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Kramer And Giuliani

I’ve posted about Martin Kramer once before after he offered a transcript of his remarks at the Prague dissident conference where President Bush also spoke.  In Prague, he said: My teacher and mentor Bernard Lewis has put it starkly: “We free them or they destroy us.” Now Kramer is less of a democratist than some others, which […]

I’ve posted about Martin Kramer once before after he offered a transcript of his remarks at the Prague dissident conference where President Bush also spoke.  In Prague, he said:

My teacher and mentor Bernard Lewis has put it starkly: “We free them or they destroy us.”

Now Kramer is less of a democratist than some others, which is one thing that can be said in his favour, but his Prague speech showed clearly that he shared his mentor’s diagnosis about the source and nature of the threat.  He is, it must be said, more skeptical about the democratist cure and the inevitability of democratisation than is, say, Mr. Bush. 

Now that Dr. Kramer is advising the Giuliani campaign, we should look out for a combination of this sort of thinking with the dangerous foreign policy outline offered by Giuliani himself.  Giuliani’s recent debate appearance where he poured a little cold water on democratist enthusiasms may be the result of Kramer’s influence.  The Kramer post from last month announcing his involvement with the campaign points us towards a paper by the campaign’s chief foreign policy advisor, Charles Hill, whose arguments from this paper are echoed quite clearly in Rudy’s Foreign Affairs essay.  The most damning thing that can be said against Dr. Kramer is that he wrote:

I believe that Mayor Giuliani gets it. He understands perfectly what is at stake in the Middle East, he sees precisely the forces arrayed for and against us, he knows this will be a long contest, and he has the resolve to see the United States prevail. I don’t see that same depth of understanding in any of the other candidates.

If that doesn’t disqualify Martin Kramer’s judgement on such matters, I don’t know what does.

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