![\"Bush\"](\"http:\/\/www.mikepellegrini.com\/Graphics\/FingerOfTheYear.jpg\")
<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nOur hypocrite of the decade award goes to none other than George W. Bush.<\/p>\n
Mr. Bush, the world\u2019s premier champion of the democratic form of government, has made spreading democracy Job Number One for the good ol\u2019 US of A.<\/p>\n
This mantle of good-natured philanthropy surfaced, as you\u2019ll 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\u2019s borders.<\/p>\n
Without the threat of WMD\u2019s as a justification for the invasion, Mr. Bush obviously needed something else to use for the rationale.<\/p>\n
Mr. Bush was observed to state, \u201cWell heck, even if there weren\u2019t any WMD\u2019s, we still need to let these godless heathen, goat-lovers choose their own form of government, so the invasion was still necessary \u2013 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\u2019ll pick up our guns and leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
So now the Spread Of Democracy \u2013 what a grand, noble cause \u2013 is job one!<\/p>\n
And according to GW, if they don\u2019t like it, we\u2019ll bomb the sand-grubbing, camel jockeys into the Stone Age, and kill all of their first-born males \u2013 until they do like it, by gosh!<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right: Democracy is Job One!<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s something healthy about a system that does that,\u201d observed Mr. Bush at a news conference.\u201d The Hamas victory \u201creminds me about the power of democracy,\u201d he said. \u201cYou see, when you give people the vote, give them the chance to express themselves at the polls and they\u2019re unhappy with the status quo, they\u2019ll let you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
But then he went on to say, \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
So according to Mr. Bush, it\u2019s great that they\u2019ve elected a representative, democratic government \u2013 a government of the people, for the people, and by the people \u2013 but Bush doesn\u2019t like the people they elected, so he won\u2019t deal with them.<\/p>\n
Fantastic!<\/p>\n
The obvious message here, is you must have a democratic government \u2013 but only one that Bush likes.<\/p>\n
Good going George!<\/p>\n
Now of course this hasn\u2019t played out fully in Iraq yet, but I have confidence it will \u2013 if Bush can\u2019t get along with the Hamas government, I\u2019m sure the Shi\u2019a of Iraq will fare no better.<\/p>\n
So what do we have? The Palestinians have democratically elected a government that we refuse to deal with because we don\u2019t like their politics.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s throats, and when that\u2019s finally done, then we\u2019ll likely refuse to deal with their freely elected representatives (assuming the Shi\u2019a prevail).<\/p>\n
Bravo, Mr. Bush! You\u2019ve surpassed yourself.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our hypocrite of the decade award goes to none other than George W. Bush. Mr. Bush, the world\u2019s premier champion of the democratic form of government, has made spreading democracy Job Number One for the good ol\u2019 US of A. This mantle of good-natured philanthropy surfaced, as you\u2019ll no doubt recall, after it finally became […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikepellegrini.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}