Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: U.S. pushes for democracy until the wrong side wins
By Erin Caballero
Spartan Daily (San Jose State U.)
02/01/2006

(U-WIRE) SAN JOSE, Calif. — America is truly an ironic country - we nag other countries to "clean up their act" environmentally, but we're one of the few nations that have yet to sign the Kyoto Protocol. We like to think of ourselves as secular and democratic and that we are a role model for the world, more specifically the Middle East.

My case in point - the January 25 elections in Palestine, in which the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, a terrorist organization responsible for suicide bombings that have killed scores of innocent Israelis, won 76 out of 132 parliamentary seats.

The main objective of Hamas, in the words of co-founder Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, is to "remove Israel from the map."

There is considerable irony in the fact that we in the West pushed for democratic elections in the Middle East and cried foul after the votes were tallied.

Um, it's called democracy and they can choose whomever they want. Unfortunately for us, it happens to be a group on a terrorist watch-list, one that wants to destroy a nation (Israel) that we helped establish and that we continue to support.

While we're on the subject of democracy, why is it that we think we are such a great role model that the rest of the world needs to emulate us? We launch preemptive wars on other nations that have NEVER attacked us, such as Iraq and Vietnam. Did these people drop flaming jellied gasoline on us, also known as napalm? Did they steal our resources, or kill our people unprovoked? No, but we did it to them. Basically, we're setting an extremely poor example for the rest of the world to follow.

To this day, I'm still surprised that neither the Vietnamese nor the Iraqis have launched serious terrorist attacks on our soil.

Instead of being angry at Palestine for electing Hamas, America should just shrug its shoulders. It's like a three-year-old who thinks that a striped shirt and polka dot stretch pants together are the height of fashion; despite wanting and needing to correct them, you need more to let them "express themselves."

The same rule applies to politics; people don't like being told whom to vote for, nor do they like being told that their political party is stupid. If you insist on being right, even if you are right you end up looking like a sanctimonious blowhard and the mismatched toddler in question will throw the world's biggest tantrum. This is something that I've had to learn - despite the fact that some of my friends voted for someone who can't pronounce the word "nuclear" correctly, I must bite my tongue like any civil democrat and love them anyway.

Palestine is growing up fast - the last thing we as a global community need is this young nation throwing a tantrum and a couple of grenades while they're at it. As a country, we need to put our own curtains of violence and religious fundamentalism into the incinerator where they belong. We can't just talk the talk without walking the walk. There is a word for that: hypocrisy.

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