Hamas

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by spence

I object your honor, the defense is applying his personal value system upon another culture!

The Palestinians are screwed up in a lot of ways, but you gotta look at the last 60 odd years in perspective to get a grip on what's going on. Not that there's been parity necessarily, but both sides have behaved poorly and the Palestinians have been screwed over by just about everyone including the Brits, Jews and Arabs and Persians.

In the end, unless someone can indicate the election was fraudlent, (that there was corruption or forced votes) what you would have are people voting for who they think is going to deliver the best quality of life for their children. We find terrorisim to be abhorrent, they look at the razing of homes and annexing of land to be just as so...it's all relative.

-spence

Nope Spence, just what I consider normal human universal values. Jusr because some people portray their causes as sympathetic or somehow moral in their own sense of culture does not mean I have to believe or accept their crap.

I consider it coercion when people are led to believe that strapping bombs to themselves or their kids is the "right" thing to do and will lead to some sort of salvation for them.

Tired now...

[spence]

I think you're confusing the cause of the general people vs the cause of those aligned against Isreal. The whole Wilsonian "universal values" thing is fragile, it exists in a world of plenty, not in a world of poverty.

I'm not justifying any of their actions, I find terrorisim to be abhorrent and Hamas to be evil in many ways, but I also understand (somewhat) how humans could come to do these things.

Think about US action in Dresden or the atomic attacks in Japan. These clearly were intended to kill large numbers of civilians to crush the will of our opponents. Were they in our interests at the time? Sure they were...but you know where I'm going.

The key is, we can't just look at terrorists as crackpots, because you can never stop all the wackos. The world today is such that a few people can create tremendous harm for the masses if their motivated.

We need policy that places a wedge between the real fanatics and the mainstream. Today we've lost a billion people on the wrong side of the wedge...

-spence

[JoeP]

Spence I agree with alot of what you said - it's just that the premise of my original comments came from the other comments about whether or not the Hamas vote today was "true" democracy in action.

But I will add, again, that I believe policy and diplomacy with these types of people only goes so far, and then aggressive protective and instinctual defensive tactics must take over. That is why I fully support what our President has done for this country in the past 4 years...

[spence]

You know...the interesting byline here is that the people were so frustrated with the corruption of the old government that they voted a wacko terror group into power!

Could some strategic aid have swayed (i.e. purchased) their support instead?

Was Isreal too hardline in their stance?

Simple questions, but this is and has been the single largest Global policy issue in the last 35 years! (aside from the cold war)...

-spence

[ThrowingTimber]