Saturday, 28 January 2006 - 7:06 AM CST

Respect?

Yes, and the new Hamas-majority government should negotiate with the rapacious Palestinian-killing Israelis to create genuine peace. Eventually they will. Both sides will negotiate despite what they say now. They have no other choice ultimately, though much blood may be shed in the interim.

What the rest of us should respect is that the Palestinians have created the first homegrown democracy in the Arab world and have chosen their own government despite Israeli occupation, an occupation in which the occupier fought against one of the major parties, arrested and killed candidates, keeping leaders in prison, set up roadblocks in the streets.

Bush does not like democracy when the elections don't turn out the way he wants. Aside from the fact that Hamas won, the other thing which Bush does not like is that the Palestinians have chosen to have a theocracy. He thinks when you install democratic governments in the ME the people will of course choose to be like us, and that what they all want is an S.U.V. and private schools and low taxes. Wrong. It turns out that these Muslims really are religious people and have not accepted the western tradition of secular government. In the ME, democracy = theocracy. Better get used to it, if you want "a forward strategy of freedom." The majority opposition parties throughout are Islamist fundamentalists. The "democracies" in the Muslim world are in reality authoritarian regimes.

The miltary wings of Palestinian organizations blow up Israeli civilians because the Palestinians are third world people living in grinding poverty (about like Haiti) occupied by one of the most formidable and technologically-advanced military powers in the world. It's asymmetric. They are the indige. They are fighting for their own soil and they will keep blowing up Israeli civilians until the last Palestinian is dead...unless both sides negotiate. They have to.

Saturday, 28 January 2006 - 7:20 AM CST

By "democracies in the Muslim world," I meant the other democracies, e.g. in Egypt or Jordan or Syria or Lebanon. These are democracies in a very limited sense, like Soviet-style democracy used to be, often with one-party elections. The last election in Egypt is a good example of totalitarian-style democracy. The Palestinian democracy, on the other hand, is genuine and homegrown.

BTW, did you notice that Bush's KGB-like program of warrantless domestic spying (The Everybody Surveillance Program) would be illegal under the new Iraqi constitution?

Article 38:

The freedom of communication, and mail, telegraphic, electronic, and telephonic correspondence, and other correspondence shall be guaranteed and may not be monitored, wiretapped or disclosed except for legal and security necessity and by a judicial decision.

Now if we could just get some freedom and democracy here.