Last Word: Natan Sharansky

I appreciate that Bush liked my book, but there are some of my ideas he doesn't share. He was very firm in pushing for immediate elections, a concept I was very critical of. Free elections have to follow the building of civil society. This, unfortunately, was ignored, and pushing for immediate elections paved the road for Hamas.

Now that Iraq has descended into a bloody civil war, are you upset that your book was used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion?
If you read my book, nowhere do I say that the way to bring democracy is to declare more wars. But what I do say is that appeasing dictators for a long time will make them stronger so that in the end we'll have to fight with them. That is what happened with Saddam Hussein. But America wasn't prepared for the Shia-Sunni conflict that fo—lowed- not enough thought was put into it.

Does the success of Islamist groups like Hamas, Hizbullah and the Muslim Brotherhood contradict your claims that democracy is the best way to secure freedom and human rights?
When there are elections during or after many years of corrupt dictatorship, people choose candidates who are taking care of immediate needs. People kept asking why Christian villages voted for Hamas. It's because Hamas was protecting them from the gangs of Fatah.

© 2007