Ledeen

I had completely forgotten Michael Ledeen existed, but he’s dead and we should not mourn. That guy never found a situation where some killing wasn’t the answer, whether it was Sandinistas or Muslims.

“He insisted that the right, not the left, should be the true heir to the radical, revolutionary tradition of upending dictatorships,” Mr. Heilbrun wrote. “This was neoconservatism on steroids.”

Mr. Ledeen fervently supported opponents of the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran, in the expectation that democratization would calm conflict in the Middle East.

“Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone,” he wrote of sponsors of terrorism in his book “The War Against the Terror Masters” (2002). “They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence — our existence, not our politics — threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission.”

In a post on X after Mr. Ledeen’s death, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel wrote that Mr. Ledeen’s “deep familiarity with the Iranian people convinced him that the ayatollahs who oppress them must be prevented at all costs from developing nuclear weapons, and that a free Iranian people will be a great ally and friend to America and Israel.”

Some of the theories that Mr. Ledeen espoused in his books and articles were later discredited, among them that Iraq had sought to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from Niger as part of a nuclear arms program; that the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 in Vatican City was orchestrated by Moscow; and that President Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy, had influenced the president on behalf of Libya.

Glad this guy was a solid leading Republican foreign policy figure for decades with theories like this!

LGM mentioned him a few times, always for his finest deeds.