God’s Belly Laugh

01/28/2006

Paul Munnis

When it comes to governing themselves the Palestinians are as dumb as a box of rocks. The simply don’t know how to do it. They lack practical experience. They lack knowledge of governance. They know only politics by gun-barrel. They have a bad educational background, poor civic knowledge, and their understanding of world history is nil. Under Fatah, they were inept, corrupt, and had no idea how to proceed. Under Hamas, they have no idea how to go about forming a government. They have uneducated leaders who couldn’t even run an elevator.

Fatah made it because the U.S. and others sent money their way. They quickly learned how to grab it and to buy nice government cars for themselves and to play the yuppie role. They equated power to money grabbing.

Sound familiar? You’re right, that is how the U.S. is behaving in Washington today and it’s not beside the point, it is the point. This is the model that America holds out to other nations these days. It is a failed model.

Now Hamas is trying to figure out what they need to do to form a government. They are clueless.

The U.S. and Israel are moving to cut off the money supply to Palestine. Soon they will be broke and isolated and dumb and a danger to all around them as they shoot at anyone not a tribesman or clansman. The future of the mid-east rests upon a bunch of bozos whose knowledge base consists of field stripping AK-47 rifles and elementary bomb making. Shooting invites a counter-response—more shooting.

For this we have poured billions into the mid-east and we have done so for 57 years.

We’re dumb too.

In a sense, God is having a belly laugh by granting Hamas their wish: to rule Palestine.

“OK boys, it’s all yours—now what?”

He is also having a laugh at the expense of America.

“Okay Boys, you have a Democratic elected government in Palestine – Now What?”

He is asking this again in Iraq, and again in Afghanistan, and by inference also in Iran and Syria, and Lebanon, and all across the continent of Africa wherever the U.S. wants to send in an Army to institute Democracy.

God is laughing at America for sending guns and boots instead of text books and teachers.

The Russians had enough education to ‘get it’ and to survive when the cold war ended and they had to assume development of a capitalist model. The Palestinians do not understand any of this.

The underlying assumption was that these nations were ready to rule if only we could get them free from dictatorship then they would all follow a western model.

Nope – dead wrong.

Dictators seem to be the only ones with some understanding of how to manipulate and play the government game. “Seize power, consolidate a hold over people, grab all of the assets, then form a loyal army. Kill anyone who is a threat.”

That is the model that they have come up with thanks to America failing to educate them otherwise. We are reaping just what we sowed. Our examples of a squabbling Congress, massive government corruption, and power by gun-barrel, are all poor examples to the rest of the world. Our founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves at how dumb we are about stewardship of the legacy that they left us.

That is the model that the mid-east has and that is their legacy from America. They need coaching and development, and leadership and there is no base there for understanding Democracy and they lack an understanding that in order to form a nation, you must have people of good-will, working in concert and in a peaceful and bi-partisan manner to set goals and to make compromises to allow these goals to be achieved over time even if there is ideological misunderstanding or disagreement over how to achieve the goals. This is the same lesson that Washington needs to re-learn. We have forgotten it.

Yes, the Bush Administration and Hamas both need to learn those lessons for indeed their failure at governance seems to illustrate that they just don’t get it either. 

So if the student hasn’t learned then the teacher failed to teach. And if the teacher’s teacher didn’t know either, then how can Democracy survive in either the mid-east or in Washington? We have a bunch of dunces in charge of government. No wonder they are driving us all crazy. It’s because they don’t know what they are doing nor how to govern. We have idiots running governments.

There is an opportunity for the U.S. State Department to contact these people (Hamas), and offer to help them form a government, educate them on their responsibilities, and teach them how to behave in a civilized manner. It’ll take a few years to do this and what do they do in the meantime?

That is where perhaps the UN could offer to help by assisting them in forming a new government and stepping in to help out through on-the-job training and governmental coaching.

If we don’t do this then we will have nobody to blame for what follows except missed opportunity caused by our own ignorance.

We can’t blame God for this. He gave us brains and then left us to use them. We aren’t doing very well at the task.