Reply #12: Indeed, Sir

[The Magistrate]

If one adopts a cold-blooded view in real-politik style, democracy is the last thing any U.S. government should seek to foster in the Near East. It is only the presence of autocrats with a clear focus on their own self-interest and the capacity to ignore the will of those they rule on most points of policy that alows the U.S. any peaceable intercourse with the region at all. The present regime has certainly aggravated this, but it a great and old fact in place for decades. These people now in charge, for all their self-promotion as "adults" and "realists" and "hard-boiled sons of bitches" seem to operate on a comic-book level of understanding, only occassionally rising even to the level of a Tom Clancy pot-boiler. It is hard to escape the conclusion they actually believe their propagandas, and are gebnuinely surprised at the continued resistance of reality to their illusions and self-deceptions.