Palestine today


Time for accountability
Charles Krauthammer makes some great points.

It is time to stop infantilizing the Palestinians. As Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said in a news conference four days after the election, ``The Palestinian people have chosen Hamas with its known stances.'' By a landslide, the Palestinian people have chosen these known stances: rejectionism, Islamism, terrorism, rank anti-Semitism, and the destruction of Israel in a romance of blood, death and revolution. Garbage collection on Wednesdays.

Everyone is lamenting the fall of Fatah and the marginalization of its leader Mahmoud Abbas. This is ridiculous. The election exposed what everyone knew and would not admit: Abbas has no constituency. Would it have been better to keep funneling billions of dollars from the EU and a gullible U.S. to the thoroughly corrupt administration of a hapless figurehead? Billions that either end up in Swiss bank accounts or subsidize countless gangs of young men carrying guns?

The current nostalgia for Fatah moderation is absurd. What moderation? Yasser Arafat's 1993 paper recognition of Israel's right to exist was as fraudulent as his famous Oslo side letter renouncing terrorism. He spent the next seven years clandestinely sponsoring terror, then openly launched a four-year terror war, the most vicious in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

I think Mr. Krauthammer fingered precisely what was wrong with American foreign policy before 9-11. Basically we paid off tyrants and dictators for future good will and to keep the Soviets at bay. The result is whole nations who have never had to take responsibility for their actions because they knew someone would always ride to their rescue in exchange for some meaningless promises.

A better choice would have been to encourage democratic governments whenever possible.

Best yet would have been to stay out of other nation's politics entirely. But Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson closed that door a long time ago.

We're not dealing with long term foreign policy right now. We're picking up the pieces after the failure of everything except the collapse of the Soviet Union. President Bush has risked everything in a gamble that democracy will take root and flourish.

But I wish we had more time to get the first crop planted.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - February 3, 2006 at 04:50 AM  Tag


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