The Palestinians and the Democrats

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/israel/articles/20070715.aspx

'The Arab Reform Movement is pretty blunt about blaming Arabs for the lack of good government, or economic and scientific progress in the region. Many Arabs note that over half of Israel's population is "Arab" (either Israeli Arab or Israelis of Middle Eastern origin), and that has not prevented Israel from building a working democracy and thriving economy. An increasing number of Arabs ask, "why not us?" The Palestinians are increasingly seen as a bunch of self-destructive screw-ups who can't do anything right. Arab support for Palestinians is increasingly just for show, and the show is coming to an end.'

Perhaps the show is coming to an end in the middle east, and amongst those with first-hand knowledge, but the mushy left in America is just gearing up to support them. The burgeoning support for the Palestinian 'cause' among American college students, their professors, journalists and editors in the mainstream press and so-called liberal politicians bodes ill for any solutions in the middle east based on reality. It has been noted that sales of the Yasser Arafat hanky thing have gone completely crazy, and the number of 'activists' prepared to do all kinds of nutty things on behalf of the Poor Ickle Palestinians has shot through the roof. As with the situation in Iraq, where millions and millions of Iraqi's want the Americans to stay, and millions and millions of lefty morons want America to leave, mass politics has a its own dynamics; and these dynamics are very loosely connected to the actual world.

For many middle eastern governments the current big issues are the presence of 155,000 US soldiers in Iraq, the desperate attempts of Iran to get nuclear weapons to shore up their claim to be a 'regional power', the growing attempts by Wahhabist extremists to undermine all the secular institutions of power in their countries, and how to deal with Israel in its new concialatory, constructive mood. The very old songs played by the Palestinian cheerleader squads in the various capitals of the Arab world sound like music from an age past, dead and gone. These facts are of no import to the American and British left. They live in an insulated world which needs no further input from the outside. They are utterly confident that the truths of 1980 are the truths of 2007. Like all true believers, the world cannot change for them. Which is annoying for the rest of us, and sometimes quite important.

If 'progressive liberal' politicians succeed in altering the course of the Iraqi situation by playing about with the funding of US forces, both American politics and Iraqi daily life could suffer severe downsides. The suspicion of Republicans that large segments of the Democrat party have turned decisively away from the interests of the United States, and swung behind those of its sworn enemies could harden into a real conflict. This bizarre turn of events, where party affiliation suddenly becomes the fault line for patriotic affiliation has never happened in the US before. No major US political party has ever accepted pretty much wholesale the arguments of its enemies and detractors, and made them its program for 'government'. I foresee the complete disintegration of the Democrat party, where the half of it which is still patriotic to the US leaves to find a new political home and the rump Democrat party, full of haters and malcontents becomes a sort of militant rabble, a bit like the militia movements in the '80s and '90s. The militia movements fueled themselves on hatred of the Federal government, conspiracy theories about every kind of government skulduggery, and ignorant theories about how the world works. That is very close to the positions of the crazed half of the Democrat party.

Sadly, the Republican party is in great disarray too, and is not in any position to take advantage of the disintegrating Democrats. It has different problems, at the heart of which I believe is a complete breakdown of what Republicans commonly believe to be the core principles of conservatism. President Bush is not nearly conservative enough for many Republicans, who hanker after the days of Ronald Reagan. There is a very large faction of centrist Republicans though, for whom large government contracts, big government solutions to most problems, and a corporatist view of American life have replaced completely the frontier values of working class America. How the Republican party can take all its disparate elements and combine them effectively in actual goverment is almost as serious a problem as the one confronting the Democrats. Saying that, a Republican failure to govern would not be as bad for the United States as a Democrat success in getting elected in its current state.