Treat enemies like enemies and friends like friends

By Michael Ledeen, FPM

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The most important part of Reagan’s success was the tireless critique he and his people unleashed on the Kremlin.  It wasn’t just the well-known broadcasts from Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty;  a lot came directly from the president, the secretary of state, and a plethora of senior officials.  A lot of this campaign has been forgotten and denied.  Reagan critics like to pretend, as is their wont, that the Soviet Empire fell because of its economic failure.  As if the Communists hadn’t failed from the very beginning, and as if our practice of calling for the release of political prisoners were not crucial.  But those of us who worked with the dissidents knew that Soviet Communism was doomed once the president had gone after its failed system.  It would not have occurred to him to say we wanted a change in behavior, not a change in regime.  I wish Messrs Trump, Pompeo, Bolton and Mattis would emulate Reagan’s example.

These thoughts come to mind as I watch the media and countless intellectuals and politicians call for harsh punishment of Saudi Arabia for the Khashoggi murder.  I say to myself, all this furor for the assassination of one man, reminding me of Stalin’s ugly remark that one dead man is a tragedy, while a million dead is a statistic.  His meaning is as clear as it is cruel:  if you’re going to be a murderer, do it big-time.  Thus the anti-Saudi campaign endures, while there is no comparable anti-Iranian outpouring (Khashoggi is lionized because he was a journalist, but one-third of the imprisoned and tortured journalists in the world are in the clutches of the Iranian totalitarians) or even an anti-Assad campaign (a half million dead at his hands;  a mere statistic evidently).

What worries me most about the current state of affairs is that the intellectuals are devoting significantly more time and energy to bashing Saudi Arabia—a longtime friend—than to Iran and Syria (and China), self-proclaimed enemies.  That’s crazy.  I’m all for calling out murderers, wherever they are, but it makes no sense to treat friends worse than enemies.  That is not just an “America first” foreign policy matter;  it’s common sense.

As things stand, our deep thinkers seem more committed to regime change in Riyadh than in Tehran, which is nuts.  We should be hell-bent on Iranian and Syrian regime change, and openly disappointed and disapproving of Saudi murderers.  Is that so hard?  Apparently so.