re: #349 Obdicut

I mean that the crunch hasn’t worked with Cuba or with North Korea. Or Iran, for that matter. The only time the ‘crunch’ could be said to have worked was with the Soviet Union, and I think that was actually much more a cultural thing.

Gaza does get a ton of aid, but they really do have a shitty, screwed up economy, too; it’s hard to have a thriving one when a fucked up band of thugs is in charge and busy scavenging the infrastructure and goading the Israelis into attacking.

By any rational logic, the citizens of Gaza should have already rejected Hamas.

Well that’s true. There’s a thriving black market in Cuba, too.

If you try to apply rational logic to this situation, you’ll get continually frustrated :)

Who pointed me to that article on Vanity Fair, The Gaza Bombshell? I haven’t read it all, but it’s about how Bush backed the Hamas election so as to split the Palestinians into the two groups, Hamas and Fatah. Then Bush would arm Fatah in a civil war against Hamas and basically annihilate them. Except it backfired. It’s all premised on relying on this terrorist thug named Muhmmad Dahlen, kind of a Fatah spy living in Gaza.

I remember hearing about this after their election. That Bush would arm Fatah against Hamas, but then nothing happened. Condi made many trips to visit Abbas in 2006, 2007, before the elections. But it was never reported why she went or what was discussed. Just in interests of “peace.”

It wasn’t such a bad idea. My guess is Bush put his trust in the wrong people.