Letters to the Editor
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‘A “Moderate” Path Is Just Another Road to Disaster’
Youssef Ibrahim cites Bernard Lewis’s axiom “one man, one vote, one time” to argue that we should beware the Muslim Brotherhood’s commitment to democracy [Foreign, “A ‘Moderate’ Path Is Just Another Road to Disaster,” March 12, 2007].
Mr. Ibrahim argues that in our article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, we “declared that the Ikhwan movement would honor democratic processes.” Mr. Ibrahim then refutes the point saying, “the Nazis, Bolsheviks, and the Baathists of Iraq and Syria who used bait and switch tactics.”
He must have missed the part where we wrote, “many analysts, meanwhile, sensibly question whether the Brotherhood’s adherence to democracy is merely tactical and transitory — an opportunistic commitment to, in the historian Bernard Lewis’ words, ‘one man, one vote, one time.’ Behind that warning is an extensive history of similar cadre organizations that promised democracy and then recanted once in power: the Bolsheviks, the Nazis, the Baath party in Iraq and Syria, even the Nasserists.”
Despite Mr. Ibrahim’s stated goal to clarify the debate using “facts and logic,” his column only serves to muddy the water.
ROBERT LEIKEN
Director
The Immigration and National Security Program
Nixon Center
STEVEN BROOKE
Research associate
Nixon Center
Washington, D.C.
