Uh... well, sorta.
I got a ride to A Creation. The first days of a new fantasy, the new substitute for Naziism and Communism.
A new Center of Meaning: the utter evil of Ahmadin
James Woolsey stepped up to the podium. He was sharp, focused and serious, exactly as a former head of the CIA should be. He went straight to the point and very soon touched on the audience’s most sensitive point: the Holocaust. The Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Syrian ‘challenges’, according to Woolsey, should correctly and jointly be thought of as ‘Islamist totalitarianism’, the ‘defeat of which I believe is the great challenge of our age, just as the defeat of Nazism and the defeat of Communism were’. There were sparkling eyes in the audience, and he was heading for glory. ‘Destroying Israel and the US is the essence of the Iranian state,’ Woolsey said, ‘and trying to convince Iran to stop it is like trying to convince Hitler not to be anti-semitic.’ The crowd was now his. Woolsey didn’t lose his momentum. ‘I agree with Dr Gold,’ he said, as he looked over at the panellists. ‘Wahhabi Islam, al-Qaida and Vilayat e-Faqih cannot be treated individually. Those who say that they will not co-operate with one another are as wrong as those who claimed that the Nazis and Communists would not co-operate.’The whole of the piece is here: Yoni Mendel at Herzliya in 2007.The audience couldn’t contain its excitement and started clapping riotously. Woolsey kept his grip. ‘We should listen to what they say,’ he said, silencing the crowd, ‘just like we needed to listen to Hitler.’ An attentive silence spread through the room. ‘We must not accept totalitarian regimes,’ he said, ‘and we should not tolerate a nuclear weapon capability for Iran . . . If we use force, we should use it decisively, not execute some surgical strike on a single or two or three facilities. We need to destroy the power of the Vilayat e-Faqih if we are called upon and forced to use force against Iran.’ Next Woolsey took his audience to Syria. ‘It is a shame,’ he said, that Israel and the US failed to ‘participate in a move against Syria last summer’. He paused. ‘Finally,’ he said, looking into his audience’s eyes, ‘we must not forget who we are. We, as Jews, Christians and others, are heirs of the tradition deriving from Judaism.’ Woolsey chose an American and Jewish ending. ‘Elijah had it right in confronting Ahab, and Thomas Jefferson had it right in the one sentence of his that circles your head as you stand in front of his statue in Washington DC: “I have sworn on the altar of almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”’
The audience went wild; Woolsey had outlined the ultimate battle between good and evil and they were on the side of good. Someone rose to his feet. And someone else, and someone else, and someone else. I looked at the audience, amazed. They were cheering as one. This wasn’t funny. Israel is the strongest country in the Middle East, the only country in the region with nuclear power, the only state that co-operates unquestioningly with the world’s only superpower. Why do we have such a short memory? Why don’t we remember the circumstances that led to the invasion of Iraq and the 600,000 Iraqis who have died over the last four years? [Final total, 1,455,000. This is 2007.] Why are Israelis so eager to fight Syria, when Damascus seems to want to sit down and talk? How can the nation that suffered immeasurably in the Holocaust let people use the memory of six million Jews as an instrument to gain international support?
That's when the bizarre/fantastic/goof ball notion that Iran is a conquering super power emerged as the new Excalibur for America's favorite theme: perpetual war.
Yes, worth a read. You'll like the writing.