Yeah, I’m the guy who had a run-in with a Hamas guy and will kill him on sight (unless I think I stand a good enough chance of capturing him and getting him to the feds before he can tip anybody off).
But, this is serious good news, and I’m happy to hear that the Islamofascist fucktards have come into power. Yeah, that’s counter-intuitive. But in foreign policy, the simple and appealing answer is, unfortunately, almost always wrong… and this is no exception.
1. Fatah was hopelessly corrupt. The New Guard fought the New Guard. Neither faction gives a rat’s ass about the people, and both are hip-deep in terrorism, hardly a bunch of blushing virgins faced with the Big Bad Wolf of Hamas. (Seriously, the Algerians Arafat ran with were Bad People(tm).
2. Hamas is a bunch of Islamofascist thugs. But they’ve bothered to do some of the stuff Fatah should have been doing, such as running clinics, etc. Granted, they’ve done it for most of the wrong reasons… but Hamas winning means that the chance of that necessary social work being disrupted is minimized.
3. Fatah is now known publicly to be toothless, rather than that being known only to obsessive foreign-policy wonks. Fatah cannot be a negotiating partner, because they’re powerless.
Hamas can’t be a negotiating partner, because they hate us and all we stand for… wait a minute, how’s that follow? So long as they’re not slaughtering people wholesale, what do we care whether or not they hate us? If they step out of line, they get their teeth kicked in. If they don’t step out of line… we’ve at least gained a negotiating partner with the actual ability, if not necessarily the desire, to carry out its pledges.
And that’s a step forward. A big step forward.
