Well, here’s a pickle for you. President Bush has been pushing the whole democracy in the Middle East thing for the last couple of years. For a long time, he was pushing for free elections in Palestine, especially since the U.S. really didn’t like Arafat that much. So, the Palestinians oblige, elections are held, people voted, and Hamas won.

Oh, poop. Hamas doesn’t like Israel. Hamas supports suicide bombing. Hamas is the democratically elected leaders of Palestine. The U.S. is pissed.

But, it gets worse. Now, it looks like there’s going to be civil war between Hamas and Fatah, the leaders who were ousted in the election. So, if you’re the U.S., trying to spread democracy and get other countries in the Middle East to embrace Democracy, aren’t you obligated to defend Hamas against the sore losers in the Fatah party?

“And the reason why I’m so strong on democracy is democracies don’t go to war with each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don’t like war, and they understand what war means…. I’ve got great faith in democracies to promote peace. And that’s why I’m such a strong believer that the way forward in the Middle East, the broader Middle East, is to promote democracy.” – George Bush

It looks like Bush is a bit mistaken in holding to the Democratic Peace Theory.