We think it's a good thing for Hamas to have done well and wish for its adherents to control Palestine completely. As one person, whose name we can't recall, remarked, Hamas could before reap the rewards for providing just the services that they do provide. Once in power they will be resented for the services that they fail to provide.
More to the point, operating separately and/or in opposition to constituted government is a great luxury. On an even greater scale, the oil rich Arab nations have had the luxury of wielding enormous economic power without having to subject themselves in any significant fashion to the disciplines required to create the material foundation of modern civilization (a term loosely used here on account of the distinctly uncivilized uses to which these nations have devoted their ill-deserved wealth and their seeming complete lack of understanding of what "civilization" might actually mean).
Saudi Arabia can exist as an early-21st-century la la land (would that we could find a more elegant term for this territorial excrudescence) and engage in its traditional activity of financing subornation of our diplomats, terrorist operations against us, and the creation of institutions and distribution of publications devoted to spreading hate for us.
Were it a nation constrained by the requirements of having to educate its population in ways more useful than emphasizing rote memorization of the recondite Koran,[2] it might be embarrassed by having its officials declare the earth to be flat.
But it is not so constrained and it is free to serve as a modern equivalent of the land of Laputa floating about to cast its shadow below for one base purpose or another.
The mullahs in Iran are in the same position as the Saudi princes but have the harder job of administering a larger population with much more complex needs. Consequently, though lunacy was there also able take the reins of governance in hand, Iran has had to administer a much more advanced people than the essentially backward people of Arabia. The people of Iran have thus been able to experience the mad schemes of the mullahs up close, and you may be sure that they know the full extent of that savage madness first hand.
Though the West has not chosen to hold the mullahs to account for their crimes against either their own people or the many innocents abroad killed or injured by their assassination squads, the fact of Iran's vulnerability to pinpointed military attacks is obvious. Gaddafi, another lunatic actually controlling an actual government, learned an object lesson in what can be achieved with a little will power. Who hears about the enduring, seething hatred of Ronald Reagan on the part of Libyan taxi drivers and shopkeepers now? No one hears of it because it is an insignificant consideration, if it even exists.
What mattered was that Gaddafi got the message and has since been more "understanding" when the U.S., at least, has undertaken to express its views on various topics.
Alas, the West has not yet chosen to "persuade" the Iranians and the Saudis and the Syrians of our lack of patience. Perhaps this is because our leaders are still inclined to be patient, though the question of the hour is surely, "Why?"
If the imperative of stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons were absent from the present calculus of risk respecting that country, it would, therefore, be sufficient to allow events to take their course there, as the younger generation is said to be restive and unappreciative of the mullahs' insistence that all embrace barbarism and antediluvian sanctions for what pass for "crimes" in that most unfortunate of countries.
Since there is no such imperative applicable with respect to the governance of Palestine by Hamas, it is sufficient then to sit back and let the people experience the full force of their expressed desire for Koranic purity.
There is, in short, much karmic merit in adopting a strategy that might be termed the "Sharia Enjoyment Strategy."
First, that entails letting Muslims enjoy the "benefits" of living under a legal and political system of appalling backwardness, cruelty, and oppression. Then, after some time, that entails waiting for Muslims inclined toward life under the sharia (initially)[3] to assess the relatives merits of (a) decadent modernism and (b) 180-proof Seventh Century.
With all its present defects, don't we in the West have enough confidence in our own system to realize the humans around the world almost uniformly prefer liberty to constraint, and that they marvel at the fruits of innovation, personal freedom, and capitalism? While we may understand if others don't care for the precise ways we have chosen, is there any doubt that they would prefer to try a variant of their own fine tuning? Or, at least, prefer a "No Sharia" alternative of some kind?
Delaying the opportunity for people to experience the sharia is arguably a seriously erroneous policy choice. Algeria's generals paid a horrendous price for annulling the electoral victory of the Islamicists. Huge numbers of people died as consequence of that decision. While it must have been unsettling, to say the least, to contemplate a transfer of power to the Islamicists, wouldn't a transfer of power with the implicit understanding that there "are limits" to the patience of the generals have avoided the upheaval and pain? Call this the Turkish Option.
Allowing events to run their natural course is an excellent strategy, one that the Chinese might applaud given their celebrated penchant for viewing events through the prism of dynastic cycles spanning centuries. This might be superior to our U.S. policy time frame, which is based on holding federal congressional elections every two years.
The West need not be entirely phlegmatic.
Discrete problems like Iranian and Libyan nuclear ambitions and Saudi, Syrian and Iranian support for Terror will need to be dealt with and the necessary political will developed to do the "dealing." Even the Taliban came to understand that Americans do not have unlimited tolarance for terrorist bullshit.
Thank you President Bush (pbuh)!
Plus, in terms of other active Western measures, there needs to be ratcheting up of the propaganda war. People need to be told that there is abundant evidence that Islam
- preaches contempt for and subjugation of infidels and women;
- stifles creativity;
- guarantees lackluster economic performance, if not backwardness;
- is barbaric in its punishments;
- demands rule by unaccountable priests with severely limited education;
- denies freedom of conscience; and
- is so insecure that it cannot tolerate head-to-head competition with other faiths.
So let the terrorists have a shot at being responsible instead of hiding in the weeds and detonating IEDs from the safety of afar. Let's sit back and see how effective they are in winning the hearts and minds of the people. "WHAM" as it used to be referred to in the days when the Colonel was touring Southeast Asia.
Notes
[1] We'll leave off the scare quotes we're inclined normally to use with anything to do with Palestine, with the understanding that we use "Palestine" to refer to the territory presently controlled by the Palestinian Authority. We don't use it to refer to that territory and Israel, as though Israel had carved out a slice of some discrete historical entity in the eastern Mediterranean.
[2] Although the Koran is crystal clear as to the status of infidels as inferior beings to be plundered, killed, snubbed, or lied to at will.
[3] "[Hamza Awadallah, 22, ] said the time had come for 'unbelievers' to leave government. 'Hamas officials pray, they fast, they give alms,' he said. 'Finally, Palestinians got smart, and voted for religious, the true, law.'" Quoted in "Vote seen as rejecting corruption." By Matthew Gutman, USA Today, 1/26/06.
UPDATE: Emanuele Ottolenghi also thinks Hamas's election is a positive development, although much more from the spandpoint of its now being accountable to Israel and the "international community": "Hamas Without Veils. No more hiding behind the PA." By Emanuele Ottolenghi, NationalReviewOnline, 1/26/06.
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