The Case for Natan Sharansky

Saul Singer, author of the valuable "Confronting Jihad: Israel’s Struggle and the World After 9/11," reviews, in The Jerusalem Post, Natan Sharansky’s "The Case for Democracy."

George W. Bush loves Natan Sharansky’s new book, and it is easy to see why. The cerebral former Soviet dissident and the more-earthy Texan president might seem to have little in common. Yet Sharansky has written a book that explains, better than Bush himself could, the intellectual underpinnings of the president’s core beliefs.

The Case for Democracy . . . presents a way of understanding our world, and provides a paradigm for taming it that, despite its idealism, is more realistic than that of the "realists" have proven to be. . . .

In one of the most fascinating aspects of the book, Sharansky describes his meetings with various Israeli and American leaders.

In the main, these leaders reacted to Sharansky as if he were from another planet. Not that they disagreed with the importance of democracy and human rights. Just not this minute. . . .

The irony is that, even in our post 9/11 world, Sharansky and Bush are almost alone in their belief that democracy has practical, not just theoretical, power to transform the world. When the rest of the world comes around, The Case for Democracy will be recognized as a seminal and prescient classic.

Power Line has an important post on The Return of Shimon Peres that questions Israel‘s reliance on a discredited leader:

As a distant lover of Israel, I have been genuinely puzzled by its failure to produce a statesman equal to the challenges faced by the country over the past 20 years. In every area of modern life the country boasts a genius that on a per capita basis must be unrivaled. Yet on the world stage its politicians seem almost retarded.

The country has never had a public accounting for the utter disaster that was Oslo. Its politicians seem to keep the country’s citizens in the dark about the nature of its national security strategy and the actions taken to pursue it. Ariel Sharon’s deal with Peres seems to me a metaphorical expression of the problem. . . .

Vital advocates of Oslo such as Shimon Peres are still respectable public figures playing significant roles and urging the same policy. It is as if Neville Chamberlain . . . were still advising Winston Churchill on the statesmanship of appeasement in 1942.

Barry Freedman, blogging from Israel, thinks Peres’ involvement in the government stems from Sharon’s fear of an election or referendum.  He thinks it is time for someone of historic stature to come forward:  Natan Sharansky.

Hold that thought.