A couple of disclaimers:
1) I don't love Palin. I have mixed feelings about her. Above all, I feel she is an unknown commodity.
2) I know what Hamas is. In all likelihood I know more about Hamas than Palin, Couric, or you.
3) I was a champion debater once, and I know and have studied the formal rules of logic.
4) I object to the kind of questioning that Katie Couric is doing in this interview in general.
But... just because you all seem to be asking for it, I am going to do an analysis of a clip that was sent to me of an interview question that Palin answered. I didn't watch this interview when it first came on, and I still have not watched the whole thing. I don't even plan on watching the whole thing. I wish I had never seen this clip, because it's a waste of my time. Having said all that... this clip was offered to me as an example of how incompetent Palin is. I have no idea if she's competent or not, but I will assert that a) Couric appears incompetent and biased and b) the clip proves nothing of interest. Palin appears to give a normal politician-style answer to a virtually non-sensical question.
In the clip, Kouric asks this question, which I will quote word-for-word here:
Kouric: "What happens if the goal of democracy, Governor Palin, doesn't produce the desired outcome, for example in Gaza? The US pushed hard for elections and Hamas won."
Ok. Now... a little pop quiz for all of you out there. What was the question asked? The question was, "What happens if the goal of democracy... doesn't produce the desired outcome?" What the hell does that mean? The goal of democracy doesn't produce anything. What I *think* Couric meant was, "What happens if democracy doesn't produce the desired outcome?" Couric's question is a really weird, tricky (or silly) sort of a question, for many reasons. Here are a couple:
1) If you answer the question, "What happens if democracy doesn't produce the desired outcome?" with reference to Hamas, you are sort of admitting that what happened there was "democracy." This is like asking the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" It's not a reasonable question, because there's no logical way to answer it except to dodge it, unless you *have* previously beaten your wife. I could ask, "What's your favorite color of M&M's? Some people prefer red over blue, for example." But then... could I legitimately get pissed off if you talked about how you like green M&M's? Isn't that kind of a reasonable answer to the question?
2) The question also presupposes that we agree upon what the desired outcome was. Does Couric think there's an outcome to the elections in Gaza that would obviously have been good? Many people believe the alternative to Hamas, Fatah, is also a terrorist organization. So... if you answer the question she asked, do you have to presuppose that Fatah members winning more seats was the desired outcome? At the time (and still) many people believe that Hamas members winning was the desired outcome because of Hamas's connection to terrorism. People who think that generally believe any or all of the following:
- By winning elections, Hamas leaders will be held more accountable. People may now assume that if conditions in Gaza worsen, it is Hamas's fault.
- Because Hamas as a party triumphed, they will, as a party, now be held accountable for their positions. They will be forced to soften their line against Israel. To a very minor extent, this has already occurred.
- Because Hamas was elected, it will now act more like legitimate governments do in order to appeal to other countries.
- Because Hamas has been [at least partly] legitimized, it will no longer be forced to define itself solely as a paramilitary organization and can therefore reduce or drop its terrorist activity. This is still a very realistic possibility.
Note: Last time I checked, which was four seconds ago, the question doesn't specifically ask what Palin thinks about Hamas. It cites Hamas as an example of a group that won an election. Again, this presents several problems: 1) It is not at all clear, although Hamas members won an election, that Hamas as a party even believes democracy is good; 2) It is not at all clear that the election that happened in Gaza would be considered "democratic" by our standards. Saddam Hussein was elected, too. That doesn't mean Iraq was a real democracy. Another good example of a person who won an election in a place that alleges it is democratic, but really isn't, is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran.
I ask several questions here: 1) Does Couric believe that Gaza is a "democracy?" If so, why? Is she asking Palin if she believes Gaza is a democracy? 2) Does Couric understand that Gaza is not an independent nation? Typically, we talk about "democracies" as existing at the national level. Do you understand that this is a loaded question? I don't know if Couric understands it or not, but to refer to Gaza as a democracy or "not a democracy" is perhaps to imply it is a sovereign nation. Do you understand why a politician may be reticent to do this? 3) Does Couric realize that Palin is answering the question asked, or that Palin understands that Iran is similar to Gaza in the sense that it has elections, yet isn't really a functioning democracy? It appears that Katie Couric doesn't realize this. It seems obvious to me that Palin is aware that in both places (Gaza and Iran) elections occurred, and the people who were elected may support terrorism.
Palin answers, "Yeah, well, especially in that region, though, we have got to protect those and support those who do seek democracy and do seek protections for the people... um.... who live there and we're seeing, today, in the last couple of days, here in New York, a speaker, a President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, who would come on our soil and express such disdain for one of our closest allies and friends, Israel, and we're hearing the evil that he speaks, and if that, if hearing him doesn't allow Americans to commit more solidly to protecting the friends and allies that we need, especially there in the mideast, then nothing will. If Americans are not waking up to understand what it is that he represents, then nothing is going to wake us up and we will be lulled into some kind of false sense of security that perhaps Americans were a part of before 9/11."
At this point, the camera shows Katie Couric, who looks very agitated. Why is she agitated? I'm struggling to understand how she thinks Palin didn't answer the question. I mean, her answer wasn't really that great or insightful, and it was somewhat indirect. Basically, the question was, "What happens if 'elections' elect leaders we don't like?" Palin's answer was, "We need to protect those who seek democracy and seek protections for the people." This is a logical, if somewhat mundane, answer. Further, she gives the example of Ahmadinejad and urges Americans to realize we must oppose him and people like him, especially in the Middle East. Lastly, she points out that since 9/11, we cannot tolerate the repressive regimes of the Middle East, such as that of Iran, or the hate-spewing, anti-Israel ones, of which Hamas is another example.
Comparing Gaza to Iran is not an entirely illogical thing to do. In fact, it's somewhat relevant. In both cases, a terrorism-supporting party which advocates attacks against Israel was 'elected' in elections of questionable fairness. Uh... why did someone send me this clip? How is this unique amongst all the TV interviews that politicians give? It sounds pretty run-of-the-mill to me.
I hope you readers out there also realize that Iran actively supports Hamas. Here's a quote from a news story from September 13th, 2008 (shortly before this interview):
Iranian news agency Khabar quoted him as saying to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh that he and the Iranian people as a whole consider it their religious and national duty to support Hamas “until the big victory feast which is the collapse of the Zionist regime.” He added that the group’s violence against Israelis would always be “a source of pride for all Muslims.”
Uhh... you realize, right... that Hamas and Iran are linked in some ways? Oh wait... you probably don't realize that, which would mean that Sarah Palin might know more than you do. Grow a brain before you send me these clips. I don't have time to help you sort out the basics of foreign policy, let alone language and logic.
Now, if you want to interpret Palin's answer more deeply, and I am not asserting that this is what she meant, but if you want to look deeper into it, then I think it has some implications for Venezuela and possibly Egypt. Palin's answer was basically, "We need to protect those who support those who seek democracy and protections for the people." This is an indirect way of saying, "We need to give weapons and money to the democractic forces in places like Iran and Gaza." Now, everyone knows that Ahmadinejad is bad, even if we aren't really doing anything about it. The "we need to wake up" message could equally apply to Venezuela, though. We need to wake up and realize that Chavez is an oppressive, authoritarian dictator-communist. We DO need to wake and up do something about him, as we do about Ahmadinejad. One can also infer from Palin's comment that, even if we don't openly fight Hamas, we need to oppose them more strongly because they support the destruction of Israel. It may not be politically expedient to say that we should openly fight Hamas, but that is not an unreasonable position, which she may have been inferring.
The alternative answer, which Palin did not give, was, "We need to respect the outcome of the elections." Not only is this not true (nowhere is there a rule that if Hitler is elected, you must then think he is a nice guy), but as I mentioned before, it's not at all clear that what happened in Gaza were even fair elections to begin with. The most clear thing about Palin's statement is that we need to protect those who genuinely promote democracy. Further, you might imply that she also says we need to "wake up" and stop adhering to the philosophy that once someone is elected in some weird, rigged election, they are somehow legitimate and on equal footing with other world leaders. If the elections in which Hamas won the majority of seats was legitimate, then a legitimate government now exists which opposes Israel's right to exist, and opposes individual liberties in general (such as many womens' rights). Palin's answer in this case should be understood as "we should back the opposition." If the elections were NOT legitimate, Palin's answer should be understood as "we should back the genuine democratic forces." Right or wrong, these are fairly straightforward viewpoints, even if she explained them in a slightly (although, by politicians' standards, not very) indirect way.
I'm sure there was more to this interview, and maybe in the other parts Palin made more or less sense -- I have no idea. But, at this point, seeing how Couric was already turning against her for her perceived failure to answer the question (even though Palin basically did answer, and Couric clearly didn't understand her answer), I don't know what I would gain by watching any more. Now, I have no faith that Couric isn't out to purposely make Palin look bad, which is fine, but it isn't interesting to me and it shouldn't be on a show that even pretends to present unbiased information or "news" of any kind.
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