The Hamas Calumny
Recently, John McCain has been harping
about the fact that Hamas leadership has expressed a preference for
Barack Obama as president. Skipping for the moment the fact that John
McCain supported a war that pissed away universal goodwill for the US
after 9/11 and created the most effective recruiting and training
environment for terrorists in several lifetimes, I find there are
several problems with his logic.
McCain seems to (deliberately, perhaps) misunderstand three things.
In general, I seriously doubt that Hamas will benefit from the election of Barack Obama or suffer from the election of John McCain in the least. There may be rational reasons to vote for John McCain over his three likely general election opponents (though I can't think of any at the moment), but a perceived endorsement by the leader of Hamas for his likely Democratic opponent is one of the dumbest reasons to do so that I can imagine.
McCain seems to (deliberately, perhaps) misunderstand three things.
- Terrorists sometimes want a specific political goal, or at least claim to want it, but they usually want different things in private and public. A public announcement that terrorists will rejoice in a particular outcome in the presidential election has, at best, no correlation with what they actually want.
- Terrorism is completely ineffective at achieving any end except fostering conflict. Well organized terrorists like Hamas want conflict above all other things. Israel and United States are not up to the task of wiping out organizations like Hamas with violence--if they were, Hamas would have been history long ago, given the superior firepower and training of Israeli forces. A violent religious extremist doesn't blow himself up in a public square hoping there won't be a retribution--he is counting on a retribution, and he is counting on that retribution to be severe and generalized; this radicalizes moderates, undermines his enemy's political position, and forces other co-religionists to choose sides, with his side at an advantage. A belligerent mad bomber such as McCain and Clinton at least portray themselves to be is ideal from their point of view.
- Historically, the least belligerent party to a given terrorist group has been the most effective at countering that group. Among the major party candidates, Jose Luis Zapatero of Spain, Tony Blair of Britain, and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel were the least belligerent to their terrorist opponents. In all three cases, they were the far more effective against ETA, the IRA, and Palestinian terrorists than their more belligerent opponents. None of these candidates were prepared to make concessions directly to their terrorists opponents, but all of them drove wedges between the terrorist organizations and the moderate members of their constituencies.
In general, I seriously doubt that Hamas will benefit from the election of Barack Obama or suffer from the election of John McCain in the least. There may be rational reasons to vote for John McCain over his three likely general election opponents (though I can't think of any at the moment), but a perceived endorsement by the leader of Hamas for his likely Democratic opponent is one of the dumbest reasons to do so that I can imagine.
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I have to disagree about terrorism; it can be used very effectively.
For the purposes of exposing the fallacy, though, I think a far simpler approach is better. Say you want to respond to this when Joe Beergut expresses concern about "terrorists endorsing that Obama." Here is how it plays:
You: All Americans pretty much hate [insert terrorist] and other terrorists, right? And whatever the terrorists try to achieve is pretty much always bad for everybody else, right?
JS: Yeah.
You: So if [terrorist] says that they endorse somebody, Obama for example in this case, Americans would probably uniformly think it is a bad thing about Obama, right? You think it is a bad thing, right?
JS: ..Yeah.
You: So [terrorist] knows that if they say they like Obama, Americans are going to like Obama LESS, right? Because it is not a good thing to be endorsed by a terrorist group.
JS: ..I guess..
You: So if they really liked Obama, they would stay quiet because they know that as soon as they endorse him, his approval actually goes down--which means the other guy has a better chance of winning. So the only logical conclusion is that they actually want to hurt Obama if they say they endorse him.
You: See? [Terrorist] is trying to meddle in American affairs by pushing Obama out of the race because they know that Americans would scorn whoever they like!
JS: Oh.
May 2, 2008 12:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate your dialogue; it is a much better way of expressing my first bullet point. Thanks.
I didn't mean to assert that terrorism isn't effective at achieving political ends; I meant to say that it achieves those ends by fostering violence. Hamas gains ground in Israel through terrorism by radicalizing Palestinians by provoking an asymmetric response from the IDF.
May 2, 2008 1:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ah, misunderstood. That is certainly true.
May 2, 2008 2:10 AM | Reply | Permalink