Posted on 01/29/2006 12:32:31 PM PST by Dark Skies
NOW that Hamas has apparently won the Palestinian elections, the West is hoist with its own petard.
On the one hand, Hamas is a terrorist group that unabashedly targets Israeli civilians and calls for the elimination of the Jewish state.
On the other hand, it just won what observers deem to have been a reasonably fair election, and so enjoys the legitimacy that comes from the ballot box. Every foreign ministry now confronts a dilemma: nudge Hamas to moderation or give up on it as irredeemably extremist? Meet Hamas members or avoid them? Continue to donate to the Palestinian Authority or starve it of funds?
This double bind is of our own making because, with Washington in the lead, virtually every Western government adopted a two-pronged approach to solving the problems of the Middle East.
The negative prong consists of fighting terrorism. A war on terror is under way, involving military forces in the field, toughened financial laws and an array of espionage tools.
The positive prong involves promoting democracy. The historical record shows that democratic countries almost never make war on each other and tend to be prosperous. Therefore, elections appear to be what the doctor ordered for the maladies of the Middle East.
But that combination has failed this troubled region. The first functional election in the Palestinian Authority has thrown up Hamas. In December 2005, the Egyptian electorate came out strongly for the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic party, and not for liberal elements. In Iraq, the post-Saddam electorate voted in a pro-Iranian Islamist as prime minister. In Lebanon, the voters celebrated the withdrawal of Syrian troops by voting Hezbollah into the government. Likewise, radical Islamic elements have prospered in elections in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.
In brief, elections are bringing to power the most deadly enemies of the West. What went wrong? Why has a democratic prescription that proved successful in Germany, Japan and other formerly bellicose nations not worked in the Middle East?
It's not Islam or some cultural factor that accounts for this difference; rather, it is the fact that ideological enemies in the Middle East have not yet been defeated. Democratisation took place in Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union after their populations had endured the totalitarian crucible. By 1945 and 1991, they recognised what disasters fascism and communism had brought them, and were primed to try a different path.
That's not the case in the Middle East, where a totalitarian temptation remains powerfully in place. Muslims across the region -- with the singular and important exception of Iran -- are drawn to the Islamist program with its slogan that "Islam is the solution". That has been the case from Iran in 1979 to Algeria in 1992, to Turkey in 2002, to the Palestinian Authority this week.
This pattern has several implications for Western governments:
* Slow down: Take heed that an impatience to move the Middle East to democracy is consistently backfiring by bringing our most deadly enemies to power.
* Settle in for the long run: However worthy the democratic goal, it will take decades to accomplish.
* Defeat radical Islam: Only when Muslims see that this is a route doomed to failure will they be open to alternatives.
* Appreciate stability: Stability must not be an end in itself, but its absence likely leads to anarchy and radicalisation.
Returning to the dilemma posed by the Hamas victory, Western capitals need to show Palestinians that, like Germans electing Adolf Hitler in 1933, they have made a decision gravely unacceptable to civilised opinion. The Hamas-led Palestinian Authority must be isolated and rejected at every turn, thereby encouraging Palestinians to see the error of their ways.
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia and author of several books on Islam and the Middle East.
I disagree with this in that IMO islam is itself radical. This is tantamount to getting Christians to adopt a lukewarm faith without every wishing to become devout.
The cat is out of the bag now. I doubt you could put it back in.
ping
The people of the United States elected Jimmy Carter. Hopefully the Palis will learn from their mistakes.
We've reached an event horizon in world history.
Best description I have heard so far! Very dangerous time.
We have to make them so terrified, that even the dumbest Arab understands there are two alternatives: adapt to democracy or its equivalent, or die. Hammer the youknowwhatoutofthem first. PC warfare is like looking down the barrel of a gun and checking to see if it's loaded. You can't make nice while waging war, especially against Arabs. They haven't evolved far enough up the food chain for that.
Disagree. Now we have identified a people with their elected representative government as the enemy, not just terrorist amongst their ranks. The gloves can come off now.
Uh, no. What has happened is that its been clarified for us that, far from being at war with some small faction among west bank arabs, they are at war with west bank arabs themselves.
That actually goes a long way toward simplifying things.
Pipes is assuming somehow that Hamas is worse than Fatah. It isn't. But what is important is that in the eyes of the arabs who voted for Hamas, Fatah was somehow insufficiently dedicated to the killing of Israelis. Hamas has promised to remedy that shortcoming. Which means that if anyone still thinks the gates should be left open so that arab gardeners can get to their jobs, they have been exposed as hopelessly simple, and probably non-residents.
Seal the border, and leave the arabs to deal with one another.
Careful Danny. Actual conservatives (non-Republicans) have brought that issue up and they're called racist. Could it be that Germany and Japan actually had experience with democracy before it was 'established' by Western nations?
Because in Germany, for example, there was a ruthless policing effort to identify all members of the Nazi party and the German military command and to exclude them from government.
No such effort has taken place in these Arab hellholes.
Well, the region is more than ripe for a democracy - of settler type, like Israel is. As for the natives. Pipes is right.
If there was an election in the whole ME today, Osama would be elected ... it's time to get smart and get real about what we're up against...
These two sentences demonstrate the error in the way the west thinks of islamic countries. The German's at least had a civilized foundation ...though they made a big mistake with Hitler.
The foundation of muslim society is islam, sharia, the koran, and the prophet. They can never recognized their error because it (their error) is the very underpinning of their world.
Why all the hand-wringing?
Now the Palestinians have created a government engaged in STATE-SPONSORED TERRORISM.
Uh, I think we know what to do with that should the need arise.
This development actually makes things easier, clearer and without ambiguity. We know have an offical enemy, not some amphorous political movement.
So cut off aid, or whatever else you want to do to try to reform naughty nations, but if they threaten you, THE EAGLE FLIES. It's not hard. And, as I said, it's much easier now that the PA has taken their terrorism from street gang to official government policy.
oops - a "know" = now
Thank you --- I have been posting similiarly on these threads.
I agree! I hope the President and Condi and the entire administration realize it is time to go back to the drawing board.
This time they need to clearly define the enemy and come up with a real strategy for defeating it...no matter how politically unpalatable and un-PC it is.
Better to have a real solution that seems brutish and harsh than a politically attractive one that just doesn't work.
Bump to that.
Many people on FR, for a long time now, have been saying the democracy is NOT the antidote to fundamental islam. Such people are not wringing their hands so much as celebrating a Pyrrhic victory. The hamas election and the parlimentary wins by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt point out that the Administration and all like-minded governments in the world need to go back to the drawing board and be honest with themselves about who the enemy is and how to defeat it.
Islam declared this war almost 1,400 years ago against the non-islamic world. Our enemy is not radical islam but just plain islam (as practiced by devout muslim). As Pipes says, democracy of the western variety can never take hold in the islamic world. Islam must first be uprooted.
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