The Palestinian Authority went ahead and held elections and Hamas won. No one, it appears, is happy about this. But, as (I believe) David Plotz on Slate pointed out, "Not since Sampson has there been a good week in Gaza." Like in Iraq, democracy imposed too soon becomes a setback.
If you can number it and apply it to other things, I love it. The Slate gabbers made the observation that you need:
1) Order
2) Justice
3) Economic freedom/civil liberties/freedom of the press
all before you can have a functional democratic system. On the other hand, as outsiders, opposing even premature democracy can appear ...not politically astute.
I only read the bare minimum of Robert Putnam in grad school in order to pass my classes, but I understand that the foundation of a functional democratic government is a functional democratic society. Society is comprised of relationships. So, war-based relationships must heal before a democratic government can grow.
I feel torn in so many directions for where this post should go. I want to talk about building trust in relationships, and about my relationships that lacked trust. I want to talk about friendship, which is also really about trust, about how you must "have a friend to be a friend." I want to talk about the Golden Rule. I want to talk about What Jesus Would Do, not that that is terribly relevant to the current players in the Middle East. Imagine my brain all over the wall behind me.
Except there is no wall behind me. I'm facing the wall. I think the best thing we can do with the Middle East is to learn from it. Self-protection, harbored hatred, violence, getting too fixated on one solution... all lead inevitably to war and misery... and not being ready for democratic relationships.
Some people thought that Rodney King was an idiot for asking "Why can't we all just get along." Others thought it was a good question. The other year, a woman started screaming at a bicyclist on the sidewalk, and I suggested to her she might consider meditating. She responded by screaming at me something about Jesus. Maybe I should have handed her a flower -- you know, be the change you wish to see in the world. Years later, I still don't have a better idea.
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I've begun to think the poisonous situation there is beyond healing.
The only solution, and it won't happen, is for all outside parties to declare and agree as one that no cause ever justifies any terrorism/suicide bombing, ever; and that not one penny of support will go to any nation, group or party whose leadership espouses terrorism or the elimination of another nation.
(But then I get to wondering about the bomb we dropped on Japan in WWII -- it surely saved the lives of countless American soldiers and brought a grueling war to a quicker conclusion, but was it not, pure and simple, an act of offical terrorism on our part?)
We should buy not one more drop of oil from Iran - the main source of misery in that region, albeit a source of misery that our bungled American policies helped to make happen decades ago. Not one drop. Yeah, the world economy would probably collapse, though, so that will never happen.
Someone made the comment a while ago that Arabs seem to prefer living in rubble and playing the victim card.
Perhaps that is overly broad stereotyping, even somewhat racist -- but you just look at that part of the world and search in vain for some refutation.
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