Peace In Our Time

As with any era where wars are prevalent, and we do suffer the Chinese curse of living in interesting times, there are those who would mimic Neville Chamberlain and assume we can have "Peace In Our Time". For some reason, Bill Clinton seems to fit this mold better than most and he proves it with little articles like this one on his "willingness" to deal with Hamas, if only they'd stop being big bad men.

Showing that he truly is worlds above us in understanding and logic, Clinton offers these terms to dealing with Hamas.

"He (Arafat)had made private assurances, and he made public assurances, that he did not support terror any more and would try to restrain it. So if Hamas would say, suppose they say, 'OK, look, we can't change our theory, we can't change our document, we can't change our history, but we're in government now and the policy of the Palestinian government is no to terror and yes to negotiations. As long as we're in government, we'll honor that policy.' If they did that, I would support dealing with them," Clinton said.

First, Arafat made those assurances and then promptly did nothing to see them through. The Second Intifada that rang out after the failure of the Oslo accords was incredibly bloody and Arafat did nothing to try and stop it. In fact, all accounts are that he continued to encourage the violence after he snowed Clinton. Who's the naive one, Bill?

He's also looking at Hamas like they're Democrats, or perhaps a slightly less left-leaning party. See, they're just misunderstood. They'll suddenly mature now that they have political power and become responsible citizens, because their terrorist murders were just their way of "lashing out" at not having representation. All we did by watching Hamas take Gaza was give them a fat, juicy seaport to truck military supplies into through the Mediterranean. Hamas didn't want political power because they wanted to make the trains run on time. They wanted political power to better achieve their aims, the eventual destruction of the state of Israel. Ask them. It's not like they've ever denied that was their goal. There's seemingly this pathological desire on the Left to deny it for them, though.

Hamas is one of the many terrorist organizations that has grown out of the old fascist secular Arab hate of Israel and through the Iranian revolution merged that thought with fundamentalist Islam and modern socialism. The worst of all worlds come together in such philosophies, and through the misguided whim of the Palestinian Arabs, has attained the status of ruling body of Gaza.

And Clinton thinks we can deal with these people? These are, perhaps, people who he could do business with? I guarantee you. This man and all his ilk firmly believe that Hamas isn't so bad. They're certain that through Israeli and U.S. propoganda, we have unjustly maligned these cowardly killers of women and children. Sure they killed all those people, but it was done out of necessity, out of fighting repression and that makes it ok. Do you see more clearly the kind of people we have to deal with on the Left? On the side of the Democrats? Not that Republicans these days have seen a dollar they wouldn't spend or put any kind of new control on the border, but at least they've made it clear they won't truck with Hamas.

Outside the Big Two, I think I can safely say I'm not eager to see the thugs in anything other than body bags, but I've always been one for the more diplomatic solution, usually out of the barrel of a gun, the only diplomacy such criminals typically understand.