The Gathering Storm

So CNN reports that all of our foreign policy “experts” are surprised that the militant terrorist coward organization Hamas has done as well as it has in the Palestinian elections.

I have a simple question to ask in response to that: why?

Is Bushco EVER going to get it? Much of the world hates us for a variety of reasons (the IMF/World Bank, the Iraq War, global warming, etc.). With the noteworthy (and fortunate) exception of Canada, leaders espousing their own peculiar brand of nationalism, often of an anti-U.S. nature, are being either elected or installed into office one way or the other in countries in Asia and South America, to say nothing of the anti-U.S. violence fomenting all over the world (I mentioned Hugo Chavez and his buddies in South America yesterday, and while we’re stuck in Iraq and act like we know what’s going on, China grows ever cozier with Iran).

This takes you to a column that describes the rise of Islamist governments across the Middle East, and the forces behind this development. I should caution that there is some anti-American rhetoric here that makes me wonder what the organization behind this is all about. However, I’m including this link because, as nearly as I can tell, the information in the column is factually correct (except for the part where they state that they didn’t expect Hamas to do as well as it did in the election).

I usually stay out of anything having to do with the Israeli/Palestinian problem since you could argue yourself out of breath in favor of one side or the other, but I only know that, though the Israelis have bulldozed homes, they’ve never blown up kids on school buses either. Also, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak “gave away the store” to the criminal Yasser Arafat in 2000, and all Arafat did in response was set off another “intifadah.”

It’s all a tragic legacy of Great Britain’s stupid partitioning of countries they once occupied, which hasn’t worked anywhere (Ireland, India/Pakistan, etc.).

Sorry that I don’t have anything more original to offer on this (as I said, that’s why I usually avoid this topic).

Update 2/3: Trudy Rubin nails it again (registration required).