Powell Non-Bashing

Ari Berman notes a Jerusalem Post article featuring Colin Powell being sensible. "They won an election that we insisted upon having," Powell said. "And so, as unpleasant a group they may be and as distasteful as I find some of their positions, I think through some means, the Middle East Quartet… or through some means Hamas has to be engaged."

The normal next step after Powell says something sensible is to furiously denounce him for having endorsed the policy he's now denouncing back when he was Secretary of State, but the "isolate Hamas" blunder is an entirely post-Powell Bush administration screw-up. His hands are clean!

(well, okay, semi-clean; his public support was important to Bush in the 2000 and 2004 elections so in some sense everything really is his fault)

Photo by Flickr user Charles Haynes used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

I fail to see any logic in having to engage with Hamas just because it was elected. If Osama bin laden were eleted in Afghanistan would we be forced to engage him? The Palestinians were given a choice and they made a bad one. Now they, not us, have to live with the consequences.

Posted by Dave | July 20, 2007 1:46 PM

The only problem is of course that saying "ha, you suck, now live with the consequences!" is only going to strengthen Hamas by pushing the Palestinian territories further into the failed state category.

Posted by balta1701 | July 20, 2007 1:54 PM

Dave
I think the point was that we can't go around preaching about how awesome democracy and elections are, and at the same time reject the outcome of such elections. It is silly to tell people that they have the right to elect the representatives that we deem acceptable.

In fact, democracy and free elections by themselves may not quite the panacea for all evils that we thought they were. There are a lot of preconditions for democracy to succeed (rule of law, free press, civil order, courts and institutions etc). Without these, all you get is the democratically elected mess in Palestine and Iraq.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | July 20, 2007 2:01 PM

What balta said. Also, at the time of the elections there was a significant portion of the Hamas leadership in Gaza that was open to some form of accommodation with Israel. However the strategy of isolating Hamas served to greatly strengthen the rejectionist faction, and weaken the accomodationists.

Posted by RC | July 20, 2007 2:08 PM

It is especially hard to reject the outcome when Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian government all warned our totally confused Secretary of Stae (no -- not Powell -- the other one) that Hamas was going to win. Her insight "I guess we didn't have our finger on the pulse of the Palestinians." And these folks are now going to lead the people to a democratic peace.

Posted by Peter Driscoll | July 20, 2007 2:09 PM

- And, just to pile on, it was especially stupid to do this in the context of a Middle East policy founded on the core principle of spreading democracy. Now, wouldn't you know, some Arabs are so cynical that they don't imagine the Bush administration to be entirely serious...

Posted by Dave L | July 20, 2007 2:11 PM

2cynicalbyhalf-

Well, we should not be going around preaching about elections. We should be preaching about liberal democracy. Elections are icing not the cake.

Posted by Dave | July 20, 2007 2:16 PM

"However the strategy of isolating Hamas served to greatly strengthen the rejectionist faction, and weaken the accomodationists."

There are no "accomodationists" in Hamas. Just like there are no "accomodationists" is al Qaida. Yoi might apply that term to some parts of Fatah, but Hamas is per se rejectionist. It exists to destroy Israel. Read its charter.

Posted by Dave | July 20, 2007 2:19 PM

Hamas was not isolated because it was Hamas - it was isolated for refusing to honor the accord signed by the predecessor government.

As a counter-example, in 1996, Netanyahu, who had been dead set against Oslo, defeated Peres (Peres was crushing Netanyahu in the polls prior to Hamas' terror offensive in the spring.) Under pressure from the Clinton administration, Bibi signed onto the Wye Accord and pulled Israeli troops back from Hebron in accordance with the Oslo agreement.

The projection of good intentions onto Hamas by liberals borders on the pathological. Would anyone do the same for the religious settler movement? What policies should the U.S. and the Palestinians do to bolster the "accomodationist" wing of the National Union Party. Perhaps we should send a diplomat to Kiryat Arba to inquire?

Posted by mhp | July 20, 2007 2:21 PM

Re RC

"Also, at the time of the elections there was a significant portion of the Hamas leadership in Gaza that was open to some form of accommodation with Israel"

To be fair to Mr. RC, even though I am highly skeptical of his assertion, the problem is that the shots for the Hamas Government are being called by Khaled Maashal in Damascus, who is a diehard supporter of no accommodation with the Government of Israel, probably because Bibi tried to knock him off 10 years ago. As long as he calls the shots, any possible accommodationists in the Hamas Government will be keeping a very low profile.

Posted by SLC | July 20, 2007 2:28 PM

Well, we should not be going around preaching about elections. We should be preaching about liberal democracy. Elections are icing not the cake.

Exactly. But that is not what we have been doing in the middle east.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | July 20, 2007 2:35 PM

Man, Powell's looking really old - and a knockoff for the old McNamara.

Well, it seems the US and Israel are going for a 1.5 state solution, plus a gulag. Palestine get one/half a state, with roads all over it dividing it up that it can't use since they are for settlers and military only. Instead of Bantustans, Palestine gets Palestans. Oh, and the eastern boundary (along the Jordan River) is Israel (got that?) The Western boundary? A wall whereever Israel wants it to go - and f**k yourself if the Palestinians complain.

Apparently the final solution for the Gaza strip is starvation, no water, and no electricity. Darfur in the Levant. So much for holocausts that Israelis remember so vividly (and no, Israelis don't own this word).

If Abbas had any balls, he would tell Olmert that the US is NOT a partner for peace (and won't tolerate US intervention), just like Olmert is telling Syria that the US is not a partner for peace (and won't talk to Syria with the US present).

Can anyone explain why the Israel setters and Eretz Isreael religios folks aren't just as extreme as Hamas?

Posted by JimPortlandOR | July 20, 2007 5:20 PM

The problem with democracy is that the governments it produces come under a lot of pressure to answer to the needs/aspirations of the electorate, rather than the needs/aspirations of foreigners. For this reason, an imperial power like the US loves democracy only in the abstract, but often works to undermine or outright destroy actual democracy.

The advantage of a dictatorship is that it enjoys much greater freedom to place the requirements of the foreigner ahead of the wants of the indigineous population, and for that reason, the US hates dictatorship only in the abstract, while often creating/supporting/tolerating actual dictatorship.

For propaganda purposes, the labels are often simply reversed.

Posted by RLaing | July 20, 2007 5:52 PM

"The projection of good intentions onto Hamas by liberals borders on the pathological. Would anyone do the same for the religious settler movement? "

Congratulations, mhp, for an absolutely moronic statement. Wrong at both ends. People regularly cover up and ignore the violence of the settler movement and the way it obtains land, and, of course, it was not good intentions of Hamas that people wanted to credit, it was their actual actions when in power. For months PRIOR to the election that gave Hamas national power, it had run any number of local municipalities and in doing so had cooperated and worked professionally with Israeli local officials and, for that matter, Christian Palestinians as well. Bethlehem had been run by Hamas, and one of their actions had been to work to expand Christian tourism to the holy sites. De facto recognition of Israel had been Hamas policy, regardless of the virulent anti-Semitic content of their charter.

Posted by JohnN | July 23, 2007 3:25 AM