Jim Austin

His previous columns are archived HERE.

JIM AUSTIN

The Incompetence Olympics

If there were an "Incompetence" Olympic games, the Bush Administration would get chronic neck pain from all the gold medals. Their latest flock of big ugly chickens has just come home to roost in the Middle East. You know the one I mean? It's the government that will now be owned and operated by "Hamas," a terrorist organization with absolutely no experience. How wretched, corrupt, and repugnant must the Fatah government have been if citizens chose a group of gun-wielding, masked suicide bombers over them?

If you are a Republican and you have read this far you are probably spraying your oatmeal all over your domestic partner and shrieking, "How do this be the fault of our President, he didn't force them Ay-rabs to vote for Hamas."

No, he didn't tell them how to vote but he pretty much made voting for anyone but Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party a slam-dunk. One of the centerpieces of our foreign policy is dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian fiasco. We do this for several reasons.

One is that our government tells us is that we Americans love democracy and Israel is the only Western-style democracy in the area. Ostensibly we also want to help the poor benighted Palestinians who were screwed out of their land back in 1948 and have been cheesed off about it ever since.

In reality, our government couldn't care less about the Palestinian people. They correctly see that the plight of the Palestinians is the catalyst for most Middle Eastern violence, not to mention Islamic terrorism around the world. If we are not seen to play fair with the Palestinians the rest of the Arab world and all their oil might not like us. Though to his credit, Bush's policies are approaching a point where they couldn't possibly hate us more.

If keeping the oil flowing happens to coincide with helping the Palestinians build their nation, isn't that a win win situation?

Yes, it would be if it were not being handled by the most inept government since Homo Erectus elected Og's barely evolved brother-in-law to lead the mastodon hunt.

Instead of insisting that former Palestinian Leader Abbas reign in the corruption in his government and oversee the spending of our foreign aid, the Bush administration put all their energy into the quest for democracy. Did it take a brainiac to anticipate that once the Palestinian people, whose lives were made miserable for four decades by the thieves in charge of Fatah, had a chance to vote, they would overwhelmingly cast their ballots in favor of any alternative? They'd have voted for Lindsay Englund over Abbas after the way his mob treated them.

Now Bush, Mr. Democracy, says he won't deal with the elected representatives of the Palestinian people. He and his henchmen insisted on an election and now won't recognize the winners. It's irony on crack.

No doubt the future of this government will be fascinating. Ultra-religious, fundamentalist, suicidal whackos in charge. Just great. Another foreign policy coup for the Bush administration.