HAMAS
I'm not sure how many of you all have been following (or are aware of) the situtation in Palestine right now but, two days ago, Hamas captured a majority of seats in the national (if that word can accurately describes present-day Palestine) parliamentary elections. The fact that Hamas is currently recognized as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, the E.U., and others makes the situation between Israel, Palestine, and the West really volatile right now. Seeing as how the U.S.-led "Coalition of the Willing" invaded Afghanistan and Iraq partly on the premesis of these nations harboring "terrorists" what will they do now to Palestine that is, to them, run by terrorists? Anyone have thoughts and what the course of action for the U.S. and others might be? What type of governments Hamas will look to erect? Why the Prime Minister and his cabinet immediately resigned?Has Ariel Sharon woken up from his coma yet? Talk about receiving bad news...
posted by Chimaobi Amutah @ 7:53 PM
3 Comments:
thanks for your continued international updates chip, they allow for me to keep posting
If anyone wants to speak of hypocritical and just plain bad U.S. foreign policy, this is it. The hypocritical part I encourage anyone to dispute, but the plain bad part I will not back down on.
It is hypocritical because the U.S. is fighting for "democracy" in iraq but seems to be threatining not to support Hamas which won in a free and fair democratic election. I guess one could argue that the U.S.'s "war on terror" takes precidence over that, but now we see where the U.S. lies in terms of "freedom". They choose a war on a concept instead, and policy rooted in mutable concepts is always threatened by the biases of the ruling elite.
That being said, regardless of what you believe U.S. policy towards Palestine was horrible, rooted in its hurtful hubris. The U.S. assumed it could influence its elections through USAID money, which backfired completely as when a WaPo article came out exposing it, leading to Hamas running with it. When is the U.S. going to learn how many people don't like it, and how their "support" hurts more than helps parties, especially in the form of buy-offs. If the U.S. economically isolates Hamas now, the new government is going to be able to blame any shortcomings on outsiders, which will again hurt the U.S.'s image in the eyes of the Palestinian people. If they are forced out of office, it will be even worse.
George Bush is stupid. If he wanted to influence the elections, he should have just sent them the voting machines from Florida and Ohio to vote on. They could have even had some Republican donors do it under the auspices of an international democracy promoting non-profit, "Democracy Int'l. Donates Voting Equipment to Mideast." Oh these people are amateurs at corruption.
Guess Who for President '08
Democrats are about the same friend though they are better at covering up their botched foreign policy.
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