I can’t say I’m enthusiastic at the prospect of more Paul Saunders contributions to the Corner.

I confess I was a lot more sympathetic to Saunders’s Washington Post op-ed than my friend Michael Ledeen was. I profoundly disagreed with Saunders’s essay because (a) it disregards the 800-pound gorilla in the middle of the room, namely, that the Iranian regime has for 30 years been at war with the United States, and therefore we have very strong reasons — wholly apart from domestic Iranian politics — to exploit any opportunity to topple the regime; (b) even in highlighting Iran’s complexity it oversimplified the dynamic of nationalism such that it somehow only works in favor of incumbents and against dissenters; (c) as Michael Rubin nicely demonstrates, it ignores the extensive range of options between doing nothing meaningful (the Obama approach) and a military invasion of Iran (and — perhaps because I am more motivated by American national security than Iranian democracy — I would add to the menu some options that are more provocative than Michael’s (Rubin’s), albeit short of invasion); (d) by Saunder’s logic, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher would have sat on their hands when tyrannized Eastern Europe most needed our support; and (e) like Michael Ledeen, I thought Saunders significantly undermined his own case with the throwaway line at the end, “If the crisis escalates, it may be necessary to do more” (why, if the things he says are true and if it was already okay to do nothing while Iraqis were being massacred, would it somehow be “necessary to do more” if there is an “escalation” — which means what? more Iraqis massacred?).

Still, unlike Michael (Ledeen), I didn’t think Saunders’s op-ed was “silly.” As those who follow our spirited discussions in these parts know, I am not a big believer in the “forward march of freedom” in the Islamic world (when it comes to the word freedom, I don’t think Islam and the West are even talking about the same concept), and I am dead set against using military force for purposes of democracy promotion in a region where I think it is doubtful that Western democracy (as opposed to sharia-lite) will take root anytime soon.* Consequently, I am sympathetic to Saunders’s plea that we recognize Iran is complicated, that the opposition is not monolithic, and that we just don’t know how much of it is made up of Western-style secularists and how much is comprised of Islamic fundamentalists who may not want mullahs running the show (as Michael Rubin says, velayat-e faqih) but would still forge a sharia state — though one less brutal and less aggressively anti-American than the current regime. (On that score, as I suggested yesterday, I am closer to the Diana West camp than the Bret Stephens camp.)

All that said, however, Michael (Ledeen) said that Saunders’s argument was silly, not that Saunders himself is silly. It was not an ad hominem attack, it was an engagement of Saunders’s argument. It was not as thoughtful a rebuttal as Michael would have written in a column or a post on his blog (indeed, I see he has now posted something while I was preparing to post mine) — after all, he was just answering questions in a short but wider-ranging interview by K-Lo, not setting out to refute Saunders. But it was not personally insulting to Saunders and in no way suggested that Saunders had skeletons in his closet that made him a suspect participant in the debate.

Thus, my jaw is still on the floor from reading Saunders’s hysterical response to Michael’s passing comments. Particularly despicable was this gem: “[T]hough I suppose [Ledeen] may want America to pay the protesters’ bills, presumably secretly and perhaps through his good offices, as he once established key connections in Iran which facilitated the Iran-Contra disaster.” That this is an incredibly ignorant account of history is beside the point. It’s got no place here. Michael doesn’t need me to defend him, he can do that himself. But he shouldn’t have to. Our practice around here is to have civil discourse between people who often disagree – vigorously, but always in good faith. What Saunders did was shoddy and he ought to apologize.

_______________________________

* Even in the American-birthed “democracy” in Iraq, which is cautiously celebrated as a success story on the Right these days, whom do you suppose is more popular: Hezbollah or Israel? And as I pointed out in yesterday’s column, Maliki’s government recently refused to prosecute the Iran-backed terrorists who murdered five American soldiers who died while fighting for Iraqi freedom — after all, Maliki’s mouthpiece explained, those terrorists’ beef was with the U.S., not with Iraq. Fabulous ally.