Ledeen: Refusing to See Evil Clearly in Iran

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWZkMDhmMDAzNWNkMjExNzQ0M2I3YTA2YWM0NTEzODk=

The brutality in Iran today foreshadows what the mullahs intend for us. It is what the world will look like if they prevail. Iran's Middle East neighbors know this, and dread it (with the exception of Syria, which is playing Mussolini's Italy to Khamenei's Nazi Germany). Yet every American president from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama has convinced himself that we can reach a workable, long-term modus vivendi with the Islamic Republic. They refused to see the mullahs' Iran for what it is: a ruthless and determined enemy, at war with the United States.

It is an old story. Franklin Roosevelt and most Western European countries refused to see that Hitler's treatment of the German Jews and other minorities foreshadowed his global intentions, just as we deliberately blinded ourselves to the fact that Stalin's mass murders of his own people, whether landowners or Ukrainians, showed what Soviet expansion would bring to the captive nations after the Second World War.  Indeed, America has almost always refused to see evil clearly, recognize that it would inevitably be directed against us, and act early enough to prevent an even greater disaster.

To our great shame, we were unprepared for the uprising of the Iranian people, which had become highly likely in the runup to the "election," and which, we should have been aiding for years with better communications, strike funds for workers, open calls for freedom, and insistence that political prisoners be freed. Worse yet, in the first days following the explosion, our leaders seemed annoyed that the Iranian people had interrupted efforts to strike a bargain. The president first took credit for the "robust debate," then suggested there was no real difference between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, warned that it would be counterproductive for him to be seen "meddling," and then, when the dimensions of the street massacres were too large to ignore, criticized the repression and finally spoke warmly of Mousavi.