Raw Deals

What's that — chatter about politely asking dictatorial regimes who mean to do us harm more time, a little more time before they go through with it? The success of jury-rigged detente is said to embody Washington's relations with countries like Egypt and Pakistan.

But both of those countries manufacture non-state authoritarians — terrorists following counterfeit Islam — as readily as adversaries like Iran and Syria. Remember, the most poignant collective fact of the nineteen September 11th hijackers was that nearly all of them were citizens of putative allies. Our lesson learned from Cold War clientage is that, absent revolution that transposes an authority and reestablishes political and cultural mastery, radicalism will spurt from failing dictatorships as if from a safety valve — this can be studied under the historical index of "upheaval."

And this says nothing of despots who are actively deploying irregulars against us. All bargains made with tyranny are Faustian; they can't be seen as ends in themselves.

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