers what their real priorities should be:

His unnuanced theory of terrorism, however-the "terror masters" are "tyrants" who loathe America because of its mere "existence" as a symbol of freedom-downplays political complexities and ignores America's tarnished record in the Middle East. And while Ledeen urges the United States to help the citizens of terrorist states overthrow their despotic rulers, he warns that to do so-i.e., to be ready for war-Americans must give up their faith in "radical egalitarianism" and "the perfectibility of man" in favor of Machiavellian principles ("The only important thing is winning"; "It is better to be feared than loved"). Some readers will applaud Ledeen's hard-nosed demand to "reconcile our democratic values with the necessity of imposing our will," but others may think the compromise too great.

What is wrong with these people?!?

Unnuanced? Newsflash: Kerry lost!

Tarnished record? It's only tarnished in the eyes of the unreasonable. No rational assessment of our "record" comes close to being a reason to avoid firm action to stamp out terror regimes.

Compromise too great? What, it's better to just let them work their evil unopposed by force? What kind of self-indulgent selfishness supports such a view, merely to stoke one's own sense of moral superiority, at the expense of the rights and lives of real people? The callousness of the Left to individuals is one of their most staggering, and most characeristic features.

But how else would they have been able to murder 100 million people last century in pursuit of their ludicrous social goals?

But I digress...