Our hypocrite of the decade award goes to none other than George W. Bush.
Mr. Bush, the world’s premier champion of the democratic form of government, has made spreading democracy Job Number One for the good ol’ US of A.
This mantle of good-natured philanthropy surfaced, as you’ll no doubt recall, after it finally became apparent that there were no actual Weapons of mass Destruction in Iraq, and further, that Iraq and Saddam Hussein posed no threat to anyone at all beyond Iraq’s borders.
Without the threat of WMD’s as a justification for the invasion, Mr. Bush obviously needed something else to use for the rationale.
Mr. Bush was observed to state, “Well heck, even if there weren’t any WMD’s, we still need to let these godless heathen, goat-lovers choose their own form of government, so the invasion was still necessary – I promise you that. We did it to protect them, so they can have a government of the people, by the people and for the people, just like us. So as soon as they elect a democratic government and are able to govern themselves, we’ll pick up our guns and leave.”
So now the Spread Of Democracy – what a grand, noble cause – is job one!
And according to GW, if they don’t like it, we’ll bomb the sand-grubbing, camel jockeys into the Stone Age, and kill all of their first-born males – until they do like it, by gosh!
That’s right: Democracy is Job One!
Okay. Now with that said, the Palestinians this week, in a democratic election, elected a Hamas faction slate to office, throwing out the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement. The feeling was the old guard, Fatah party had not well served the interests of the people. And so the election of the radical Islamic Hamas slate was a stunning change of course for the Palestinians.
“There’s something healthy about a system that does that,” observed Mr. Bush at a news conference.” The Hamas victory “reminds me about the power of democracy,” he said. “You see, when you give people the vote, give them the chance to express themselves at the polls and they’re unhappy with the status quo, they’ll let you know.”
But then he went on to say, “I have made it very clear however that a political party that articulates the destruction of Israel as part of a platform is a party with which we will not deal.”
So according to Mr. Bush, it’s great that they’ve elected a representative, democratic government – a government of the people, for the people, and by the people – but Bush doesn’t like the people they elected, so he won’t deal with them.
Fantastic!
The obvious message here, is you must have a democratic government – but only one that Bush likes.
Good going George!
Now of course this hasn’t played out fully in Iraq yet, but I have confidence it will – if Bush can’t get along with the Hamas government, I’m sure the Shi’a of Iraq will fare no better.
So what do we have? The Palestinians have democratically elected a government that we refuse to deal with because we don’t like their politics.
And in Iraq, where we invaded a foreign country under false pretenses, we are in the process of ramming a democratic form of government down the people’s throats, and when that’s finally done, then we’ll likely refuse to deal with their freely elected representatives (assuming the Shi’a prevail).
Bravo, Mr. Bush! You’ve surpassed yourself.