The "Ledeen Doctrine" of "crappy little countries"

Jonah Goldberg, on "my friend Michael Ledeen," 2002

I’ve long been an admirer of, if not a full-fledged subscriber to, what I call the “Ledeen Doctrine.” I’m not sure my friend Michael Ledeen will thank me for ascribing authorship to him and he may have only been semi-serious when he crafted it, but here is the bedrock tenet of the Ledeen Doctrine in more or less his own words: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” That’s at least how I remember Michael phrasing it at a speech at the American Enterprise Institute about a decade ago.

—Jonah Goldberg (1969–) on Michael Ledeen (1941–), National Review, 23 April 2002. Ledeen denied that he had said this.