Did the US Attempt to Overthrow Hamas in Gaza?

[fourier jr]

I remember this. I was really surprised when Hamas won.

Vanity Fair reports in its April edition that President George Bush and the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, signed off on a plan for the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to remove the Hamas authorities in Gaza. The plan called for Washington's allies in the region to funnel arms and salaries to Fatah fighters who would lead a rising against Hamas.

But the project was controversial even within the administration, the magazine reports. "There were severe fissures among neoconservatives over this," David Wurmser, a former Middle East adviser to the vice-president, Dick Cheney, told the magazine. "We were ripping each other to pieces."

Wurmser resigned his post in the vice-president's office in July 2007, only weeks after bloody clashes in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah that led to the Islamist organisation taking total control of the territory. "It looks to me that what happened wasn't so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen," he said.

The Bush administration plan sought to undo the results of elections in the West Bank and Gaza in January 2006 which, to the chagrin of White House and State Department officials, saw Hamas win a majority of seats in the Palestinian legislature.

The project was approved by Bush, Rice, and Elliott Abrams, the hawkish deputy national security adviser.

The 2006 election result was seen as an affront to the central premise of the Bush administration's policy in the Middle East - that democratic elections would inexorably lead to pro-western governments.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/04/usa.israelandthepalestinians

 

[Poop-Loops]

When's the last time the US successfully overthrew something? Bay of Pigs? Shah of Iran? Saddam Hussein?

Seriously, we should just accept that we suck at this and find something else to do.

 

[russ_watters]

Gee, I'm surprised. And upset [ ]

 

[russ_watters]

When's the last time the US successfully overthrew something? Bay of Pigs? Shah of Iran? Saddam Hussein?

I'm reasonably certain we were successful in deposing Saddam Hussein.

 

[Poop-Loops]

Yeah, it only took how many wasted lives? How many wasted dollars? And an entire country in chaos, to top it off.

Looks like we did a fine job.

 

[devil-fire]

I'm reasonably certain we were successful in deposing Saddam Hussein.

i think the attempt to have him over thrown in gulf war I by the Kurds was a failure. the invasion and occupation of Iraq was vary successful in (if little else) regime change though