Michael Ledeen: still not dead

Via the always-amusing HTML Mencken at Sadly, No!, we learn that fearless prognosticator and top-notch journalist Michael Ledeen has taken Henry Kissinger, father of a nonexistent generation of Cambodians and Laotians, to task for being insufficiently hawkish.

Following the sage advice of former Nixon Museum curator Hugh Hewitt, Ledeen knows that the important thing isn't reaching achievable goals, or practicing the art of realpolitik, or finding common ground with your ideological opponents in order to forestall disastrous violence. Politics, to Ledeen, isn't the art of the possible; politics is the art of listening to the craziest bullshit some foreign ideologue can yank out of his pocket, swallowing it whole without an iota of realism or skepticism, and preparing to bomb the shit out of his whole country because of it. Let's let Fasterplease Theatre speak for itself:

Only the defeat of the Islamic Republic can accomplish that goal, because that would demonstrate that the mullahs do not have divine support for their global jihad.

Well, sure! That is so goddamn insightful there is totally no way that it wouldn't work. The best way to prove that Allah isn't on their side is to hand them a crushing defeat in war! BRILLIANT! I mean, look how timid and meek the Germans became after their humiliating defeat they were handed in WWI! Look at the United States after the Twin Towers fell on 9/11 -- people stopped believing in American exceptionalism, and the religious right, who had always taught that God was on our side, completely withdrew from national politics! And you sure haven't heard a peep from the Taliban since we spanked their asses in Afghanistan! You're the greatest student of history ever, Michael Ledeen.