Only a democracy of our choosing

So, we all know that Hamas won the elections in Palestine and is now the ruling party there. Democratically chosen by the will of the people. What's the first thing the world does, especially Israel and the U.S.? Well, of course we say we don't deal with terrorists and threaten to cut off all aid of any sort to the Palestinians. No, "let's see what they do." No, "Hey, let's talk about our problems now that you're running a nation. We can sit down, tell you what will piss us off, you do the same, and we'll go from there." Nope, the West just says, "Ooh. You're bad. Swear off violence or we won't talk to you." Now, what nation ANYWHERE besides Canada and Switzerland can do that? You've gotta have some pretty big neighbors willing to protect you (or be so remote nobodies interested, like Sweden, Finland, etc) to swear off violence. Palestine doesn't have that.

My concern is how hypocritical it looks to anyone not blinded by the flag, the anti-terrorism rhetoric, or any of the other hype tossed about by the administration. Here we are, trying to set up a democracy in Iraq, but we don't even give the new democratically elected leaders of Palestine a chance. I'm not saying we should coddle them and be best friends, but I've seen no indication that either Israel or the U.S. has made an effort to deal with Hamas at all since the election. None. That bothers me. That says to the people of the world that we only support democracies that share OUR views of the world. That's not a good political position to be in. That's the position of some of our enemies. Just another thing to consider in ten months when we hit the ballot boxes.