Nation-Building In Pseudostine

Apparently, the dhimmis in charge want to do more than provide Americans with mortgage bail-outs and an "economic stimulus package." Reaching across the globe, they are poised to extend the meaning of nation-building.

Excerpt from this article in the April 15, 2008 edition of the New York Times (Hat-tip to Michael):

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian West Bank...got a boost on Monday: the announcement of a plan, led by the American government, to help tens of thousands of people buy homes.

The plan, which establishes a $500 million mortgage company, aims to build 10 new neighborhoods over the next five years and, in the process, create thousands of jobs in construction and real estate. In doing so, it could improve the depressed local economy and the political prospects of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, of the...Fatah party.

[...]

A secondary aim of the housing program is to send a message to the Gaza Strip, run by the Islamist party Hamas, that its citizens, too, could benefit from international generosity and economic progress if they restore Fatah’s authority, overturned by Hamas forces in a battle last June.

The new company’s name, Affordable Mortgage and Loan Company, yields the acronym AMAL, an Arabic word meaning hope.

[...]

Half of the money for the new mortgage company, $250 million, will come from the United States through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. The rest will be from the Palestine Investment Fund, the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank and the Bank of Palestine, with a smaller contribution from the British government.

Tony Blair has at least a public-relations role in the program:

At a ceremony in Ramallah, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who is representing the international community in helping the Palestinian Authority build institutions, called the plan “a major step forward for ordinary Palestinians.”

Ah, yes, those "ordinary Palestinians." Might those be the ones who voted Hamas into office?

Back in 2000, in those pre-9/11 days, many of us voted for George W. Bush because he campaigned on a no-nation-building platform. Instead, he's moved on to embrace the idea that poverty is the root of terrorism and pursues the goal of nation-building without a definitive military or ideological victory. As Debbie Schlussel said in the following comment about the above story:

...Would John Kerry and Al Gore have been any different on this issue? Would they really have been worse? Or just the same.

Attempting to buy off the enemy — what this kind of nation-building really is — will do nothing except embolden and enable the enemy. That lesson will be learned, but at the cost of many, many lives.