I just gave a thumbs-up to Martin Kramer‘s list of the dumbest things written by Western intellectuals who did junkets to Libya.
• 3d place: The shores of Tripoli by Stephen Walt http://goo.gl/pkzZu: “Libya doesn’t feel like other police states that I have visited.”
• 2d place: My chat with the colonel by Anthony Giddens http://goo.gl/VCEo4: “As one-party states go, Libya is not especially repressive. Gadafy seems genuinely popular.”
• 1st place: No Democratic Dominoes in the Middle East by Benjamin Barber
“Libya has a tradition of participatory local governance because of Qadaffi’s long interest in participatory democracy and peoples’ committees. Moreover, he is not detested in the way that Mubarak has been detested and rules by means other than fear.”
