Oops! What happened?

And The Winner Is…
By Joseph Walther


I guess by now you’ve all heard that Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization, won a majority in the latest parliamentary elections. The group, at last count, had won between 70 and 80 seats in a 132-seat parliament. Oh, and did I mention that Hamas’s long-standby primary goal has been the total destruction of Israel and its entire population? I didn’t? Well, silly me.

I’m not going to get into a long-winded analysis as to what is going on in the Middle East. I’m not at all qualified to do so. Besides, the slightly more qualified and definitely overpaid analysts on FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, and others, do this ad nauseam and infinitum. Moreover, we must never forget the audio contributions of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Al Franken, and Bill O’Reilly, intrepid windbags… all of them, although, in Franken’s defense, he can be funny.

The conflicts among the Islamists, Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis, and others in and around the ancient deserts of Babylon have been going on for centuries. These conflicts began even before Strom Thurman was born and well before Mercurochrome became a wonder drug. They are not going to end any time soon, no matter what the United States does.

I served two combat tours in Viet Nam. Like most other ordinary military combatants, I learned a great deal about the people we were supposed to be helping. One of the primary things I learned was that average Vietnamese citizens, north or south, didn’t care one hoot who ran their country. They wanted to be secure, left the hell alone to live their lives and farm their lands. Whichever governmental form and/or group provided this the best was fine.

An insurgency didn’t defeat us in Viet Nam. By the time we pulled out, we had won that battle thumbs down. However, after twelve plus years of lying presidents, partisan representatives and senators, biased news reports, and a killed in action list that exceeded 69,000 men and women, the American voting public wanted it OVER and so, it was.

There is not a whole lot that is different about the people in the Middle East. Once you weave down below the powercrats and the accompanying corruption, you reach the “you and I” types. This larger than life group wants to live their lives in peace and dignity. They want security and peace for themselves and their families and to worship whatever God, if any, in whatever way they wish.

Every society has its “silent majority”, whether it’s the United States of America, the Israelis, Palestinians, or Arabs. When the members of these “silent majorities” get pissed off over the status quo, they shake things up. Fatah, other than achieving flagrant corruption, accomplished nothing for ten years and the “silent majority” threw the bums out.

According to Jimmy Carter, the best former president in the history of the United States in my opinion, the Palestinian elections were “completely honest, completely fair, completely safe and without violence.” Mr. Carter was there as the leader of The International Democratic Institute. Senator Joseph R. Biden, independent of Mr. Carter’s group, was also there and echoed the same sentiments.

This is an example of how ineffective the George Bush theory on democracy can be. It also points up the weaknesses inherent when thinking is not your long coat. George, by his own admission after all, is a believer not a thinker. His belief is wrong because he bases it on a flawed assumption, that everyone’s definition of democracy is the same as ours. It is not.

George Bush is going to have to start thinking first and then believing. I’ll bet you that if the same open elective process were to take place in Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the near future, the results would be similarly horrendous for the United States.

I love my freedom and the benefits of Western Democracy. I love it so much that I would fight to the death destroying any enemy who attempted to take it away from me. However, I think it is futile, at best, trying to shove it down another country’s collective throat at gunpoint. This is especially true in regions of the world where religious dogma trumps human rights and dignity, no matter how much oil is there.

I am not all that comfortable writing about global politics. I prefer to keep it light and as humorous as possible, including satirically skewering idiots. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything to laugh about over religiously militant leaders advocating killing others over who has the best imaginary friend.

See you next week. The McGoofy Group met again last Saturday at Mama Gina’s Pizza stand. This time they featured guest appearances by Larry, his brother Darryl and his other brother Darryl. This was SOME meeting!

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send email to: publisher@thetruefacts.com