So Stupid It Shows

Again, Not Too Bright
The Bush team should have know Hamas would win -
Now it should quit the name-calling
by Eric Margolis
Toronto Sun
Feb 5, 2006

After Hamas' stunning victory last week in Palestinian elections, a flustered U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, tried to explain the Bush administration's latest Mideast fiasco.

"I've asked why nobody saw it coming," she offered plaintively.

Dear Miss Condi, many of us saw Hamas' victory coming. You didn't because you failed to face facts.

Your boss, George W. Bush, made similar lame excuses trying to explain his embarrassing failure to find WMD in Iraq by claiming all western intelligence services believed Iraq had them -- which was untrue.

For a nation that spends $40 billion annually on intelligence to be so wrong about so much is utterly inexcusable. Condi, go stand in the corner with Colin Powell.

Hamas won because of Washington's total failure to push Israel into any meaningful concessions under its dead-ended "Road Map to Peace," fatally undermining Bush's favourite, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party.

Palestinians were fed up with corrupt Fatah leadership which appeared too cozy with the U.S. and Israel. The more Washington bribed or arm-twisted Fatah leaders to comply with its wishes, the more Palestinians backed hardline Hamas. The feuding ninnies and crooks running Fatah stood in sharp contrast to Hamas' disciplined, efficient, uncorrupt cadres.

When it became clear Israel's leadership would continue PM Ariel Sharon's plans to colonize the West Bank and confine Arabs in three isolated tribal reservations, Palestinians voted for Hamas.

Why didn't Rice see this obvious fact? Because, like the rest of the administration and U.S. media, her view of the Mideast is warped by ignorance, inexperience, and intense pressure from neoconservatives and religious groups pressing for a crusade against the Muslim world.

Misinformed

America's shocked reaction to Hamas' win shows how misinformed and misled it is about the Mideast....

See the link for the full article.

This was so incredibly obvious and sane, I had to write a response - hoping also that I could effectively point out to the Canadians that we USians are not all "fuddled".

I would actually be VERY interested to hear Mr. Margolis' take on 9/11 itself, after reading his take on the Palestinians and the Israelis, and how the US fits into that equation.


My letter to the Editor re Margolis' article :

Thank you, Mr. Margolis, for a sane perspective on the Hamas election victory in Palestine. I first would wish you to know that millions of us south of the US-Canadian border are not "fuddled", though I do not say that with rancor. Though seemingly without power after our neocon coup, we are regrouping and have some real, solid hopes for our future. It is an uphill fight, but then so was the effort of the late 18th century, when we were attempting to free ourselves from the other King George III.

Just as the Palestinians are attempting to throw off the oppression of Israel, who (despite their massive arms advantage over the Palestinians) could not exist without their sugar daddy across the ocean, we are attempting to throw off our one-party domination. Some day - maybe in my lifetime - the U.S. will stop assisting in the murders of Palestinian civilians, and then the Israelis will have to learn to get along with their Muslim and Arab neighbors.

It will not happen with the kinds of governmments and strategies we have had here since before I was born in 1949. Only realization of the kinds of things that you point out in your article can ever, ever bring peace to the Middle East. Please keep on being rational and sane. We millions down here will attempt to build from this end. Perhaps in time there will actually be a sane and peaceful world. Peace is not possible without sanity, I don't think. That is the reason the U.S. has been at war almost my whole life. Be glad you do not live in such a place, and do send positive thoughts our way.

Living in "God's gift to the world" carries a heavy burden; the current manifestation of it is the defective in our White House at the moment. We ask the world's forgiveness for putting it through this. We have been getting a real feeling for what it was like living with Hitler in 19030s Germany: The insane rantings of a depraved leader are both frightening and embarrassing. It would be nice to live in just a regular country for a while.

. . . . TD