The difference between us

When Michael Ledeen (a man with the finest of neocon pedigrees) isn't hyping up a case for an American attack on Iran, he's reminding people like me why we began to hate neoconservatism in the first place.

To illustrate, here's a line or two from his latest column:

In any event, the first time I encountered the notion that Syria is really our friend was in the mid-Eighties, when I was working on counterterrorism. The synagogue in Vienna had been savagely attacked by terrorists carrying hand grenades and a machine gun. We had learned that the terrorists had gone to Damascus, and then directly from Damascus to Vienna. They had not stopped between the Vienna airport and the synagogue.

I suggested that we might contemplate doing something mean to Syria.

Ok, so the obvious question here is: WHY should WE do something mean to Syria in response to an attack on a synagogue in Vienna? Isn't that, properly, the responsibility of the Austrians?! (Or the Israelis, for that matter.)

The United States Government should have condemned the attack and shared whatever intel it had with the Austrian authorities. Period. End of story. Time to move on.

It was, by the way, exactly what the Reagan administration did. (The above incident occured over twenty years ago.) But for Ledeen, it seems, American restraint in a matter that didn't involve us in the least was, naturally, [get ready for it!] appeasement.

These are the people who are in charge of our foreign policy, folks. For the love of God, vote Democrat in November...

(WHO said that???!!!)