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POPSGiuliani as Mayor: A Look at the Darker Side Thanks for the insight Joe Bierman. I could not have said it better....especially the following: "After seven years of similarly arrogant and petty leadership that has devastated our country’s reputation around the world, we can ill afford another president whose style of leadership can be summed up not just by the directive “My way or the highway” but, more accurately, “My way, or else!”
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POPSThe Foreigner's Gift:The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq
Yes, a poisoned Palestinian political culture opted for Hamas in a free election in early 2006. This is what it is: an expression of the malady of Palestinian politics. The larger case for democratic reform is bigger, and nobler, than the state of Palestinian politics. The Bush Doctrine brought about a veritable reversal in the realm of ideas: here was a conservative President asserting that freedom can travel to distant shores, that we can take it to strangers beyond, and here were his liberal critics at home falling back on a surly argument that Iraq, Lebanon, and other Arab and Islamic domains offer insurmountable obstacles to the spread of freedom. Those in the know—and those who pretend to be—have written and spoken about the influence exercised by the Egyptian thinker and pamphleteer Sayyid Qutb (executed by the Nasser regime in 1966) on the course of modern Islamism. This is good as far as it goes. What is needed is a more sustained analysis of the depth of Egyptian radicalism
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POPS Free Elections Come First Autocrats create state power over which they can exercise a monopoly, like the security forces. But they are the enemy of impartial administrative institutions that a developing society needs and that are essential for liberalism. Rather than strengthen the state, "autocrats habitually misuse the state."They keep institutions weak, unthreatening and under their control. The same is true of the rule of law. Minxin Pei, another Carnegie scholar, once had high hopes for the rule of law in China. Today he sees a "predatory" ruling oligarchy more interested in holding power and enriching itself than in building an impartial legal system. There are "dozens or even hundreds of rapacious, repressive autocrats . . . for whom the rule of law represents a straitjacket to be avoided at all costs."
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POPSIraq Outcome Fascinating article highlighting opinions of my hero George Kennon.
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