W'S BLIND SPOT:

An inside story of how the US magnified Palestinian suffering: The covert push to empower Fatah failed. And isolating Hamas just made things worse. But it's not too late to change course. (Norman H. Olsen and Matthew N. Olsen, January 12, 2009 , CS Monitor)

A million and a half Palestinians are learning the hard way that democracy isn't so good if you vote the wrong way. In 2006, they elected Hamas when the US and Israel wanted them to support the more-moderate Fatah. As a result, having long ago lost their homes and property, Gazans have endured three years of embargo, crippling shortages of food and basic necessities, and total economic collapse. [...]

It didn't have to be this way. We could have talked instead of fought.

Hamas never called for the elections that put them in power. That was the brainstorm of Secretary Rice and her staff, who had apparently decided they could steer Palestinians into supporting the more-compliant Mahmoud Abbas (the current president of the Palestinian authority) and his Fatah Party through a marketing campaign that was to counter Hamas's growing popularity – all while ignoring continued Israeli settlement construction, land confiscation, and cantonization of the West Bank.

President Bush's faith in the transformative power of democracy oddly faltered at the prospect of Islamic parties winning elections. It made him over cautious where opportunity was knocking.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 11, 2009 7:04 PM