Laundering Hamas

Daniel Pipes is right: Hamas is simply a terrorist organization, allowing it to participate in PA elections only enables it to present itself as a legitimate organization instead of one dedicated to evil goals through evil means. No legitimate organization would say this

Responding to a question on whether Bush is correct that U.S. engagement with Hamas would moderate the terror group, Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas founder, laughed and declared that this tactic “will not succeed.” In recent days, Zahar has publicly reiterated that Hamas still intends to destroy Israel.

Worse yet is the callow and foolish thought process underlying the US's "engagement" with these terrorists:

President Bush made this argument in early 2005: “There's a positive effect when you run for office. Maybe some will run for office and say, ‘Vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America.' … I don't think so. I think people who generally run for office say, ‘Vote for me, I'm looking forward to fixing your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table.' ”

This is the same preposterous thought process that the Susan Sontags and Alice Walkers emitted after 9-11-01. Pipes' rejoinder is spot-on:

The historical record, however, refutes this “pothole theory of democracy.” Mussolini made the trains run, Hitler built autobahns, Stalin cleared the snow and Castro reduced infant mortality — without any of these totalitarians giving up their ideological zeal nor their grandiose ambitions. Likewise, Islamists in Afghanistan, Iran and Sudan have governed without becoming tamed. If proof is needed, note the Iranian efforts to build nuclear weapons amid an apocalyptic fervor.

And again the US seems to be willfully ignorant of the evil it tacitly abets with this stance.

Simply said, Hamas is what it is, and will not change. As Charles Krauthammer noted a couple of weeks ago, the Aesop fable, The Scorpion and the Frog, should tell the Administration all it needs to know about the Palestinian scorpion that it hopes will be tamed:

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

Replies the scorpion: "It is my nature..."