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May 29, 2006
In the wake of Hamas's assumption of power President Bush declared: "We support democracy, but that doesn't mean we have to support governments elected as a result of democracy." Consquently, his administration set about engineering Palestinian "regime change" in reverse. The idea was to get the Palestinians, through collective punishment, to repudiate the very people they had just elected. The US's weapons were sanctions---the starving of a whole people--- and fostering the conflict/war between Hamas and Fatah:
Stavro
The result of regime change---undemocratically removing a Hamas-led Palestinian government---would be chaos in the territories, that would then open the way to militants, jihadists and suicide bombers from the rest of the world.
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I have never swallowed Bush’s almost fundamentalist faith in democracy.
(A comment which coming from someone you labeled as a “neocon” may be surprising)
No doubt if democratic elections were held in Saudi Arabia etc they'd turn up equally unpalatable characters.
I think Bush etc would argue they are not so much trying to overturn Hamas as moderate their policies towards Israel -and it may well work, given time. Some Arab sources have expressed the idea that the realities of office will moderate Hamas.
And the idea of sanctions is a bit of a furfy –what they are doing is restricting –or in the case of Europe, redirecting their aid. In your comments there seems to the implication that the west is obliged to give such aid. You need to remember it’s a gift, not a birthright.
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