Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog

While I’m not at liberty to divulge details, suffice it to say I was at a very intriguing meeting of the minds the other night in Beverly Hills at the house of Ron Burkle. The discussion centered around the prospects of using casinos to transform the Middle East. Bush’s one mistake was his misguided focus on the spreading of democracy to the East, when he should have been taking a page from Ronald Reagan’s strategy of the Cold War - the spreading of free markets and capitalism. And what better manifestation of capitalism is there than casinos? (just ask your local Comanche or Sioux).

So there I was with Mohammed Ali Al Hashimi of Dubai-based Zabeel Investments on the one hand, and the dashing Vegas entrepeneur Andrew Sasson (the Light Group). And we got to talking about the potential for expansion in the service and hospitality sectors not just in the Emirates, but in Iraq proper. Show me a place where casinos have not prospered and bettered the prospects of the surrounding communities? Strangely enough, some old-school members of the internationalist wing of the Democrat party were present at Ron’s house that night (Dukakis, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark et al) and Warren Christopher, of all people, chirped up “you can’t go wrong with casinos.”