The Global War on Terror: Where's George

The great Michael Ledeen agrees with the Washington Post and Bush's critics that the Global War on Terror lacks definition, focus, and energy.  President Bush seems to be skating at a critical moment when one of the foremost state-sponsors of terror is about to hold elections.  This is a very timely piece, and much needed:

Iran is headed toward another phony presidential election on June 17, with the usual charade intended to deceive all would-be appeasers into believing that Iranian elections are like those in Wichita, Kansas....The Iranian people are not deceived, and all reliable reports from Iran tell us that few of them intend to vote. Knowing this, the regime has announced that non-voters will be treated as criminals, deprived of educational opportunities, forbidden to travel, and banned from government employment. Why have our diplomats not denounced the electoral scam and the frantic efforts to compel the Iranians to act in the pathetic comedy? The most authoritative religious figure in Iran, the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, told Reuters that the Iranians understood the election was a fraud, because the president has no authority. Khamenei holds it all. In open rebellion against the Islamic Republic, Montazeri said that the Supreme Leader "should limit his role to religious matters and to ensuring that laws conformed to Islam."

Yet President Bush, Condoleeza Rice and all of our diplomats are basically silent about these fraudulent elections.  Why aren't we standing with the Grand Ayatollah?  Mr. Ledeen continues:

I do not understand why [they] should be less forthcoming than an 83-year-old Grand Ayatollah under virtual house arrest in Qom. In his final days in office, Colin Powell went around the world announcing that the United States was not calling for regime change in Iran, and no one in Washington has gainsaid those words. Nor has anyone called for regime change in Damascus. In each case, official rhetoric, and apparently formal policy as well, are directed toward matters of less significance in the Global War: the nuclear ambitions of the Iranian mullahs, and the domination of Lebanon by the Syrian Baathists and their murderous Hezbollah allies. Yet it is clear to anyone with eyes to see that even these lesser goals cannot be accomplished so long as Assad rules Syria, and the mullahs rule Iran.

He goes on  to say that we don't need armies to spread our greatest weapon against terrorism.  As Mikhail Saakashvili, president of Georgia said four weeks ago (shortly before W went missing), "We didn't ask President Bush for cash here or for some special statement, even on the Russian bases. No. What we asked for was not to be abandoned. That's what matters."

Just don't abandon them.

Relevant aside:  This is what Bill Clinton had to say in Davos (as in Easongate) and to Charlie Rose, as we wrote in Bill and the Post-Surgery Oxygen Deficit:

“Iran today is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas that I subscribe to are defended by a majority.”

It gets better:

“Iran is the only country in the world that has now had six elections since the first election of President Khatami (in 1997). (It is) the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections: Two for president; two for the Parliament, the Majlis; two for the mayoralties. In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.”

Certainly not his own.  What a jackass.

[hat tip to our man in Baghdad, Lawrence Peter,  for the Ledeen article.]