If an enemy is tying their own noose, don't take away their rope!

Today, I read an article which claimed that: The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again.

This begs the question: does the Bush administration actively try to come up with most counterproductive course of action in every situation or are they just that ignorant of the most basic tenets of psychology? I suppose harsher critics would attribute this to malice. But given their infamous lack of curiosity and world awareness and their notorious inability for seeing things from anyone else's point of view, the more generous of its critics would suspect ignorance.

The martyr/persecution complex is the most important element in any populist movement like Hamas. Hamas needs enemies to villify in order to get people to rally behind them. Mostly, the enemies are external: primarily Israel and the US. But also internal: the corrupt Fatah regime.

But like any puritanical, populist movement, they will find being in government a vastly different proposition to being in opposition. Being in opposition, simply means saying 'no' and blaming everything on the enemy fo the day. Governing requires you actually do something. Governing means you can't just blame others for all the problems; you're expected to find solutions.

The best thing Israel and the US could do is to let Hamas fail on its own terms. This would result in the Palestninian people rendering a harsh judgement on the organization.

But if Hamas fails because of US/Israeli meddling, then Hamas can easily blame the Zionists and the infidels. Even if foreign meddling isn't the reason Hamas fails, the PERCEPTION of outside interference will remain.

And what if, by chance, Hamas succeeds in cleaning up the corrupt Palestinian bureaucracy and improving the standard of living for its citizens? That would be good as well. It would benefit Israel by mitigating some of the misery and desperation that is the breeding ground for terrorism. And these better living conditions would either weaken Hamas or moderate it. By diminishing the persecution complex and empowering Palestinians, Hamas would be faced with the choice of maintaining its decreasingly credible hard line and losing support or moderating its hard line in order to keep a grip on power.

I'm sure Hamas is absolutely thrilled to read of these destabilization plans. It will allow them to play the nationlist card to STRENGTHEN their support. And it will give them a ready-made excuse in case of failure.

This really gets to the heart of why the Bush administration's decision making process is so disastrous: their first instinct when faced with a problem is always one of belligerence. This overreliance on chest-beating prevents them from realizing that sometimes subtlety and backing off is the best course of action. When an enemy is tying their own noose, the last thing you want to do is take away their rope.