Jimmy Carter’s Hamas?

“Thugocracy,” the latest cartoon by the Republican-leaning team of Cox And Forkum, shows a crowd of armed and dangerous Hamas members calling for Israel to be driven into the sea, while, looking on from the side, Jimmy Carter smiles his ineffable smile and says, “Isn’t democracy beautiful?”

Why do Cox and Forkum portray the Hamas victory as somehow Jimmy Carter’s baby, when, obviously, it’s much more George W. Bush’s baby? He’s the one in charge, he’s the one who has made the democratization of Muslim countries a sacred calling, he’s the one who pushed Israel to allow the Palestinians to vote for Hamas candidates, and he’s the one who in his official capacity as president has praised the vote that has brought Hamas to power. I saw him this week saying approvingly of the PA elections, “When the people don’t like their current leaders, they throw them out.” See? It’s just good old democracy in action. Carter by contrast has famously shown himself to be perfectly comfortable with unelected Third-World dictators, and he is not a supporter of Bush’s democratization strategy.

To show Carter putting his blessing on the election of Hamas is a perfect example of the way Bush supporters reflexively blame every failure and disaster of Bush’s policy on the left.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 29, 2006 02:38 PM | Send