In A Ruined Region

WARREN asks "what doctrine?": "At the very moment when the cause of democracy was finding voices in Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere, Washington suddenly went silent."

In a lot of ways, Condi's recent Princeton speech was excellent -- especially for the job she did with historical context. And there can be no doubt whatsoever about her intellect. I TIVO'ed it and will be playing it over more than a few times.

But her hand-waving about there being some flexibility to absorb Hamas into the Pali political process was troubling. But now I'm reading Samuels' "In A Ruined Country" in The Atlantic which does a pretty good job of pulling together mostly things I knew along with some additional details of how Arafat's corruption machine really worked.

And most of all reminded me harshly of how awful Fatah is also. (It's pretty sad when PALLYWOOD actually cheers me up.) The sad truth is that there's about a dime's worth of difference between them, with Fatah leaning toward a corrupt rationality and Hamas leaning toward what I can only describe as a sort of insane integrity.

With this as the menu, I will cut Condi a bit more slack -- for now...