Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Concerning Ledeen ...

I will bet that this quotation, possibly with ellipses and all, did not come from a primary source document. Also, concerning the martyrdom of Father Ragheed Ganni, maybe Mark can explain to me if he cares about the Chaldean population so much why he now endorses abandoning them to the tender mercies of al-Qaeda? He would strain a gnat when it comes to Ledeen while swallowing a camel when it comes to the actual fate of the Iraqi Christian population.

Mark writes:
Indeed, I remember a time when "revolutionary war" was what the Left called for, while conservatives (not to mention Catholics) were highly skeptical that the Millennium could be brought about by political revolutions. For every American revolution resulting in a stable free society (give or take a Civil War and an Indian genocide or two), there seem to be dozens and dozens of French, Russian, Nazi, Khmer Rouge, Maoist, and tinpot African dictator revolutions. Not a promising track record. How did such thinking manage to become parroted by conservatives, much less Catholic enthusiasts for Ledeen?

Probably because the type of democratic revolution championed by Ledeen is a very different thing from that championed by the communist left. As he makes explicitly clear in the NRO piece that Mark referenced:
To those who say it cannot be done, we need only point to the 1980s, when we led a global democratic revolution that toppled tyrants from Moscow to Johannesburg. Then, too, the smart folks said it could not be done, and they laughed at Ronald Reagan's chutzpah when he said that the Soviet tyrants were done for, and called on the West to think hard about the post-Communist era. We destroyed the Soviet Empire, and then walked away from our great triumph in the Third World War of the Twentieth Century.

Good thing we didn't take Mark's paleocon advice about the lack of viability of democratic revolution during the 1980s or the Iron Curtain would still be standing. Then again, that appears to be what Ron Paul is still arguing today, so maybe that's Mark is such a supporter.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

That crack about "Indian Genocide" is yet another example of Shea's borrowing from the Left's playbook when it suits him. The United States government certainly has much to answer for in its treatment of the Indians, and it certainly committed atrocities (as did the Indians) but it did NOT plan, conduct, or allow genocide. I'd invite Shea to read Dee Brown (certainly no apologist for the Government) if he has any doubts about this. The guy just seems willfully ignorant sometimes.In my opinion, Shea is rapidly moving from being anti-Bush to being flat-out anti-American.

Chesterton once said, concerning the constructive role of patriotism; "Men did not love Rome because it was great; Rome became great because men loved her". NB, Mr. Shea.

Anonymous said...

Actually... Ledeen did say, precisely that in his "Creative Destruction" column.

I wasn't a big fan of it...

Anonymous said...

Excuse me. The first part about violent change wasn't in that article. It appears to have been from another Ledeen column.

Roger H. said...

I will bet that this quotation, possibly with ellipses and all, did not come from a primary source document.

It is from a primary source document, but Pope McSnotty, in fine Orwellian fashion, has taken different pieces of it to convey something that Ledeen clearly did not intend.

The hunt for the terrorists is a technical matter, and we must hope that our military has enough virtue left from the Clinton ravages to do the job. But we should have no misgivings about our ability to destroy tyrannies. It is what we do best. It comes naturally to us, for we are the one truly revolutionary country in the world, as we have been for more than 200 years. Creative destruction is our middle name. We do it automatically, and that is precisely why the tyrants hate us, and are driven to attack us. - Michael Ledeen

Roger H. said...

You're right chris 2-4, the first part about violent change isn't in the Creative Destruction column, which just goes to show how dishonest Shea is acting here.

Joseph D'Hippolito said...

What Ledeen ignores is that, in the cases where republican democracy has replaced authoritarianism and totalitarianism, the systems replaced had been irrevokably disgraced: Nazism and Japanese militarism by the eviseration of national infrastructure, Communism by internal rot and apartheid by lack of popular support. Islamism, which is a fundamental part of Islam, has not yet been so disgraced.

Note also that econonmic factors contributed to the decline of Communism (the USSR's inability to build a system that could defuse the Americans' idea of space-based missle defense) and apartheid (international boycott).

Anonymous said...

OT: Mark challenges dissenting commenters sanity. When confronted about it, he challenges the sanity of the confronter. When confronted again, he says he was just trying to be funny.

Joseph D'Hippolito said...

And long time readers of my blog are well familiar with my disgust at organs of agitprop like FrontPage Mag for printing the ravings of Joe D'Hippolito against JPII's opposition to the war

Obviously, I can't let a crack like that go unchallenged.

If you're interested in my "ravings," take a look at the following:

http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2005/5/11/how-will-pope-benedict-deal-with-islam.html

(originally published in the Jerusalem Post)

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11662

There's also this from Joseph Braude of the New Republic:

When it came to the Middle East, Pope John Paul II largely failed to promote social justice and religious freedom. His political strategy in the region was in many ways the very opposite of his political strategy in Eastern Europe. The Pope took a hard line against communist governments, but in the Middle East, his strategy was too often one of appeasement--not only toward authoritarian regimes but also toward powerful religious-political movements that preach intolerance toward minorities. Partly as a result, the percentage of Christians in the population of many Middle Eastern countries continued its precipitous decline over the past three decades. Ironically, the Muslim Middle East grew more religiously homogenous and less tolerant at the same time as the Christian West was growing more religiously diverse.

It's impossible to know for sure why so many Islamist leaders and Arab heads of state were so generous in their praise of John Paul this week. But here's one theory: They liked him because he didn't hold them to the same standards to which he held Poland's Wojciech Jaruzelski and the USSR's Mikhail Gorbachev. They liked him because whereas he successfully fought for religious freedom, equality, and social justice in Eastern Europe, in the Middle East he did not.


If I'm "raving," then what is Braude doing? And if Front Page Magazine publishes "agitprop," then what is The New Republic doing by publishing Braude?

Here's the rest of Braude's article:

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w050411&s=braude041105

Joseph D'Hippolito said...

Then there are these articles from Sandro Magister, perhaps the best Vatican journalist around:

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblic...p?id=6973& eng=y

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblic...?id=43322& eng=y

The first details JPII's stance regarding Islam as an ally against secularism and materialism, and his fear of a "clash of civilization." JPII's stance was so adamant that he was willing to sacrifice Middle Eastern Christians to it, as Renzo Guolo said in the article:

But the pope´s approach, which some in the Catholic world define as "dialogue to the point of extremism," generates widespread criticism among the bishops and even in the Roman curia....Moreover, it transforms ecumenism into a sort of syncretism in which every religion seems as good as the next. This is tough criticism, which out of respect for papal authority and the state of John Paul II´s health does not manifest itself as open dissent, but it nevertheless deeply marks the ecclesial body.

The pope´s approach was rejected by the majority of cardinals during the 1994 consistory at which John Paul II expressed his intention of asking forgiveness for the "wrongs" of his predecessors. But despite the contrary opinion of many ecclesial sectors, and not only the openly traditionalist ones, the pope decided to proceed with his plan. Many responded with hostile silence: some of them recalled how Wotyla, who ordinarily speaks about all topics, had spread a veil of silence over the persecution of Christians in Muslim countries.


The second article details the Vatican's approach to geopolitics. The following is quoted from that piece:

John Paul II...put up direct opposition against the war of 1990-91 conducted by the United States and its allies against Iraq, in spite of the fact that it had UN approval and was intended to restore legitimate sovereignty to an invaded state, Kuwait. Among the “interests” motivating the pope’s opposition...was the proposition of establishing a relationship, not of conflict, but of dialogue between the Church and the Muslim world, analogous to the one established with the Soviet bloc during the years of Ostpolitik.

The 1990-91 Gulf War, which had UN support, was designed to expel Iraq from Kuwait, which Saddam had invaded and annexed. Had the world listened to the late pope, that annexation would have stood unopposed and Kuwaitis would have known first-hand Saddam's tender mercies.

The piece continues:

In effect, during the years that followed, the Holy See would protect its overtures of dialogue with the Muslim world through a general silence on the aggressions coming from that world, even when these struck Christians....

Apparently, JPII The Great threw Middle Eastern Christians under the bus a lot earlier than The Evil Torture-Mongerer-In Chief did.