Professor Schaff makes some comments below on my American News essay about Jimmy Carter. He (Schaff, Carter isn't speaking to me) says this:
Ken writes:
The hope is that Fatah, the more civilized of the two, will maintain control over the West Bank.
When Fatah, a terrorist organization itself, is your "civilized" option, you are truly in a bad way.
I agree with my colleague that backing Fatah is a very unpromising strategy, but for different reasons. It make sense sometimes to back a Stalin to defeat a Hitler, though it can be really hard to tell when. In this case Abbas clearly looks better than anyone in Hamas, in the way that strep throat is better than flesh-eating bacteria. The problem with backing Fatah is not that they are terrorists, but that they are utterly incapable of doing any of the things that a government is for. They cannot even generate a monopoly on force. The idea that we are saving them so they can be a partner in peace is laughable. They are too powerless to be a partner in anything.
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