Friday, January 27, 2006
On Hamas. . .
Frankly, there are a lot of people more qualified than I am to comment on this. The thing is, not many of them seem to be doing so, and I think there are a few general rules of politics that apply here:
1. Almost all groups are scarier in opposition than they are in government. There are exceptions (Hello, Adolf Hitler), but not really all that many.
2. We almost always view foreign elections as being about that country's foreign policy (the same is true elsewhere, which is why Stephen Harper's election was widely perceived in the States as being the result of a desire on Canadians' part for more cordial Canada-U.S. relations). They almost never are.
3. It is never good - for the country or, ultimately, for the world - for any one party to perpetually govern any one country. I'm not saying that it's good that Hamas was the group ready to step in when people got tired of the corrupt Fatah regime, but neither would it have been good for Fatah to govern perpetually.
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Frankly, there are a lot of people more qualified than I am to comment on this. The thing is, not many of them seem to be doing so, and I think there are a few general rules of politics that apply here:
1. Almost all groups are scarier in opposition than they are in government. There are exceptions (Hello, Adolf Hitler), but not really all that many.
2. We almost always view foreign elections as being about that country's foreign policy (the same is true elsewhere, which is why Stephen Harper's election was widely perceived in the States as being the result of a desire on Canadians' part for more cordial Canada-U.S. relations). They almost never are.
3. It is never good - for the country or, ultimately, for the world - for any one party to perpetually govern any one country. I'm not saying that it's good that Hamas was the group ready to step in when people got tired of the corrupt Fatah regime, but neither would it have been good for Fatah to govern perpetually.
