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Democratically-minded Strongmen?

Reader comment on item: Karzai's Brother and Washington's Kept Politicians

Submitted by John in Michigan, USA (United States), Oct 29, 2009 at 20:04

While the future is impossible to know, I share Dr. Pipes' pessimism about the chances for success of these kept politicians.

Elsewhere, Dr. Pipes has made clear his misgivings about the neo-con democracy agenda, and called instead numerous times for a "democratically-minded strongman" in places like Iraq.

I assume that in Dr. Pipes ideal world, there would be a meaningful difference between his idea of a strongman, what he refers to as Washington's kept politician. However, we do not live in that ideal world. Hearing calls for democratically minded strongmen, Washington (particularly Foggy Bottom) will instead deliver kept politicians, since that is what Washington knows how do to.

Dr. Pipes should, at least, explain in detail the difference between the strongmen he prefers, and the kept politicians he criticizes.

Furthermore, he should consider than no matter how well he explains the difference, his explanations will likely be ignored, misunderstood, or exploited by the establishment, in order to justify more kept politicians.

Here to me is the attractiveness of the neo-con democracy agenda: it presents a clear, unambiguous alternate vision, in contrast with the stability-at-all-costs establishment. Therefore, it is more likely to resist being co-opted by the establisment. In addition, if the agenda succeeds (which happens, but less often that we'd like and often in unexpected ways) we get the real thing; if it fails, it could be designed to degrade reasonably well into the democratically-minded strongman approach that Pipes finds more realistic.

Neo-cons, for their part, need to be less focused on elections and more focused on other democratic institutions such as civil society and rule of law. Same goes for the elections fetish of the UN and its constellation of left-leaning NGOs.

The subtle differences (whatever they are) between a strongman and a kept politician make perfect sense in academia, but I contend that in the real world there is likely to be little difference. Whereas, there is no mistaking the democracy agenda for a status-quo, politician-keeping policy, even if the democracy agenda in practice ends up promoting democratically-minded strongmen.

Submitting....

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Reader comments (28) on this item

Title Commenter Date Thread
We can not allow another country to fall to the taliban et al, the world will pay a heavy price if we do ! [60 words]Phil GreendJun 16, 2010 13:15174459
declare mongolistan aka pakistan a terrorist state [124 words]Muslimk***Jun 15, 2010 15:33174437
One question for Dr Pipes [16 words]car313Jun 14, 2010 07:14174390
Regroup to fight another day [350 words]No DhimmiJun 13, 2010 02:03174327
USA and Friends will get down [104 words]brNov 24, 2009 23:58164995
lost [17 words]General DostumNov 16, 2009 19:43164653
A question to Dr. Pipes [116 words]
w/response from Daniel Pipes
Debanjan BanerjeeOct 30, 2009 12:13163827
Correction: [17 words]abdullahDec 6, 2009 10:19163827
No nexus with terrorists [101 words]Muslimk***Jun 16, 2010 13:15163827
West has been dealing with the so-called "terrorists" for a long time [139 words]Debanjan BanerjeeJun 16, 2010 23:58163827
Is that fair? [56 words]Manny MatamorosOct 30, 2009 10:24163823
Ten years from now few rulers now in the world will still still be in power! [5 words]BernardOct 30, 2009 23:11163823
But what is the alternative, from Democracy Project [125 words]Brent TantilloOct 29, 2009 21:49163792
Re: Alternatives [149 words]JFTDMasterNov 2, 2009 20:40163792
suicide bombing [95 words]Black Ribbon DayOct 29, 2009 21:30163790
Democratically-minded Strongmen? [341 words]John in Michigan, USAOct 29, 2009 20:04163787
Get out of Afghanistan and Iraq as soon as possible! It's literally and financially killing us! [54 words]Ben ZalmanOct 29, 2009 12:49163760
Agree with Ben Zalman, we should get out fairly quickly, pick a side among the warlords to support [188 words]Charles MartelOct 30, 2009 14:42163760
Get us out. [125 words]Thomas E. DoyleNov 8, 2009 20:47163760
Kept vs. Unkept [14 words]John Q. OpinionOct 29, 2009 11:29163752
...or an alternative way of looking at it... [273 words]Bif BifmanOct 29, 2009 11:18163751
What is your solution? [54 words]John SchwartzOct 29, 2009 04:55163738
WASHINGTON'S KEPT POLITICIANS [73 words]JACQUES HADIDAOct 28, 2009 21:05163721
Asia As One Vast Spongy, Overpopulated Mass. [258 words]Charles GriffithOct 28, 2009 16:57163703
"Washington kept no politicians in 2000" -Arafat [29 words]RobOct 28, 2009 16:56163701
Re: Arafat a kept politician? [59 words]JFTDMasterNov 2, 2009 20:19163701
True or not [75 words]Charles BottOct 28, 2009 15:38163693
Corruption. [24 words]Michael RyanOct 28, 2009 15:26163689

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