As early as the spring of 2005, Abbas had warned American officials that he did not have the popular support to disarm Hamas, the Islamist party that turned suicide terror bombings into a standard tactic in Israel and which both Abbas and the Israelis saw was growing in power. But Bush administration officials insisted, confident of the curative powers of democracy. Later, after Hamas stunned the world by winning control of the Palestinian Parliament, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claimed: "Nobody saw it coming."
And the real money quote:
Nor did many hard-liners in Washington ever fully understand that using raw power to "impose" democracy on peoples who were not ready to seize it for themselves was a chimera. By insisting on cure-all elections in countries and territories that had no institutions of justice and security, or a politically aware economic middle class, to sustain democracy, the Bush team clearly seems to have overreached.
Not every nation on earth wants to be America. It's just that simple. And they sure as hell don't want to be America if that transformation comes at the point of a gun. The invasion of Iraq not only FUBARed Iraq, it's destabilized the entire region as well as emboldened and given credibility to the most radical elements. It's hard to tell where this will end up, but it's going to get much much worse before it gets better.
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Comments (2)
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people...would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Rice said.
This an old refrain or meme from Rice..And yet she gets promoted from National Security Advisor to Secretary Of State because of these howlers
1. Posted by Steve Crickmore | June 18, 2007 10:27 AM
Posted on June 18, 2007 10:27
2. Posted by Lee Ward | June 18, 2007 11:39 AM
Posted on June 18, 2007 11:39