New Problem, Same Stupidity

This past week’s events in the Gaza Strip should have foreign policy planners in Washington patting themselves on the back.  Wasn’t this what Bush’s foreign policy crew wanted from day one when Hamas won a landslide popular election to head the Palestinian Authority?  Within moments of the declared victory, America withdrew all material support to the Palestinian Territories controlled by Hamas while actively seeking to undermine Hamas’ government by continuing to deal diplomatically with Mahmoud Abbas. 

Israel, for its part, now had a free hand in forcefully dealing with Hamas as it knew it would have little more than statements of disapproval from Washington.  The result is one of the most overlooked humanitarian crises in the last 50 years.  Hundreds of thousands are without basic material needs being met.  Unemployment, poverty, and all the social ills that go along with it are now rampant in the Palestinian Territories, particularly in the Gaza Strip.  That particular region now fits the description of a failed state pure and simple, the historic breeding ground of all sorts of extremism.

The pitiful thing is that the situation can only do more to harm the common people’s perception of America and the democracy it claims to represent.  From the days of the Cold War, status quo stability has been the hallmark of American policy in the Middle East.  This has led to words of freedom mixed with actions of tyranny as America couldn’t bring herself to believe her own rhetoric on the merits of democracy; choosing rather to support repressive regimes throughout the Middle East in an effort to offset Soviet aggression.  Now the enemy is not communism, but Islamic fundamentalism and America’s foreign policy has fallen back upon its old habits.

The blow-back has taken full form in the emergence of Islamic fundamentalist groups like Hamas who now feel their existence and practices as being justified by an overbearing and hypocritical American policy. 

Out of embarrassment over the desertion of roughly half of the Gaza Strip population over the last week Israel is now attempting a long overdue restoration of power, and America would do well to mimic such a gesture.  Direct humanitarian aid must be given to the Gaza Strip.  Basic concern for ones fellow human beings demands such action and it will be to America’s lasting shame if she does not now intervene in this escalating crisis.  You can love your enemies in the political world too, and now is the time to show it.