Here’s Left-wing middle east expert professor Juan Cole, his bent little anti-Zionist, anti-Bush hardon engorged to the point of throbbing, trouser-tented blowback, luxuriating in Hamas’ “victory” in the Palestinian elections. From Salon, “How do you like your democracy now, Mr. Bush?”:
The stunning victory of the militant Muslim fundamentalist Hamas Party in the Palestinian elections underlines the central contradictions in the Bush administration’s policies toward the Middle East. Bush pushes for elections, confusing them with democracy, but seems blind to the dangers of right-wing populism. At the same time, he continually undermines the moderate and secular forces in the region by acting high-handedly or allowing his clients to do so. As a result, Sunni fundamentalist parties, some with ties to violent cells, have emerged as key players in Iraq, Egypt and Palestine.
Democracy depends not just on elections but on a rule of law, on stable institutions, on basic economic security for the population, and on checks and balances that forestall a tyranny of the majority. Elections in the absence of this key societal context can produce authoritarian regimes and abuses as easily as they can produce genuine people power. Bush is on the whole unwilling to invest sufficiently in these key institutions and practices abroad. And by either creating or failing to deal with hated foreign occupations, he has sown the seeds for militant Islamist movements that gain popularity because of their nationalist credentials.
Without going into too much obvious detail here, Cole’s entire diatribe is the projection of someone who has fought vigorously against the very pre-conditions for democracy he now argues Bush failed to take into account—even as the President himself has insisted time and again that voting alone, the mechanism of democratic government (and one that is often abused by dictators who recognize the importance, somehow, of appearing to run a society based around the free will of the people), is only one step in creating a functioning democracy, one of the dangers of the ostensible trappings of democratic reform being that countries set themselves up for the one-time vote scenario so widely discussed by the (now, mostly left or liberal) critics of US policy for actively spreading significant philosophical change. As I noted yesterday, with respect to the Palestinian elections, this vote was perhaps the least important step—particularly in a territory that has for years been run by warring factions all of whom seem to agree that Israel is to be eradicated, and “Palestine” expanded. That is, the conditions for a true democracy—the kind George Bush and scholars on the subject of democratic reform consistently refer to—were never present in the first place: the Palestinian populace has been raised on a toxic brew of anti-Semitism, cultural victimhood (combined with a sense of supreme ethnic superiority), and the rhetorical and financial cover of the western socialist establishment that has willingly excused a history of violent actions against Israeli civilians, even as they denounced Israel’s heavy-handed defense tactics while pouring monies into “refugee” camps that were never improved (though, on the plus side, Yasser Arafat and Jimmy Carter both won Nobel Peace Prizes, Ms. Arafat is able to maintain her swanky Paris digs on EU taxes, and just about everybody in the West Bank and Gaza has four rifles for every shoe.)
But where Cole veers wildy off course—or rather, where he hopes to distract readers from the rhetorical sleight of hand that animates his argument—is when he attempst to conflate conditions in the Palestinian territories with those in other countries to which it is the stated goal of an enlightened and truly progressive foreign policy (as opposed to one that, ironically, gives itself that title while agitating for a status quo of dictatorships and oil-field stability) to bring about an end to tyranny and create the necessary conditions for actual democratic reform—if not out of some sense overarching idealism (to which, again ironically, the left used to claim a moral monopoly), than at least when such reform works in our national interests (for instance, in the realist foreign policy philosophy of the pre-neocon conservatives).
Argues Cole:
In Iraq, which is among the least secure and most economically fraught countries in the world, the Dec. 15 elections brought into Parliament a set of powerful Shiite fundamentalist parties and a new force, the Muslim fundamentalist Iraqi Accord Front, which gained most of the votes of formerly secular-minded Iraqi Sunni Arabs. Some IAF politicians are suspected of strong ties to Iraq’s Sunni insurgency. In Egypt, last fall’s election increased representation for the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood from 17 to more than 70 seats in Parliament, making that group a key political player for the first time in Egyptian history. Decades ago, the party once assassinated a prime minister and attempted to assassinate President Gamal Abdul Nasser, but now maintains it has turned to moderation. It aims at the imposition of a rigid interpretation of Islamic law on Egyptians, including Egyptian women.
I’ll agree with Cole here that Egypt still needs to be dealt with more forcefully, but first things first, Doctor. Simply mentioning both Iraq and Egypt in the same paragraph of an essay doesn’t mean you’ve joined them in any other way than rhetorically.
Iraq—for its voting patterns that retreated, in many cases, to ethnic lines and tribal affiliations—is by no means similar to the situation in Palestine. For one thing, the minority and former ruling secular Sunnis—even if some of them eschew the political process to join with the fundamentalist IAF (which, gee, I thought the secular Ba’athists would NEVER join with the Muslim fundamentalists, but maybe I was mislead by some earlier writings on the subject)—they are a moribund alliance. The democratic elections in Iraq, after all, didn’t guarantee and end to violence and insurgency. They simply put another nail in its coffin.
Similarly, the ruling religious Shiites are constrained by a constitution, and so the potential for Iraq to become a stepchild of Iran is remote. Should such a thing happen, the entire adventure would be a failure, certainly. But I think the US and its coalition partners have too much invested in Iraq to allow such a thing to happen—nor do I think the majority of Iraqis have any interest in a fundamentalist theocracy.
The remaining concern in Iraq, as I see it (and I lack Dr Cole’s expertise in these areas, admittedly), is the potential for a series of brief civil wars, with the Kurds perhaps breaking away into a mostly-autonomous federalist state. But even still, the preconditions for democracy in Iraq—a highly literate populace newly freed from tyrannical rule, one which has shown a determination, at least to this point, to welcome all factions into the political mix (which, when political wrangling takes the place of gunfighting and throwing “dissenters” into plastic shredder or off of rooftops, is the surest sign democracy is on the right track) and has committed itself to the political process by participating in large numbers in a series of votes and compromises (including continued political horse trading over provisions in the Constitution)—have been much further advanced than the parallel condition Cole wishes to draw on for his implied comparison via the Palestinian vote and “hard right populism”.
More Cole:
Now Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, a branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, has come to power in Palestine. In his press conference on Thursday, Bush portrayed the Palestinian elections in the same way he depicts Republican Party victories over Democrats in the United States: “The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find healthcare.” He sounds like a spokesman for Hamas, underlining the irony that Bush and his party have given Americans the least honest government in a generation, have drastically cut services, and have actively opposed extension of healthcare to the uninsured in the United States
—or, if one wishes to frame it another, more internally consistent way, he is, rather, trying to explain precisely what Dr Cole earlier insisted Bush doesn’t understand: that simple voting does not a democracy make. And rather than sounding like a “spokesman for Hamas”, Bush—while admittedly trying to put the best face on a horrible outcome (but one that speaks to the failure of the Palestinians to take historical advantage of an opportunity for sovereignty and self-determination, not, as Cole would have it, the failure of the US and Israel to offer olive branches)—along with the Israelis, has already made it clear the US will not seek relations with Hamas unless they renounce violence and alter their charter.
Hardly a victory for the Palestinians, I should think.
Continues Cole,
[…] the president’s attempt to dismiss the old ruling Fatah Party as corrupt and inefficient, however true, is also a way of taking the spotlight off his own responsibility for the stagnation in Palestine. Bush allowed then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to sideline the ruling Fatah Party of Yasser Arafat, to fire missiles at its police stations, and to reduce its leader to a besieged nonentity. Sharon arrogantly ordered the murder of civilian Hamas leaders in Gaza, making them martyrs. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements continued to grow, the fatally flawed Oslo agreements delivered nothing to the Palestinians, and Bush and Sharon ignored new peace plans—whether the so-called Geneva accord put forward by Palestinian and Israeli moderates or the Saudi peace plan—that could have resolved the underlying issues. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, which should have been a big step forward for peace, was marred by the refusal of the Israelis to cooperate with the Palestinians in ensuring that it did not produce a power vacuum and further insecurity.
In other words, the Israelis deserve Hamas, and it’s all Bush’s fault.
But what Cole doesn’t mention—and what lies at the heart of all his litany of blame—is that the real responsibilty for the shape of modern “Palestine” comes from those arrogant academics like Cole whose internalized elitist bigotry, the very stuff that allows them to consistently forgive the violence and recalcitrance of the “Palestinian” movement under the guise that, as studied acolytes of Said-inflected identity politics, he and his ilk are protectors of an oppressed and disenfranchised Other rather than enablers of a movement that has retained as its goal from the PLO through Hamas the eradication of Israel, is what affords the Palestinian “freedom” movement both its international sympathies (through a decidedly hostile anti-Israel western and middle eastern press) and its international aid, which is then funneled into anti-semitic training and propaganda, weapons, and money for the corrupt autocrats who have used this movement to distract the region from their our sins for over 50 years.
In short, Cole’s soft racism—his insistence that the Palestinians are at heart but noble savages whose strategy is in need of the guiding reform only he and his intellectual brethren can afford (for instance, what is the best way to protect an oppressed Palestinian refugee from an Israeli school child on a bus? Preemptively blow up the bus? Or start a movement at Harvard to divest investment into Israeli companies, or refuse to hire Israeli scholars?)—and the soft racism of western elites who refuse to take the Arabs at their word (because to do so would be to force them to recognize that they’ve been deployed as useful idiots for years) is at the heart of the problem in the middle east.
And it is high time the strategy shifted, and that US foreign policy eschewed the “realism” and “stability” in foreign policy that provides the Arab street with its grievances and moved toward a determined effort to bring freedom and self determination to a poisoned region.
(h/t Allah at Link Mecca; see also, The Guardian: when 59 million Americans vote for Bush, they’re morons; when the Palestinians vote for a terror organization to front their government, “The Palestinians’ democratic choice must be respected”; and Ace has more on Cole—working in “douchebag” where I, to my shame, couldn’t find that perfect spot that makes it sound just right)
As so often in plumbing the deptha of the Leftist mind, Orwell had it: “Objectively pro-fascist.”
Jeff, you made a game try, but cataloging all of the abject lies Cole put in that bile-filled incoherent and dishonest screed may be beyond mortal strength.
Which means that soon “Horse manure is a land of Llamas” will be in here endorsing Juan.
I have to wonder whether if, in our haste to man the typical partisan battlements, we aren’t missing the whole point. The fact is, a Hamas led Palestine is A Very Bad Thing. Furthermore, no one seems to have been expecting this; the Isreali intelligence predicted a narrow victory for Abbas for example. I have to believe that there is an attributable cause for the unexpected results. It is important that we step back for a moment, and try to acertain whether or not our policies have served to push more Palestinians toward extremism & violence. We have an opportunity to gather a tremendous amount of information by completing that feedback loop. We can bicker over what to do with the information once we have it.
I’m pretty sure the title makes up for any douchebag deficiencies in the post.
Eric —
I think you miss the point. It is the steady and consistent international resistance to our policies that, in my estimation, continue to embolden the Palestinians.
They have not changed their tactics. Our problem is, we keep expecting we can “teach” them to do so.
I help a friend who races a dirt track car. We invest heavily in safety gear, as do most racers. But there is a particular breed, particularly in the lower levels, that eschew all but the bare minimum safety equipment on the philosophy that in a really bad crash they would rather just eat it than be a cripple. Maybe this is just Palestine unbuckling the seatbelts.
Eric, you make an interesting point. But the U.S. can’t be solely to blame. After all, we didn’t have anything to do with Arafat’s death. But we can certainly be blamed for neutering other Palestinian heroes–Saddam sits in a jail cell, OBL is in hiding. What other homicidal maniac(s) are the Palestinians to turn to?…For now, it seems to be Hamas.
Are the Palestinians emboldened? Or are they finally getting a chance to speak(vote) their minds about how they’ve always felt?
For years, we’ve dealt with the PLO as the partner in peace with Israel, while Hamas called the shots as to whether there would truly be peace or not.
Now Hamas is on the line, the Palestinian people have said ‘they speak for me’, and any act of terrorism by Hamas is either state-sponsored terrorism or a military action. Let the world and the UN deal with that accordingly.
This is a set back for the current negotiations. But I don’t see how anybody is worse off for finally knowing how the Palestian people want to be represented. If we are all shocked, it is because world actors were too busy ascribing their own motives to the palestinians for their own purposes. But now we know, and now we’ll see.
That’s why we shouldn’t have given those academics all that agenda-setting power back in . . .in … ehh forget it.
If the middle east ‘self-determines,’ that will be the end of israel.
But in general I can’t tell whether you get this point about Hamas, about Bush’s quote on health care and good governance. That is why people voted for Hamas—because they do provide health care and good governance (and also a current truce with israel—how do we read that?). They chose that over the US financed PR of Fatah. Is that a ‘failure of self determination.’ In general it looks to me like what occured in algeria, and maybe occuring in egypt: that the religious parties offer the well-organized good-governance alternative to corrupt and inept secular parties. Kinda the opposite of here.
But what victory was at hand? Continue to be fleeced by Fatah?
Actus are you saying that the hatred taught in the madrassas in Palestine and the children’s shows that glorify suicide bombers have nothing to do wiht the voting?
Where in the world do you get the idea that these particular religious parties are not corrupt and inept? For heaven’s sake, actus! Hamas is a terrorist organization and you are saying they aren’t corrupt??
This is actually just making transparent what we’ve known all along—the Palestinians want to destroy Israel. There can now be no internationally-sanctioned fig leaf that allows the world community, with a wink and a nod, to fund the Palestinian state while recoiling in mock horror and shock at the terrorism. Fund the Palestinian Authority and you’re funding the Intifada—no ifs, ands, or buts.
One election does not a democratic state make. It is the second, third, and fourth elections—the habit of elections—that enables democracy to emerge. Each election can correct the mistakes of the last. Do that for 200 years and you get some pretty sensible, middle-of-the-road parties to emerge.
Here the Palestinians have chosen war. I think it is a remarkably bad decision, especially considering that it isn’t a war they can win. Whoever wins the next election—if there is one, and if there is anything of value remaining there to vote over—will likely have a mandate to make the peace at any price. Perhaps then we’ll see some sense emerge.
It’s too bad. they got offered a good deal at Oslo, and rejected it. Now they’ll get nothing but whatever they are permitted to keep of their ruins. It’s a shame, and they have no one to blame for this but themselves.
By the fact that without a state funded from the outside (the Palestinean Authority), they provide social services. They don’t just have an armed wing, but also are many institutions in society, such as schools and health care, etc…. I don’t know why you imagine that terrorists *have* to be corrupt. I don’t see terrorism as the way to grow a swiss bank account. Rather I see the Fatah way as the way to do that: promise a bit of non-terrorism, get billions in aid money, do nothing with it.
It could. I don’t know why not vote for the Al-Aqsa martyr’s brigade instead of Hamas, that has declared a truce.
It should come as no surpise to see, in circumstances like this, Mr. Cole smell the offal and show up to show up to wallow in it. Like most good proto-faccists and fascist apologists, he confuses elections with democracy. As such, he is unable to get past that basic misunderstanding to shed any useful light on (a) what’s actually going on, and (b) what should we do about it.
However, I have to take issue with some of the postings here, though not so much with Jeff. Frankly, I also think Bush’s analysis of the election, that this was about corruption and basic governance, to be as likely to be right as that of many on the right who are claiming that this means the Palestinians have chosen terror and war.
Did anyone really think that Fatah was really the party of peace? Sure, there’s Abu Mazen’s wing, but there’s also the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade and many other armed wings, grown and nurtured under Arafat’s tutelege and support, that have blown up innocents as readily as Hamas has. And guess what, many of these folks were ones that lost their race to Hamas.
The reporting I’ve seen and exit polling does support this analysis somewhat as well.
I don’t put this forward necessarily as a reason for optimism. Hamas is as bad as they come. It’s just that now, it’s a lot harder for them to hide. The are the government. (Or at least the part of it that rules in internal affairs.) They can continue to engage in terrorism as they may well. But who do they hide behind now?
Meanwhile, I think Olmert has the right idea. Finish the wall. If Abbas can build a sufficient constituency for peace, great. If not, wait until Hamas either reforms or makes a mess of things and is run out of government in the next election.
Of course, we and other developed countries should help. Until and unless the Palestinians put in place a responsible government, there should be no more direct aid to the Palestinian Authority. Direct all aid toward building economic and political centers independent of the PA. And wait.
Actus,
Maybe none of the wings of the Pastinian entity that have made a show of being more “moderate” received the vote that Hamas did because of the radicalization of Palestinian society. The power structutre there, Fatah for the most part, has preached hatred at home and peace to foriegners. The locals believe the hatred, the foriegners want to believe the peace.
When you add Fatah’s wholesale theft and incompetence into the mix…it’s a pretty noxious brew, isn’t it?
None of this excuses Hamas. It is a terrorist organization, but as it turns out, maybe there was no one there to negogiate with all along. That’s a pretty depressing thought.
– The typical pattern of the entire gaggle of terrorist organizations has been to hit, then pull back and go quiet for a time, either as a shadow lurking behind a pseudo-government (Fatah) or in other ways (al Qaeda/Taliban). The general rule has been to rope-a-dope Eastern bloc countrys, while holding off Western influence through left-wing press support, and specious statements from time to time. People like Cole lap up these pronouncements using them to underwrite their anti-American/Israeli screeds.
– What I would expect, assuming the pattern will be followed, is possibly a public showing of temperence from Hamas initially, while some other obscure entity carries on rocket and human bomb attacks on Israel, all the while Hamas is struggling for some upper hand on the Jews. Learned Socialist scholars will jump on this to good effect, and when the next “crisus” comes will, as they’ve always done, judisciously ignore all the lies, and failed promises if the West is foolish enough to even entertain the propoganda.
– The best hope is that Iran will continue to work at cross purposes to the longer term plans of al Qaeda, Hessbullah, and Hamas/Syria, bringing things to a head that will require a decisive reaction from the West. A nuclear capability in the hands of yet another group of Theocratic lunitics is simply unacceptable by any possible measure. Israel knows this and will act, and many countries, priciply the US and Britain will immediately join them.
Shahid, exactly who are the western nations to give money and support to. The kiddies got elected to sit at the table with the grown-ups, there’s no one left to talk to, support or otherwise. Why not let them go to hell in their own boat?
tw: do you think Hamas will seem more tractable or less?
Jeff: “They have not changed their tactics. Our problem is, we keep expecting we can “teach†them to do so.”
They probably could be taught to do so, but not by the methods of their heretofore benefactor. The PA is not, pace Cole, Bush’s democracy. It’s Europe’s.
See, I think Hamas was the actual power structure. Not Fatah.
Actus, Hamas makes money one of two ways. It either promises to commit acts of terrorism against innocent people to influence its political enemies, or it raises money through charitble donations and siphons that money into terrorist activities. It is corruption either way.
The fact that they can build hospitals is an indication of how much money they make though outsides sources, not how little.
Arafat siphoned state aid, but he started getting money from interested parties when he was still just a man with a dream, back in the 60s. His donors included Sadaam Hussein, Mid east sheiks, wealthy Europeans. Hamas might have decided to do some good with their donations, but until I see a public accounting of Hamas funds, I’m comfortable their coffers have seen as much action as Arafat’s.
I agree with this:
See, I think Hamas was the actual power structure. Not Fatah.
and this:
The PA is not, pace Cole, Bush’s democracy. It’s Europe’s.
FWIW.
And a few of our previous adminstrations’. I agree 100% and should have thought that so obvious that for Cole to suggest otherwise is the height of audacity. But then, it’s also the centerpiece (in terms of kernel argument) of his entire piece.
So I suppose I should have made the point more clear.
Yes. Yes yes.
Ah, the forecast…glass, glass and more glass for Syria. With a light sprinkling of shattered glass for the Palestinian Region, followed by pounding shards of glass. After that, calm.
Because they try to bring about political change by slaughtering innocents and encouraging mass murder. If they manage to keep an honest set of books in the process, that doesn’t make them any less corrupt, just not corrupt in that particular way.
What you’re saying, actus, is that Hamas keeps the trains running on time.
Oh. I see. That’s what you mean by corruption. I thought you meant they’d make promises or receive money for one thing (legitimate to the giver) and then use the money for personal enrichment.
Right. Cuz you want to compare it with the public accounting you’ve seen of arafat.
The Bush administration was funding at least Fatah, if not hte PA.
Actus,
Do you think that Hamas has always controlled the dialog in Palestinain Society? Fatah just made the money? Wouldn’t that make Hamas more cunning than the west had supposed, and Fatah even slimier, if such is possible?
Actus, I put nothing past them. Our chances of ever seeing a public accounting of Hamas’s finances are about the same of ever seeing Arafat’s financial records. If you want to assume that Hamas are the Terrorists with Integrity, you do that. I’m assuming they’ve made enough money to build hospitals, fund terrorism, and put a little something away for a rainy day.
But this is a stupid argument, and I’m sorry for taking up Jeff’s bandwidth with it.
This has to be one of the top ten jaw-droppingly stupid utterances I have seen in any comment thread anywhere. Actus, you have a definition of “corrupt” that only a lobbyist could love.
[Emphasis added]
The point Colossus touches on above seems to be largely overlooked in various speculations about how this will play out.
Some say Hamas will moderate itself. Others say they will discredit themselves with a failed government, clearing the decks for more responsible leadership.
I say this election may well be the last one, or at least the last one in which there is any possibility of an alternative to Hamas. Look at recent Iranian ‘elections’, where moderate candidates are vetoed by the mullahocracy for a preview of the likely future of Palestinian democracy.
Hamas will provoke Israel into retaliating, and then wave the bloody shirt, using it to strengthen its position at home and in the Muslim world.
In the long run, it may turn out that having things get worse (perhaps much worse) is the only way to defeat the Palestinian rejectionists once and for all, by allowing them to pursue their nihilist fantasy to its apocalyptic conclusion.
But for the short term, unless Hamas’ masked leaders morph into the Arab equivalents of Gorbachev overnight, the only way out seems to be a bloodbath that makes everything that’s happened in the Middle-East since 1948 look like a Rotary Club picnic.
Y’know, Bush gave a very interesting five minute disquisition yesterday on the Hamas victory —and I thought it was practically literary in the quality of both its sarcasm and reserve.
Did no one else get him?
The Car Swarm People want to be represented by Nazis? Then let the subhuman motherfuckers do it on someone else’s dime besides Uncle Sucker’s. They’re either going to earn their nationhood the right way or they’re going to die in enormous, epoch-turning numbers.
The Bush administration, like administrations before it, has been passing funds to the PA, and thus by default to Fatah. This process was (AFAIK) begun by Jimmy Carter, and has been continued by everybody since. It is, and has always been, done under the strategy of “engagement”—the notion that if polity X is drawn into intercourse with the rest of the world it will become more accommodating of the world’s customs and needs.
Engagement hasn’t worked. It isn’t clear that it could not have worked, but in no case that I am familiar with has it accomplished its stated goals. One of the normal forms of engagement has been to provide aid, in the hope that people with a bit of jack in their jeans will participate in world trade, and therefore in world affairs, and be drawn in, engaged. It’s now clear that what has happened in almost all cases is that the oligarchs and elites have shortstopped the aid, using it to enrich themselves and ensconce themselves even more firmly at the top of their societies. Arafat and company are merely extreme examples; the process has occurred everywhere. This is what rose to the top. We’re obliged to call it “cream”.
And, fatally, the Left adopted the paradigm of “cultural imperialism”. That deserves a longer essay than I have time or space for, but I will single out one aspect: Arlington (Texas or Virginia) is a lot like Islington, and both are not too dissimilar to suburbs of Frankfurt or Paris. Wherever you go, the trappings of a wealthy society are similar—cars, detached or semi-detached houses, sports teams, fast food, and self-importance (and self-reference) bordering on solipsism. By declaring that these characteristics are “American”, and that America’s desire to see other nations and peoples so accoutered is “cultural imperialism”, the Left has declared that prosperity is inherently vile and must be strongly guarded against.
The beneficiaries, of course, are the oligarchs, elitists, and tyrants who parasitize the societies being “protected”. Their position is customary; if the customs are to be defended against American hegemonism, their positions must likewise be defended. Originally the oligarchs, etc. so defended were new. The Left, by seeing itself as the uniquely virtuous and progressive Vanguard of History, tends naturally to elitism, from which source springs the likes of Fidel I Castro, Prince of Cuba and Scourge of the Colossus of the North. Pol Pot was the last such indigenous Leftist. Since then, the heroes of the Left have been the oligarchs in place, courageously defending themselves against the myrmidons of McDonalds and the bullies of Big Oil: the Amins, the Saddams. Chavez appears at first glance to be a return to the old ways, but a closer examination reveals just another Mugabe, a bit brighter perhaps.
Engagement has merely funded the forces it was intended to displace. This has not failed to come to the notice of the people it was (putatively) intended to benefit. Thus, Hamas.
Encouraged by the Euros in the name of anti-hegemonism, the Palestinian Authority as ruled by Arafat and Fatah became just another grasping oligarchy skimming the funds off the top to finance lifestyles beyond the dreams of any ordinary person of Palestine, indeed beyond the dreams of any thousand banded together. Hamas, on the other hand, had (has) a relatively small budget which depends largely upon extortion and the thinly-veiled social extortion sometimes known as “charity”. They do seem to have at least retained some tiny bit of their original purpose, to benefit the people of Palestine. (The intended benefit, let alone the methods, can be argued against as less than desirable or beneficial; I am here speaking of overall intent.) So I strongly suspect that the result of this election is less an endorsement of Hamas than it is a rejection of Fatah—not rejection of the intent to drive the Israelis into the sea, but rejection of its grasping corruption. Hamas is yet young, and has not yet been quite so corroded by the flow of easy money.
An echo of the situation can be seen just to the north. Canadians didn’t vote Conservative because they thought Harper would lead them to the Promised Land; they voted Conservative out of disgust for the corruption of the Liberals.
Give the Left time. The leaders of Hamas will figure out that they have to say the right thing in Western languages to avoid choking off the golden flow, so the money will keep coming (after, perhaps, a brief hiccup). As it does so, Hamas’s leaders will start to buy Mercedes, skiing vacations in Europe, and gold toilet-taps, and in ten years they will be indistinguishable from Fatah—except that, being out of office and thus lacking access to the Money River, Fatah may rediscover its origins. Even Arafat originally intended to improve the lot of Palestinians; by killing Jews, true, but he didn’t start out wanting a suite in Switzerland for his nominal consort. He got diverted from his goal, and so will the new guys.
In the meantime, Israel needs to continue building the wall/fence and upgrading the software of Bright Arrow. I think it would also be good for them to tell the West Bank “settlers” that if they want Eretz Israel they will have to do it themselves, and withdraw the Army from convoy and protection duty. Hamas will learn to lie to the West, the Europeans will fall on the lies with great delight (as will the likes of Juan Cole) and declare yet another victory against the cultural imperialism of the United States and its Jewish catspaw, and the ultimate difference will be the color of the flags. In the meantime some hospitals will get built and some water lines laid, and I for one don’t begrudge the poor Palestinians those things. The rest of their bad decisions will doom them just as they do now, and there’s no reason to be a dog in the manger about things that cost us little.
Meet the new Arafat, same as the old Arafat.
Those of you who expect some radical change are SOL. If the Left can’t figure out that Mugabe isn’t exactly the Second Coming of Brian, they sure as Hell won’t notice anything wrong with killing off Jooooos, and as soon as Hamas figures out which lies to tell they’ll be right behind them just like they were with dear ol’ Yasser. There will be a brief period during which the more generous of us will note that the Euros seem to be Getting It, followed by the inevitable disappointment as the UN is called upon to condemn Israel for not financing new sewer-lines for bombers to crawl up. The Left cannot Get It. If they could, they wouldn’t be the Left.
Regards,
Ric
Maybe a better way to make the point about corruption and Hamas is to say that whereas the leadership of Fatah was a rather bumbling, venal band of kleptocrats and gangsters (comparable to, say, Mussolini and his fascisti), Hamas will be ruthlessly efficient in pursuing their murderous goals (in the German mold).
At least, that’s what I expect.
Jeff, I couldn’t agree more when you say
Sadly Bush has shown absolutely no sign of doing any such thing. Using the rhetoric of democracy as a club with which to beat the countries we don’t like he does plenty, but why wwould anyone believe that he is committed to your favored policy until he take some concrete steps to to bring freedom and self determination to our allies? Get back to me as soon as Bush shows the same interest in democracy in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Jordan, as he does in spreading it to Iran and Syria.
Retief,
There has been some positive movement on the fronts you mention, but it’s been incrememntal and evolutionary in nature, not absent. The changes that are occuring in those countries involve a lot more of the really boring civics-class kind of stuff that just doesn’t make headlines. Your broader assertion about the spread of democracy is true only in the sense that it’s not absolute, but it has more to do with not smacking down folks like Mugabe.
The closest parallel is Carter’s big Human Rights Binge. Although he only leaned directly on a handful of countries, the broader agenda setting nature of his tone affected a great number of places, just not quite as graphically.
Cheers,
BRD
I feel like I need a helmet to come to this site. I think I’ll go take a bath. It’s raining blood and bullets around here.
Bravo Romeo Delta,
I’ll happily buy that it is possible for forceful action in a few places to influence others in less obvious ways. But is that what’s happening here? It would be a lot easier to believe if any of the places that weren’t already on our list of evildoers were getting serious attention. And if our inability to act in places like Darfur, because were stuck in Iraq, didn’t act as a massive counterargument to the “better democratize” influence.
BTW, any idea why Jeff would put “victory” in scare quotes in the first paragraph of this post?
Retief,
It would seem that when attempting world wide change it is best to apply one’s assets at strategic places. As far as military ordnanace goes, one should probably only fire that at one’s enemies, not one’s allies. I am mystified why, to the left, the only legitimate war is one fought against American allies.
I woud also note that his point was covered, even in the MSM, before the war with Afghanistan, and again before the War in Iraq began.
Ric Locke:
I so look forward to your commentary. Always so clear. But this time, also so depressing…
An alternate view – OK, only slightly alternate – is an augmentation of the “now it’s all out in the open” thing: when Europe turns a blind eye to Hamas-led Palestine’s attacks on Israel, and demands that Israel continue to support the murderous freeloaders, as I’m sorry to agree with you they will, it’s yet another sign that some of our “natural allies” ain’t so much.
Many in the US recognized and then got over France and Germany’s calumny a while ago and remembered that alliances can change in both identity and degree; we might consider going back to the lavender fields for a vacation but absolutely not trusting that government to watch our backs. When the Europe that doesn’t recognize that now the evil that Hamas does is the doing of a state actor that permits a response under the most basic tenet of “international law,” self-defense, we’ll have one more datum concerning the degree of our alliance, and we can act accordingly. We may be entering a time of remarkably transparent diplomacy, with Israel as the lens. The Left never will realize it, you’re right (so to speak), but if there’s any rationality in this world the Left won’t be holding the reins in the US for a while. It’s small comfort, but I’m trying hard to find the pony here.
TW: Do you see him behind that pile of manure?
I thought we were paying these guys money for peace.
Like all government programs, not working too well, is it? I’d let them starve. It’s not like the Iranians have to give them money to make them anti-Israel or anti-American. Since they are calling the tune, let them pay the piper.
And why pray tell is that our job?
Europe isn’t “stuck” in Iraq, nor is Canada, the UN, or pretty much anyone else. Nor are the Leftys bravely marching in New York or London with giant puppets. Leftists are always fond of gleefully pointing out that America and Britain stand alone in Iraq and that our erstwhile “allies” aren’t there to aid us. So where are they? What exactly IS the Left doing to aid Darfur? What exactly IS the Left doing to free people from dictators and corrupt regimes? What’s the Left’s plan?
I’m sure when someone like Howard Dean becomes President, decides to surrender in Iraq and send troops to Darfur, the Army Recruiting Stations in Berkeley and Manhattan will be just overflowing with bright, young eagar leftists, the same ones that cry “Chickenhawk!”now, clammoring to go off to “help” Darfur.
BTW, it’s always odd that there is such wailing and gnashing of teeth over Darfur when a bloodier war was carried out in the South for nearly a whole generation without any fashionable leftist missing a latte.
It couldn’t have been that it was the Sudan’s government against the Christian south now was it?
Hypocrisy, it is a wonderful bludgeon.
”And if our inability to act in places like Darfur, because were stuck in Iraq, didn’t act as a massive counterargument to the “better democratize†influence. ”
So, when we do act in Sudan as we have acted in Iraq, you’ll be doing your share of shouting down the likes of Jill, actus, Dr. de la Vega, and Phoenician, yes?
I’m used to it. Plenty of liberals shouted me down for opposing clinton’s Kosovo war as uncessary. Me and tom delay, not supporting the troops. Together.
Yes, Hamas as a ruling party is a bad thing, but it’s a Palistinian problem, not ours. THEY did it, not us. Now they get to live with the consequences.
We are now free of any ties to support these morons, and can let the Israelis kick them to the curb as often and as hard as needed.
King Abdullah in Jordan is sweating bullets right now.