Michael Ledeen on Iran on National Review Online

Michael Ledeen on Iran on National Review Online: "Prominent activists inside Iran say President Bush's plan to spend tens of millions of dollars to promote democracy here is the kind of help they don't need, warning that mere announcement of the U.S. program endangers human rights advocates by tainting them as American agents."

So goes a quote from today's Washington Post, in it's, according to Ledeen, "relentless campaign to blame all of mankind’s misfortunes on George W. Bush." I tend to agree with him.

The latest call for working within Iran with pro-democracy people is being put down by Karl Vick (Ledeen's "candidate for the Walter Duranty Memorial Prize).

"I love the moral equivalence: Bush wants to help them acquire freedom, while the regime (neatly reduced to a couple of bad guys in the Ministry of Injustice) crushes them. And Bush is the stupid one."

"Back in the Cold War, those of us who supported the Bukovskys and the Sharanskys were often told by the Walter Durantys of that time that we were fools, because we were only making things worse for the dissidents. But they were the real fools, and morally corrupt fools at that. So will it be today, provided that George W. Bush and his people have the tenacity to join this epic struggle, which uniquely fuses high virtue with fundamental national security."