Stick a Fork In Jimmy Carter

[BPSCG]

We know what fungible means, BP, but you still aren't making your case because it assumes that Fatah and Hamas would spend their money on food and medicine for the masses, an assumption which I don't feel is justified. They might feed their militias, but the ordinary people? Do you believe they are that charitable? I think they are more likely to starve people to death rather than give up their weapons.

Sounds like you're saying that, if anything, I was being too charitable to Hamas.

In which case, there's even less reason to send aid than I originally argued. Under my scenario, at least civilians would be fed while Hamas freed up some money to buy more guns. Under your scenario, civilians would continue to suffer as before, and Hamas would eat better and be able to get more guns.

So you're on the side that thinks Carter is going senile, right?

OBTW, no, I don't think everyone here understands the concept of fungibillity. Else they wouldn't be making such stupid arguments to justify sending aid to Hamas.

 

[davefoc]

Am I part of that crowd? Pardon me for saying this, but an american mainstream politician suggesting we should fund Hamas equally with Fatah is retarded. Not only does it make no sense politically, but it can only hurt the democrat image.

I'm glad to know I am a member of the pro-Israel cabal on this forum though. Webfusion forgot to send me a membership card.

I don't know that you are part of the Israel can do no wrong crowd and if you think you aren't then you probably aren't.

My point was that Jimmy Carter arguably did more for Israel than any US president in terms of actual results achieved and yet his views on the Palestinie/Israeli conflict are routinely criticized and distorted by the Israel can do no wrong crowd.

Why is that? My thought is that the Israel can do no wrong crowd does not want peace on anything resembling balanced terms. What they want is justifications for the continuous territorial expansion of Israel and confirmation of their hatred towards the Palestinians.

The thread is anything but a discussion of how dumb it is for Jimmy Carter to say we should fund a terrorist group who even though they were brought into the political fold rebelled and took over Gaza (and to say it before an election cycle).

I don't know what to make of Carter's thoughts on this. As is obvious from what I said above I respect Carter a great deal when it comes to his views on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and if he says something I think it is worth listening to.

My thought before hearing what Carter had to say was that the Hamas victory in the Gaza strip might be good for Israel and in the end good for both sides. By allowing a government in the Gaza strip to take hold that is the clear cut enemy of Israel, Israel had somebody to threaten if the rocket attacks continue. I would be mighty scared if I was a Hamas leader right now and some of the uncontrolled nuts in the Gaza strip were firing rockets into Israel. It seems possible that the Hamas leadership might think it was a good idea to control some of those nuts. I also thought the economic isolation of Hamas might induce Hamas to reconsider some of their policies and perhaps moderate them.

But if Carter thinks that limited support for the citizens of the Gaza strip might be a good idea despite the presence of Hamas I think that his thoughts on this bear listening to. Listening to Dick Cheney for the last six years on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict seems to have deepened the conflict and has certainly not moved it any closer to resolution.

 

[Ziggurat]

I think they are more likely to starve people to death rather than give up their weapons.

If that is the case, then they have no claims to be a government of any sort, and we should not give them anything at all. If the people are really going to starve to death without our aid, then some route other than Hamas should be found, but if your estimation of their behavior is correct, it is an argument against giving Hamas access to any resources whatsoever, not an argument in favor of it.

 

[Almo]

This idea that we say "vote for your government," then say, "but not those people," is wrong. How do you think the voters feel about their choice being ignored by the world?

Say China broke off ties with the US because they didn't like whom we elected. Do you think we'd feel they were justified? If you fast-forward the Hamas election, you might find Sinn Fein power-sharing in Northern Ireland. When an organizion that uses terrorism is given a political alternative, they will migrate over to politics; not instantly as naysayers naively demand. But they will since it is ultimately more productive.

 

[Tricky]

Sounds like you're saying that, if anything, I was being too charitable to Hamas.

I said you are making the assumption that Hamas would feed the people before they would spend money on weapons. In order for food and medicine to be a fungible commodities, in this instance, that assumption would be required in order to equate helping the people with helping Hamas.

In which case, there's even less reason to send aid than I originally argued. Under my scenario, at least civilians would be fed while Hamas freed up some money to buy more guns. Under your scenario, civilians would continue to suffer as before, and Hamas would eat better and be able to get more guns.

What? That is completely illogical. Your scenario has Hamas feeding the people, leaving less money for guns. Your strawman of my scenario has Hamas stealing all the food from the people, leaving them to starve anyway.

So you're on the side that thinks Carter is going senile, right?

I'm not on a "side". I think Carter feels strongly about this and he has some good reasons and some bad reasons. Starving the people in Gaza is not likely to drive people away from Hamas. Just the opposite. They will see Hamas as the only people who will help them. Giving the people food will inevitably also feed Hamas. While I'm not so much a humanitarian that I think that feeding people will solve all our problems, I think that in this instance, we would be drawing ourselves into this civil war by picking sides. I'm not sure it is in our best interests to do that.

OBTW, no, I don't think everyone here understands the concept of fungibillity. Else they wouldn't be making such stupid arguments to justify sending aid to Hamas.

You know, BP, I'm not sure where you picked up this meme that anyone who disagrees with you is hopelessly stupid, but it is one of your less endearing qualities. Your logic is based on some assumptions that not all of us accept.

 

[Ziggurat]

Listening to Dick Cheney for the last six years on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict seems to have deepened the conflict and has certainly not moved it any closer to resolution.

I think this is a shallow analysis of the situation, and one which has led us into the current problem. The idea that present intensity of violence is the primary indicator of progress has led to elevating the influence of terrorists since they're the ones who exert the most control over that.

The Palestinian civil war is not a sign that Israel is losing its opportunity for peace. It's a sign that they're entering an end game in which Israel breaks free from the clutches of Palestinian terrorists. Here's a link to what I considered a pretty good argument that predicted Palestinian civil war years ago:
http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/01/UpagainsttheWall.shtml

But once the wall is in place, and Israeli forces have been withdrawn from Palestinian territories, Israel will largely be able to ignore the Palestinians; at least to the extent that the war will no longer occupy center stage in Israel politically and economically. The wall will deprive the Palestinians of the only real weapon they had in the war. And when violent civil war breaks out amongst the Palestinian factions, their situation will become immeasurably worse in every way.
...
Arafat has denounced Sharon and claims that Sharon is "not serious about peace". Of course, Sharon is looking for peace for Israel and damned well doesn't care if the Palestinians end up killing each other. What Arafat is actually worried about is the fact that Sharon has found a way to wrap the situation up in a way which is moderately satisfactory for Israel, without Palestinian consent and without Palestinian cooperation.

Sharon and Arafat aren't players anymore, but the dynamics set in motion then are still playing themselves out.

 

[Ziggurat]

This idea that we say "vote for your government," then say, "but not those people," is wrong.

You're right: it's wrong, because we don't say that. We say "vote for your government" and then we say "now that you've voted, live with the consequences of your choice". The whole idea behind promoting democracy is that it will force people to be more responsible. But that's undermined, not supported, if you try to accomodate destructive choiced. The Palestinians should always be free to choose Hamas as their government, but they should never be shielded from the results of that choice.

How do you think the voters feel about their choice being ignored by the world?

Oh, but it's NOT being ignored. That's rather the whole point. Pretending that Hamas is the same as anyone else, THAT qualifies as ignoring their choice.

Say China broke off ties with the US because they didn't like whom we elected. Do you think we'd feel they were justified?

Justification would be rather irrelevant in such a situation. We do not rely upon China not having a good justification to prevent them from doing that, we rely upon them suffering significant consequences of their own should they so choose.

If you fast-forward the Hamas election, you might find Sinn Fein power-sharing in Northern Ireland.

Maybe when Hamas recognized Israel's right to exist - a rather easy demand to meet, and an emminently reasonable one too I think, and yet one they could not bring themselves to do. In the absence of even that, though, the comparison is laughable.

When an organizion that uses terrorism is given a political alternative, they will migrate over to politics;

No. They might migrate to politics. But there's absolutely no guarantee. And given their unwillingness to even recognize Israel's right to exist, I think the safe bet is rather in the opposite direction with Hamas.

But they will since it is ultimately more productive.

Not if you give them resources even when they refrain from moving in that direction.

 

[corplinx]

I don't know what to make of Carter's thoughts on this. As is obvious from what I said above I respect Carter a great deal when it comes to his views on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and if he says something I think it is worth listening to.

I respect that. Look, he didn't ask for airdrops of food into Gaza. He asked for equal treatment for usurpers with a long history of terrorist activity.

I am puzzled that he would go out on a limb for them at this point. Deeply deeply puzzled. Does he honestly believe what he is saying or is he just playing diplomat and trying to appear as a neutral arbiter?

Does he really believe the US and the west should support the Hamas insurrection?

 

[thinkingaboutit]

I find it interesting how outraged posters in here get at Carter's statements contrasted with the apathetic response to revelations such as the Bush administration's secret funding of Al Qaeda related terror groups.

see http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh

 

[BPSCG]

I said you are making the assumption that Hamas would feed the people before they would spend money on weapons. In order for food and medicine to be a fungible commodities, in this instance, that assumption would be required in order to equate helping the people with helping Hamas.

Okay, let's make it simple.

I have $100 to my name until the next welfare check comes in, and I hate my next door neighbor, Tricky, and want him dead, even though Mrs. BPSCG wants me to call off my feud. Every chance I get, I try to kill Tricky, but he's a tricky bastard and I haven't been successful yet.

So I'm gonna go buy a gun. But a gun costs $75 and when you throw in another ten bucks for bullets, that leaves Mrs. BPSCG and me only fifteen bucks for groceries this month.

So I go to the Plains, Georgia Southern Baptist Church and I ask one of the elders there for $85 to buy a gun so I can shoot Tricky. The elder, one Brother Carter, is appalled at the idea. Murder is wrong, he explains to me. Jesus said that if my neighbor strikes me, I should turn the other cheek and offer him the chance to strike it as well.

Well, that Jesus stuff just doesn't sit right with me, being a Muslim an atheist and all, and I tell Brother Carter so.

At which point, he says, "Well, I can't give you $85 to buy a gun and bullets. But we have lots of food here, thanks to the charitable work of the good Christian people of our congregation, and you're welcome to help yourself to $85 worth of food."

I think it over, and realize that if I accept Brother Carter's offer, I'll have $85 worth of food plus $100 of my own cash, so I'll now have $185 worth of stuff. And now I can go out and buy a gun and bullets for $85, so when I'm all done, I'll have $85 of food, $85 of weaponry, and $15 of cash. Whereas if Brother Carter had given me $85 cash instead, I'd have $185 in cash, which I would then turn into...$85 of food, $85 of weaponry, and $15 of cash. Hey, it works out the same either way! Thank you, Brother Carter, I'll accept your offer; it's very generous of you!

The preacher at the Plains Baptist Church overhears our little transaction and says something to Brother Carter about "fungibility" or something, but I can't be bothered; I got what I wanted: a way to shoot Tricky and put food on the table.

I get home and ask Mrs. BPSCG where Tricky is. "I saw him headed over to the Baptist Church a couple of minutes ago," she says. "He said he heard they had free food, and wanted to get some so he could afford to buy a gun to shoot you with. When are you two going to stop acting like a couple of idiots?"

What? That is completely illogical. Your scenario has Hamas feeding the people, leaving less money for guns.

No. See above. Every dollar's worth of food given to Hamas frees up a dollar for them to buy a gun.

Your strawman of my scenario has Hamas stealing all the food from the people, leaving them to starve anyway.

I beg your pardon? You were the one who wrote:

I think they are more likely to starve people to death rather than give up their weapons.

How is what I wrote a strawman of your position?

I think that in this instance, we would be drawing ourselves into this civil war by picking sides. I'm not sure it is in our best interests to do that.

Funny, after all that, I would agree with you (except that I'm more sure than you are that it's not in our best interests). Let Hamas and Fatah shoot at each other until there's only one side left standing. Clarity is a wonderful thing. I see no earthly reason to support either of them.

You know, BP, I'm not sure where you picked up this meme that anyone who disagrees with you is hopelessly stupid, but it is one of your less endearing qualities.

Actually, if you really knew me, you'd know that I have many qualities less endearing than that, starting with kicking crippled beggars and emptying their tin cups into my pocket.

And FWIW, I hang around here because there are so many intelligent people here who disagree with me. You may or may not have noticed that I almost never call a person stupid ("attack the argument, not the arguer"), but I also won't hesitate to call an argument stupid if I think it is. You understand the difference. And BTW, I don't think you're stupid at all, let alone hopelessly so.

 

[Ziggurat]

I find it interesting how outraged posters in here get at Carter's statements contrasted with the apathetic response to revelations such as the Bush administration's secret funding of Al Qaeda related terror groups.

see http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh

Maybe because many of us don't see Hersch as being particularly reliable on issues of terrorism. His analysis is, quite frankly, laughable. There's nothing contradictory about the fact that in Iraq, our enemies are mostly Sunni, while in Lebannon, they're mostly Shiite. And yet, Hersh says that it is. I don't expect his analysis of information from anonymous sources whom I can't check in any way to be any better. But perhaps that's just me: perhaps publicly available information about our acknowleged actions shouldn't be treated as any more authoritative than Hersh's unverifiable reporting of supposedly clandestine operations. Maybe I'm just funny that way.

 

[Pardalis]

nevermind

 

[Tricky]

Without going through your lengthy story point-by-point, BP, I still say it make the same questionable assumption, and that assumption is that Hamas has complete control over any aid sent. I would fully expect that food and medicine would be distributed by the international Red Crescent or someone similar. That would severely limit its fungibility unless Hamas could somehow sell or trade all that excess food and medicine for weapons. I don't believe Carter's position was, "Let's give Hamas a big pile of money and hope they buy food and medicine with it."

Then let's go kick some beggars.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Wrong. We want democracy, because democracies are more likely to behave reasonably in the long run. But there's a learning curve to democracy, one election does not a democracy make, and one of the elements of learning democracy is learning that who you elect has consequences for what happens to you. It is not showing respect for democracy to try to prevent any consequences from happening for the choices people make, which is essentially what you're advocating.

Good, because police don't deserve a paycheck based on who is elected I see. Violent bastards the lot of them.

We're going to have to create a new version of Godwin's law for this sort of nonsense. I'm not talking about what was done in the past with Saddam, I'm talking about what's going on now in Palestine. One of the things that led to Rummy shaking hands with Saddam was the false notion that continued diplomatic engagement is always helpful. Well, it's not. We made that mistake with Iraq in the past. I don't see why you're eager to repeat that mistake with Hamas. Your arguments have decended into nothing more than claims that since we've made mistakes in the past, it's somehow wrong to stop making the same mistakes now.

It shows exactly what we want in the middle east, either civil wars or violent brutal dictators who are our allies.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Wrong. We want democracy, because democracies are more likely to behave reasonably in the long run. But there's a learning curve to democracy, one election does not a democracy make, and one of the elements of learning democracy is learning that who you elect has consequences for what happens to you. It is not showing respect for democracy to try to prevent any consequences from happening for the choices people make, which is essentially what you're advocating.

Good, because police don't deserve a paycheck based on who is elected I see. Violent bastards the lot of them.

We're going to have to create a new version of Godwin's law for this sort of nonsense. I'm not talking about what was done in the past with Saddam, I'm talking about what's going on now in Palestine. One of the things that led to Rummy shaking hands with Saddam was the false notion that continued diplomatic engagement is always helpful. Well, it's not. We made that mistake with Iraq in the past. I don't see why you're eager to repeat that mistake with Hamas. Your arguments have decended into nothing more than claims that since we've made mistakes in the past, it's somehow wrong to stop making the same mistakes now.

It shows exactly what we want in the middle east, either civil wars or violent brutal dictators who are our allies.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Maybe there just needs to be a "final solution" to the Palestinian question.

I have heard argument for massed reprisals killing a thousand Palestinians for every Israeli killed. To bad they could not hire Reinhard Heydrich for the job, he would have been perfect.

 

[ponderingturtle]

The thread is anything but a discussion of how dumb it is for Jimmy Carter to say we should fund a terrorist group who even though they were brought into the political fold rebelled and took over Gaza (and to say it before an election cycle).

Why should they try to get into the political fold when they are rejected by the outside organizations that collect the taxes? That is a pretty strong disenfranchise meant there.

"We want you to pursue political solutions but if you do we will do everything to make sure that any political solution is untenable"

 

[Ziggurat]

Good, because police don't deserve a paycheck based on who is elected I see. Violent bastards the lot of them.

That argument makes some sense, IF you make the assumption that we owe them the money to begin with. Well, we don't. We give them money because we're trying to buy good behavior from them, but there's never been any actual obligation on our part to begin with. It's because of their own failures, not ours, that they can't come up with the money by taxing their own economy.

It shows exactly what we want in the middle east, either civil wars or violent brutal dictators who are our allies.

And so your solution is to support violent brutal terrorists who are our enemies. SO much better, because even though that's suicidally stupid, at least it's not selfish - is that the idea?

 

[ponderingturtle]

You're right: it's wrong, because we don't say that. We say "vote for your government" and then we say "now that you've voted, live with the consequences of your choice". The whole idea behind promoting democracy is that it will force people to be more responsible. But that's undermined, not supported, if you try to accomodate destructive choiced. The Palestinians should always be free to choose Hamas as their government, but they should never be shielded from the results of that choice.

Like America ever will. We never admit any responsibility for supporting brutal dictators in the region for decades. By the "accept responsibility' argument we should accept the terrorist attacks as the rational outcome of our policies.

 

[ponderingturtle]

That argument makes some sense, IF you make the assumption that we owe them the money to begin with. Well, we don't. We give them money because we're trying to buy good behavior from them, but there's never been any actual obligation on our part to begin with. It's because of their own failures, not ours, that they can't come up with the money by taxing their own economy.

So you are pretending that Israel was not collecting taxes for the Palestinian authority, and then refusing to turn over the Palestine tax revenue? What an interesting alternate world you live in.

link

Well it seems that they might have started to turn the money over. So they withheld the tax revenue for only about a year. Of course this makes the assumption that just because it is your nations tax revenue that it is your nation that deserves it not who ever can take it.