Shot In The Dark: Consequences and Cluelessness

January 30, 2006

Consequences and Cluelessness

There are a lot of people out there who just don't "get" the Hamas election, I think.

Last night I listened to "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me", an NPR quiz show that, to be fair, doesn't pride itself on keen analysis. The ofay snark is more its' speed.

At one point, host Peter Sagel quipped "this past week, President Bush welcomed the election of Hamas, saying..." and quoting Bush's generic diplomatic boilerplate welcoming the new government, to the titters of the crowd (of Volvo-driving, alpaca-wearing Kerry voters and MoveOn supporters) who just knew that it was yet another hypocrisy!

Supporting terrorists in the Palestinian Authority while fighting terrorists in Iraq! Not to mention attacking terrorists who his father had bankrolled until they double-crossed Halliburton! Hahahaha!

Of course, as King and Ed noted on last weekend's NARN show, the real good news of the Hamas election is not that terrorists won; it's that the real sentiments of the Palestinian people are on full electoral display. Peace doesn't have a chance until the people of Palestine have a massive change of heart about Israel.

Oh, yeah; Democracy has consequences:

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday ruled out any American financial aid to a Hamas government in the Palestinian territories and said Washington wants Arab nations and others to cut off money as well.

Humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, many of whom are poor and unemployed, is likely on a "case-by-case basis," Rice said. She indicated that the Bush administration would follow through on aid promised to the current, U.S.-backed Palestinian government led by President Mahmoud Abbas.

"The United States is not prepared to fund an organization that advocates the destruction of Israel, that advocates violence and that refuses its obligations," under an international framework for eventual Mideast peace, Rice said.

The PA government, weaned on Yasir Arafat's graft-riddled style, is shrieking like a spoiled six-year-old at the thought of the US denying it support in its electoral goal of destorying Israel.

And the semi-conservative win in Germany is having results:

The European Union could not fund a Hamas-run Palestinian Authority if it did not renounce violence and recognize Israel, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Israel on Sunday.

It was the most explicit threat to cut aid from Europe, the biggest donor to the Palestinians, since Islamic militant group Hamas won a shock victory in parliamentary elections last week. The United States has also threatened to block funding.

Hamas, expected to form the new government, has denounced Western threats to cut aid as blackmail and rejected calls to disarm and end its formal commitment to destroy Israel.

"Blackmail".

Democracy has consequences. As I noted on the show Saturday, last week's election was similar to the German elections of 1933 in that the winner tapped into a strain of belief that was endemic in their respective societies - eliminationist anti-Semitism - and that neither particularly stood out from either their society or the other electoral options (except, of course, for the Nazis' will to follow through on their campaign promises).

Posted by Mitch at January 30, 2006 05:30 AM | TrackBack

Comments

We think that the important theory here isn't so much that democracy has consequences, but that perhaps the theory that democracies don't go to war with one another will be tested. Of course, if Hamas gets attacked, we're sure we'll find a brand new name for what they were doing (perhaps FZ's "iliberal democracy" will do the trick...we're sure that if it happens, he'll be the first talking head on tv). Anyway, that's a theory that's often cited, but has never really had a good solid test.

Posted by: cleversponge at January 30, 2006 06:30 AM

and by iliberal...we mean illiberal

Posted by: cleversponge at January 30, 2006 06:31 AM

" perhaps the theory that democracies don't go to war with one another will be tested."

The theory is the stuff of parlor games; it's true, but hardly what everything turns on.

This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first majority government in history whose entire platform is based on an evil concept.

Posted by: mitch at January 30, 2006 07:34 AM

And by "evil concept", I mean eliminationist racism.

Posted by: mitch at January 30, 2006 07:37 AM

I think cp has his quote muddled a bit. Bush has said "The United States has never been attacked by a democracy." I could be mistaken, but weren't we a democracy in 1941? Hmm?

Posted by: Kermit at January 30, 2006 08:55 AM

Kermit,

"No Democracy has ever attacked another Democracy" is one of those truisms that is always accurate until falsified.

Of course, if Bush said it and Hamas wages war against Israel, the left will act like it's a key tenet of conservatism.

During the '04 election, I coined what may be one of my favorite aphorisms (along with "whoever said 'the pen is mightier than the sword' never had to bet his life on it"); "100% of truism are accurate until shown false". It was in relation to one of those tidbits that had the left all warm and fuzzy before the election, something like "no Republican has ever won in a year where the National Lacrosse League held its championship in the Eastern time zone" sorts of things. This might be another example.

And if it happens...then what? It shows democracy isn't all it's cracked up to be?

Just not seeing why it matters...

Posted by: mitch at January 30, 2006 09:12 AM

I invoke Godwin's law! Claiming that Hamas is just like the Nazis ends debate.

Of course, ending debate will probably be the consequence of a Hamas victory....

Posted by: Pious Agnostic at January 30, 2006 09:16 AM

Holy crap people. Talk about reading too much into something. First, let's dispel a few of the things that were assumed:

1- Yes, Hamas is way bad
2- No, the US and Israel shouldn't deal with them until they acknowledge Israel's right to exist and they denounce terrorism
3- No, we're not talking about anything Bush said

Once again: Holy crap.

The idea that democracies don't attack one another is a respected and long standing theory in the field of political science. Typically, when this subject is brought up in a bar, one guy gets all huffy and starts naming off historical events that he thinks should qualify as 2 democracies having it off on one another. Rebuttals are given, exclusions are made, beers are consumed, and eventually, the conversation ends with the Civil War or the American Indian Wars.

Outside of the bar, this theory is used in attempts to explain why democracies are so damn cool. What is it about citizen controlled governments that make it so hard for them to attack other citizen controlled governments? Is it because they respect the inherent rights of man? Is it because the decisions for war making are dependent on a population that can throw the main decision makers out of office? Is it because democracies tend to trend towards free market values and this makes the social/financial costs of war with a likely trading/political partner too high to incur? Is it because democracies have less centralized economies and social structures than do dictatorships and other assorted nonsense. The list of questions go on and on.

This has absolutely nothing to do with anyone lining up to say that democracies aren't all they are cracked up to be. That's 100% bs nonsense. Who's saying that? Who would say that? We know, we know...some unidentified moonbat; next month's flavor of Ward Churchill.

This matters because we have engaged (rightly or wrongly) in a war based on a new set of ideas; a war based not only on pragmatic goals of blood and treasure but ideology--we're bringing democracy to the Middle East because it will make them and us safer; it will make the world a better place. This whole war is a blend of realism and idealism. This is a value neutral statement. This is the way the war was designed, carried out and justified. It just is.

Since we've added idealism to the equation, it matters when the results come down the pike. It matters when we get something that ma and pa Joe America in Kansas consider to be a crazy-ass elected government (see Hamas). If we're going to conduct foreign policy with explicit ideological goals (building democracy via force), we should take the time to define the results. (We think it would be even better if we would have taken the time to define the expectations, but that's neither here nor there.)

Hamas is f'd up. Be that as it may, we still need to figure out what they are. Are they an illiberal democracy? Is that an acceptable outcome for our Middle Eastern foreign policy iniatives? If the answers are unacceptable alternatives, how will they affect future policy decisions in the area? Will they affect current policy? How do other countries in the Middle East view the Hamas victory? Do they view it as a democracy? If so, how do we confront and deal with the disconnect many of them may or may not feel when we decide to tell Hamas to go to hell? Will that have a flip effect on Hamas by giving them more domestic appeal? Is the Hamas victory a necessary step on the way to true liberal democracy in the area? If so, does that mean we need to recognize it and deal with it? If we don't, does that hamper our long term goal of an effective friendly (esp to Israel) democracy for Palestine?

All that other crap you bring up about Republicans not winning in years where the Packers beat the Skins...those are statistical anomalies; numbers that are correlated to completely unrelated events. The democracy theory attempts to describe some system of causation; nation states that a, b, and c don't attack other nation states that a, b, and c because of x, y, and z. The assumption here is direct. The theory is important because democracy is important. It says something about who we are. That's more than a parlor trick.

Posted by: cleversponge at January 30, 2006 07:11 PM

Sponge, you have a way of missing the point by a margi that is mathematically the widest possible:

"The theory is important because democracy is important. It says something about who we are. That's more than a parlor trick."

True. And democracy exerts a civilizing influence on people and governments - usually.

Just saying that if a democracy ever does attack a democracy, it's not a slap against democracy.

Posted by: mitch at January 31, 2006 06:59 AM

We're not sure if you notice, but we're typing real slow...

Nobody is saying that if a democracy attacks another democracy it will be a slap against democracy.

Nobody.

Of course we're the ones who are missing the point.

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