Rattle wrote:
In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, Mousa Abu Marzook, a political spokesman for Hamas, explains their victory in the recent elections. Can we take this seriously?

Alleviating the debilitative conditions of occupation, and not an Islamic state, is at the heart of our mandate (with reform and change as its lifeblood).

A new breed of Islamic leadership is ready to put into practice faith-based principles in a setting of tolerance and unity.

We do desire dialogue.

The Post describes the author thusly:

The writer is deputy political bureau chief of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). He has a U.S. doctorate in engineering and was indicted in the United States in 2004 as a co-conspirator on racketeering and money-laundering charges in connection with activities on behalf of Hamas dating to the early 1990s, before the organization was placed on the list of terrorist groups. He was deported to Jordan in 1997.

Note, as well, that "Paradise Now" has been nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

There's historic precedence for this. Everyone knows SinnFein is the political wing of the IRA, and this has been a bone of contention for some for decades. As Winston Churchill once said "To jaw-jaw is always better than war-war," and the political solution in Ireland has been better than the continued bombings and riots that characterized Ulster for years.

There is a seious problem in policy here. There is the statement that "we do not negotiate with terrorists," which conventionally meant, you take hostages, we aren't going to negotiate for their release. The current batch of asshats running Washington have extended this to mean we don't talk to them period. This is not an approach that has been taken before and one that ensures the "War or Terror" NEVER ends. At that level it is neither something that will reach a state of "peace" nor is it winnable.

Why did Hamas win so resoundingly? Because Fatah was seen as corrupt, and Hamas was seen as doing something. Until we have regime change in this country, we will continue to be seen by the rest of the world as the leading threat to global security. Not the Russians, not the Chinese, not even the Iranians or North Koreans. US.

RE: What Hamas Is Seeking