"Like Afghanistan before it, Iraq is only one theater in a regional war. We were attacked by a network of terrorist organizations supported by several countries, of whom the most important were Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia"
About this Quote
Ledeen’s line reads like a map drawn with a marker: big borders, bold arrows, no traffic. The intent is to expand the frame so far that Iraq stops being a controversial choice and becomes an inevitable front in a single, sprawling conflict. “Only one theater” is the key phrase. It imports the language of World War II - coordinated campaigns, multiple fronts - and quietly discourages the idea that each intervention should be judged on its own merits. If you think you’re in a “regional war,” restraint starts to look like negligence.
The subtext is a political re-sorting of the post-9/11 story. The U.S. was attacked by a “network,” but that network is said to be “supported by several countries,” a move that blurs the line between non-state terrorism and state adversaries. That blurring is not accidental; it supplies the moral and strategic bridge from chasing perpetrators to confronting regimes. The list does heavy rhetorical work: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia. It’s not a coherent bloc so much as a curated set of targets that conveniently matches the era’s hawkish preoccupations, with Saudi Arabia included almost as a dare - acknowledging an uncomfortable reality while still keeping the focus on enemies-of-choice.
Context matters: Ledeen is a long-running neoconservative polemicist whose project has often been to treat the Middle East as an integrated system where regime change in one capital unlocks transformation elsewhere. The quote’s power comes from its compression: it turns messy intelligence debates and competing motives into a single, legible narrative of patrons and proxies, where escalation can be sold as strategy rather than appetite.
The subtext is a political re-sorting of the post-9/11 story. The U.S. was attacked by a “network,” but that network is said to be “supported by several countries,” a move that blurs the line between non-state terrorism and state adversaries. That blurring is not accidental; it supplies the moral and strategic bridge from chasing perpetrators to confronting regimes. The list does heavy rhetorical work: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia. It’s not a coherent bloc so much as a curated set of targets that conveniently matches the era’s hawkish preoccupations, with Saudi Arabia included almost as a dare - acknowledging an uncomfortable reality while still keeping the focus on enemies-of-choice.
Context matters: Ledeen is a long-running neoconservative polemicist whose project has often been to treat the Middle East as an integrated system where regime change in one capital unlocks transformation elsewhere. The quote’s power comes from its compression: it turns messy intelligence debates and competing motives into a single, legible narrative of patrons and proxies, where escalation can be sold as strategy rather than appetite.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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