Sharansky's case for democracy

NY Times:

Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident, was in Philadelphia in early November promoting his new book on democracy when his publisher, PublicAffairs, got a call from the White House. Would Mr. Sharansky be available to meet with the president the next day?

Less than 24 hours later, on Nov. 11, 2004, Mr. Sharansky found himself in the Oval Office in an hourlong conversation with the president about the book, "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror." Mr. Bush apologized for not finishing it, Mr. Sharansky said in a telephone interview last week from Jerusalem - "He said, 'I'm on Page 211' " - but otherwise threw his arms around Mr. Sharansky's theme that spreading democracy is in the strategic self-interest of free societies.

"I felt like his book just confirmed what I believe," Mr. Bush said in an interview on Thursday in the Oval Office. "He writes it a heck of a lot better than I could write it, and he's certainly got more credibility than I have. After all, he spent time in a Soviet prison and he has a much better perspective than I've got."

Mr. Sharansky's book, a White House must-read that Mr. Bush has been recommending for months to friends, his staff and a parade of recent interviewers, was a leitmotif in Mr. Bush's Inaugural Address on Jan. 20 about ending tyranny. According to the president, its themes will also be part of his State of the Union address this week.

It is one of the ironies of the middle east that a Russian Jew and a hated American president are two of the main people pushing them toward freedom and democracy. One hundred years from now they should both be revered as the founding fathers of a peaceful democratic middle east.

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