The American Conservative

With the rise to political power of Hamas in Palestine and Shi’ite Islamists in Iraq thanks directly to U.S. policy and the election of the colourful Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thanks in part to Mr. Bush’s short-sighted alienation and ostracisation of Iran, some kind of “democracy” is on the loose in the Near East. That I have always regarded the success of democratisation as equally undesirable as its collapse into a new era of dictatorships is no secret to anyone familiar with Eunomia, so I have an unusual perspective on how Mr. Bush’s hopes for democratisation have begun blowing up in his face.

Does everyone remember how, not two months ago, we were assured that the Iraqi elections in December showed that democratisation was succeeding and that all of us naysayers were wrong (as we supposedly usually are)? At that time, elections were the heart and soul of democracy–have an election, form a government (how are the Iraqis doing on that, by the way?) and you’re on your way. But now that Hamas has won an election convincingly and is about to form a government, we begin to hear from the democratists that “elections are not everything.” Why, you need the rule of law (except when Mr. Bush needs to spy on someone, or detain him, or start a war…well, you get the idea)! You need protections for minorities (but just ignore the Christians in Iraq and Palestine)!

Well, of course, elections aren’t everything if you want a stable, legitimate government that does not abuse its power wantonly and governs for the common good (in other words, a constitutional republic or monarchy of some kind), but elections have been everything to the democratists up to this point because nothing more complex than “democracy” has been their slogan and watchword. Rveolution. Will of the people. That’s what they wanted (not in this country, of course), and now they’re getting it good and hard. How often did silly democratists talk about “purple thumbs” and “purple ink” when the Iraqis voted, as if we should be gladdened by this? No one is talking enthusiastically about green banners in Palestine, even though the very same green banners are flying in large parts of Iraq and mean exactly the same thing there.

For anti-Islamists (which neocons pretend to be) to embrace Iraqi Islamist victory and shun it in Palestine would be like an old anticommunist celebrating the fall of Cambodia while lamenting the fall of Saigon. It is hypocritical, obviously, but it ought to make everyone question the soundness of the judgement of people who are taking these opposed, irreconcilable positions at the same time. If having Islamists in power is undesirable in principle (yes), and probably undesirable for Israel and the U.S. (yes, yes), then it is undesirable wherever it occurs, so the democratisation likely to bring these things about is always undesirable. Don’t expect that kind of “clarity” from our friends in Washington.

If there is a “domino theory” in the Near East, it is not one leading to any kind of “freedom,” obviously, but it is U.S. policy that started knocking the dominoes over. What has been Mr. Bush’s guiding assumption? That, to put it in his delightfully simple language, “democracies don’t war.” Oh, okay. So Hamas represents the pacific will of the people. Glad we worked that out.

“Conducting war is a responsibility in the executive branch, not the legislative branch,” the president said at a 46-minute press conference. “Most presidents believe that during a time of war that we can use our authorities under the Constitution to make decisions necessary to protect us.” ~George W. Bush

Not that he would be free to conduct warrantless searches in this country if we were.

Glaivester comments here on a Christopher Deliso Antiwar post about a possible method to neocon madness. Maybe they wanted Hamas and Ahmadinejad to win, as it provides them with new reasons to despise and target the respective nations involved. It is not such a leap to think that the neocons want chaos in the Near East–it gives their interventionism new life and forces America to play the part of a fire brigade trying to contain a brush fire that our government started. This part of the “war on terror” will last a generation, and they are doing their best to make sure of it, because that is how long they will need to get their claws into this country for good.

The “Democratic Peace” in Action.

(AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

Israel’s government hunkered down Friday, caught off guard by the Hamas landslide after its vaunted intelligence services predicted a slim victory for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Party. ~The Washington Post

No wonder they were wrong! From the description in the article, it sounds as if the “vaunted” intelligence gathering consisted of reading newspapers and polls and talking to/listening to pundits. If this is what intelligence work is, I must be some kind of agent, because I do this all the time. Government “intelligence,” my eye!

The scale and immediacy of the problems faced by the new Palestinian government were reflected by economic data that showed the government would run out of money to pay government salaries within a few weeks.

Israel has threatened to withhold taxes that it collects and pays back to the Palestinian Authority in line with long-standing agreements.

The enmity poses another problem for the Hamas leadership as any government it forms is unlikely to be allowed to travel freely between Gaza and the West Bank through Israeli territory.

Israeli security forces would arrest any Hamas member inside Israeli jurisdiction. ~The Daily Telegraph

No, this isn’t suburban Paris, but it is another kind of disenchanted “youth”!

The New Europeans are hard-working, presentable, well educated, and integrate so perfectly that they will disappear within a generation. I have admiration for their Mittel-European sophistication, a soft spot for their historical fatalism, and a weakness for their vodka-soaked parties. I grew up with Poles and Russians circulating through my Cambridge family home in the 1970s, and spent time as a teenager behind the Iron Curtain listening to wonderful young Hungarians dream of breathing free. And now they are. They are as perfect immigrants as one could wish for.

And yet. And yet. Immigration is not just about quality but about numbers. And the numbers of Eastern Europeans arriving here in the past two years have been extraordinary — far exceeding the government’s reassuring predictions. The Home Office said that between 5,000 and 13,000 would turn up, but it was wrong by a factor of as much as 60: the latest count is 293,000. Even that, however, is almost certainly a huge underestimate. The Association of Labour Providers, which represents recruitment agencies, reckons twice as many have arrived.

The New Europeans are not confined to London, though their numbers are greatest in the capital. Newsnight discovered last week that 3,000 Poles have settled in Crewe, which has a population of 48,000. Jason Canny, the head of the recruitment agency that brought them in after opening an office in Poland said, ‘It’s quite mind-blowing the changes that we’ve gone though as a town — and I’ve been personally responsible. The migrating workforce that has come into the UK is far bigger than people realise. Not just in our area, but nationally.’ And in Crewe, as elsewhere, they are coming to settle: families are being brought over and schools are filling up with sparky Eastern European kids. One Catholic school in Crewe ended up with 23 extra Polish pupils. So much for the government’s oft-repeated claim that they are just temporary workers who would go back. ~Anthony Browne, The Spectator

I would say something about Enoch Powell at this point, but I think we all get the idea. Immigrants may be as well-educated, industrious and keen to assimilate as you please (not that most immigrants to America have most of these qualities), and if there are a great many of them they will still create upheaval in society, impose new costs on institutions and change the culture to an unacceptable and undesirable degree. In America, as in Britain, the main immigration problem is not an onrush of educated central and eastern Europeans, but Mr. Browne’s article about this very sort of immigrant only highlights that no scheme of mass immigration and the “free movement of labour” (as I once heard the late Lord Russell blithely describe mass immigration into and within the EU) can be had that will not destabilise the social and political order of a country. On the scale the old EU-15 countries are beginning to experience it, this destabilisation will be severe and ongoing.
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The numbers for Eunomia this month have been a marked improvement over previous months, reaching 2,000+ unique visitors for the first time since I started in late December 2004. I’d like to thank all my readers and fellow bloggers who have made the site as successful as it is, including all my readers from such varied places as Iceland, China, Japan, India, Brazil and Greece, among many others.

I’d especially like to thank Jon Luker for getting me started in blogging and keeping this place running, Michael Brendan Dougherty for spreading the word, Scott Richert for his support and encouragement, and Steve Sailer for the the permanent link and directing his readers to more than one of my posts over the past few months. I also owe A.C. Kleinheider, Clark Stooksbury, the mysterious Glaivester, Kevin Michael Grace and Andrew Cunningham my thanks for linking to the site, commenting on my posts and directing some traffic my way. If I have left anyone out, I do apologise and will make sure to acknowledge your support in the future.

The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, and his government submitted their resignations Thursday as the radical Islamic faction Hamas appeared to have scored a major upset and defeated the ruling Fatah party in parliamentary elections.

However, no official results were expected until Thursday evening.

Fatah, which has dominated Palestinian politics for decades, was favored in Wednesday’s election and exit polls released after the polls closed projected Fatah as the winner by a narrow margin.

But on Thursday morning, Hamas leaders claimed their own count showed that the group was winning an outright majority in the 132-seat Palestinian Legislative Council. Sixty-seven seats are needed for a majority, and Ismail Haniya, a senior Hamas leader, said the group expected to at least 70. ~International Herald-Tribune

CNN’s latest is that Hamas has won a “landslide victory,” and if the reported results are correct it will gave Hamas an outright majority of 76 to Fatah’s mere 43 in an election that saw approximately 78% turnout. Representative democracy has “worked” in Palestine: we now know exactly what “the people” want and have one more example why they should not be asked the question in the first place.

If the conventional wisdom about Iraq’s elections is right (the fragmentation and division of power among myriad partues are supposedly good things, as they will make moderation and compromise unavoidable), the opposite will apply here: Hamas will have no need to moderate its language or change its “policies.” We can safely say that the Palestinian elections are a disaster–for the Palestinians. Israel will take this as a sign that Palestinians do not seriously want a negotiated settlement, which will strengthen the hand of Likud and the National Religious Party and undermine the already weakened appeal of Kadima. Yes, democracy has come to Palestine–the only question is whether Palestine will survive it.

Many of the headlines following Hamas’ “surprise, upset victory” in Palestinian elections conveyed the shock of Western elites that voters would, given the choice, prefer the more radical and militant faction. This is shock born of the delusion that most people in any given population want peace more than anything else. The “democratic peace” thesis rests on the assumption that the mass of men will almost always prefer peace and that the democratic process will restrain the government from having recourse to war. In fact, many men quite often would prefer war and it is only the restraint of circumstances and authorities that keeps these desires in check. This must especially be true of a people so embittered and radicalised by decades of repression, and whose political discourse (if we can call it that) is filled to the brim with the rhetoric of nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism. This Western sense of shock also comes from the assumption that most will vote for relatively ‘rational’ candidates and will make their decisions based on ‘rational’ grounds. Here are the results of a study showing that, at least as far as Americans are concerned, political decisions that voters make have very little to do with rational thought. Mass politics is, as it must be, emotionally driven.
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