July 18, 2002

THIS MAN IS AN IDIOT

THIS MAN IS AN IDIOT

Poli sci PhD student Nader Hashemi argues in the Globe today that the Palestinian independence movement is struggling while those in East Timor and South Africa succeeded because... Yasser Arafat isn't anti-American enough. (!)

By throwing itself so completely into the hands of the Clinton and Bush administrations, [Arafat] has brought one disaster after another on the Palestinians... A primary lesson to be learned from East Timor and South Africa is that the struggle for self-determination has to be waged in opposition to U.S. foreign policy, not in deference to it.

The fact those other movements cared about not losing their claim to humanity in their struggle for freedom by blowing up innocents, no matter how bad the oppression got, seems to have been lost on him. Seems to me the Timorese and South African events were triumphs of morality... for the current Palestinian leadership to gain any more power than it has could only lead to a greater and deadlier atrocity. But then again, I'm not going to be a professor of political science any day soon. (link)

Posted by BruceR at 04:24 PM