Michael Ledeen Hits the Nail on the Head

Michael Ledeen writes today something that has been bothering me for awhile:

But above all, the clever stratagem adopted by the administration ignores Machiavelli’s greatest lesson: Leadership is all about winning and losing, not about elegance and deep thinking. If we win the Europeans and lose the Middle East, we will have lost. But if we win the Middle East, the Europeans will hail us, as we see from their grudging tributes to Bush’s successful liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq. "If you are victorious," Machiavelli says in his uncompromising way, "people will always judge the means you used to have been appropriate."

Syria and Iran are tottering, and if they fall, the terror network will break into relatively impotent shards that we will be able to destroy. Forget about diplomacy, this is war. Every day we hear about plans to attack the United States directly, and every day more Americans die in Iraq. Is it not too clever by half to resort to cunning diplomacy at such a time? Is it not immoral to leave American fighting men and women in harm’s way an hour longer than is absolutely necessary?

Bush and his Cabinet are infinitely preferable to Kerry and the Clinton re-treads he’d have at State, Defense and the NSC. But as Angelo Codevilla has pointed out, the Bushies are just as hobbled by their adherence to liberal shibboleths as the Carter or Clinton administrations.

On September 12, 2001, Bush should have fired every senior person in State and the CIA. Then perhaps, over 3 years later, we would be in a position to provide the Iranians and the Syrians the political, diplomatic and covert aid they need. But today, all Bush can do is give speeches, because (i) State and CIA don’t believe in toppling our enemies’ governments, and (ii) even if they did, they don’t know how to do it anymore.