Isn’t democracy messy?
It can also be ugly if you don’t get your way. What could a joke on bestiality reveal about how Palestinians took the Bush administration and its neocon ideologues to heart, voted in fair, open parliamentary elections, and overwhelmingly chose Hamas Islamists who’ve vowed to destroy Israel?
You decide.
US President George Bush wanted Palestinians to have free elections and elect leaders. But not those ugly ones! Not Hamas!
So now he threatens to cut off aid and openly posits new Middle East wars, even though a US military stretched so thin that it cannot adequately respond to national disasters like Katrina’s floodwall collapse might not be the ideal vehicle to send into areas proximate to Egypt, where Mubarak rules while outlawed Muslim Brotherhooders took pride of place in the last election, or Iran, which is determined to develop nuclear weapons, or Syria and Lebanon, which may explode, 1970s-style, any moment.
Messy, messy, ugly, ugly.
This is democracy’s dark side.
Sometimes elections go well, sometimes they start off badly but better, and sometimes they get a lot worse.
Sometimes they create theocracies, like Iran. Sometimes they create Communist revolutions, like Chile in 1970 when socialist Salvador Allende won the presidency.
Just as with the Palestinian Authority, America poured millions of dollars into Chile under President John F. Kennedy’s “Alliance for Progress” program, theorizing foreign aid would encourage the election of moderate Christian Democrats and deter Communists.
What happened in Chile?
Democracy got messy, messy, ugly, ugly.
The Nixon administration, stunned by Allende’s victory, instructed the CIA to “make the economy scream” to create popular discontent.
Socialists and Communists nationalized US-owned businesses, including the controversial copper mining companies, inflation spiraled, and streets erupted in riots and strikes.
Three key politicians were assassinated — Army Commander-in-Chief Rene Schneider (who was also kidnapped); Christian Democrat former Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Zujovic; and Commodore Arturo Arraya Peters — before the army, under Gen. Augusto Pinochet, seized power in a coup leading to Allende’s own murder (or suicide, depending whom you believe).
Pinochet’s repression of Chileans was murderous, and Hollywood chronicled it in the film classic, “Missing.”
Argentina’s handling of its US-funded democracy similarly lapsed into ultra-conservative juntism.
The Argentine military brutally repressed virtually all political dissent — until it found its assertion of force over the British-held Falklands Islands (las Malvinas) a bridge too far.
Along the way to this denouement, about 25,000 Argentines simply “disappeared.” Their children were kidnapped by their killers and raised by the killers’ families, a horror chronicled by the film industry in “The Official Story.”
It’s taken Central and South America decades to recover from US-imposed “democracies.” Far from creating stable, US-style societies, US intervention in Latin America created the most unstable regimes.
Colombia, a state in which political violence is so endemic they call it simply “la violencia,” was supposed to be America’s democracy showcase. Instead, US mercenary forces bolster hapless government officials who can barely control a third of the country while guerrilla groups at least as violent as Hamas if not more so serve as local governments providing essential social services.
Local economies use cocaine base as currency.
Messy, messy, ugly, ugly.
What’s a well-meaning neocon to do? Dialogue with Hamas is clearly indicated, despite Israeli reservations.
Will Hamas change its mind about destroying Israel?
The answer’s yes, eventually — if it wants to survive politically, which Hamas clearly does. Most Palestinians advocate moderation toward Israel. They voted for Hamas to seek reforms, not for its Israeli destruction platform. Why not maintain that momentum?
Arafat is dead, Sharon is incapacitated, and for the first time in decades, both Israelis and Palestinians can seek accommodations.
But carefully.
Israel shouldn’t turn its back on Hamas. But there’s more safety in facing this group squarely and fairly than there is in turning tail.
Is there not another way around those walls? Perhaps the world’s messiest new democracy can evolve into something truly worth not only fighting and dying for, but living for.
