re: #371 marjoriemoon

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.

That was me. I think everyone knew exactly what Dahlen and FATAH were, but thought they were better than Hamas, which is true but still misses the point. Even Israel funded Hamas for a time starting in the late 1970s, as a (then young) counterweight to Arafat’s PLO.

Now, let me find a pop culture analogy to describe how this works, in theory. Ah, yes:

Skinner: ahh, but as it turns out the lizards where a god send since they’ve eaten all the pigeons.

Lisa: Isn’t that a little short sighted, what happens when where up to our ears with lizards?

Skinner: Ah, well we shall simply release wave after wave of Chinese needles snakes.

Lisa: then what about the snakes?

Skinner: We simply import gorillas who will eat all the snakes.

Lisa: Well what happens when where up to our ears in gorilla’s!

Skinner: Ah that’s the beauty of the thing, come winter the gorillas will freeze to death.

Are we all just waiting around for winter? Because honestly, I’m doubtful that things are going to play out that way.