Vanity Fair has a lovely article explaining that Dubya and (his favorite Uncle Tom) Condi Rice were responsible to Hamas taking over Gaza. The Bush administration has been waging a dirty war. The United States has been attempting to create a Palestinian civil war and its backfiring.

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza

Some sources call the scheme “Iran-contra 2.0,” recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.’s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.

Arafat died in November 2004, and Abbas, his replacement as Fatah leader, was elected president in January 2005. Elections for the Palestinian parliament, known officially as the Legislative Council, were originally set for July 2005, but later postponed by Abbas until January 2006.

Dahlan says he warned his friends in the Bush administration that Fatah still wasn’t ready for elections in January. Decades of self-preservationist rule by Arafat had turned the party into a symbol of corruption and inefficiency—a perception Hamas found it easy to exploit. Splits within Fatah weakened its position further: in many places, a single Hamas candidate ran against several from Fatah.

“Everyone was against the elections,” Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’ Fine. For what purpose?”

The elections went forward as scheduled. On January 25, Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council.

Is it only a democracy when your side wins? What is it about the West that requires them to meddle in the affairs of others? I have no doubt that the Australians and “American” over at “Tizona” will have some commentary about how both I and Vanity fair are communist anti-semites. But the issue is why people like them feel the need to meddle in the affairs of others.

Lets look at the track record of western interference in the world

1953 we overthrow a democracy in Iran. This leads to 1979 revolution and Iran becoming an “enemy.”

1961 we have the Bay of Pigs fiasco and instead of getting rid of a non threatening leader we consolidate power under Castro

1980’s we arm and train the Mujahadeen and the Taliban to fight against the Russians and place them in power when they win. I wonder how that turned out.

In the 1980’s we arm Saddam Hussein to fight the mistakes we made in Iran. Saddam eventually invades Kuwait and gasses civilians.

Oh we have done well haven’t we. Even now we continue to elect idiots to office who claim democratically elected officials are dictators (Ahmedinajad). Before the U.S. campaign against him his ratings were worse than Bush’s, but now? Now he is popular and could see re-election in his future.

Hamas was democratically elected in an election forced by and monitored by the United States. Hamas was willing to moderate as well.

Some analysts argued that Hamas had a substantial moderate wing that could be strengthened if America coaxed it into the peace process. Notable Israelis—such as Ephraim Halevy, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency—shared this view. But if America paused to consider giving Hamas the benefit of the doubt, the moment was “milliseconds long,” says a senior State Department official.

Maybe that is the problem with Western Society, they don’t think. Are we really that disillusioned by Manifest Destiny, must the “anglo-saxon” race invade and “civilize” all nations?  Oh those poor savages, we must convert the heathens.

And to my friends in Australia, I’m sure the Aborigenes love what you have done for them. Poverty, drug addiction, the systematic kidnapping of children to “westernize” them.