There’s a lot of news going on right now. Hamas and Israel have negotiated a 72 hour ceasefire. It is approaching the last day and there are only about 8 hours left. The question will be if they extend the ceasefire. It was brokered in Cairo. Hopefully it will lead to a long term truce. Israel wants to make sure that Hamas cannot rebuild its rocket arsenal and military capabilities and Hamas wants Israel to remove the blockade of goods and people into Gaza.

For all the talk of Hamas being a terrorist operation, the fact remains that they are, for better or worse, the voice and government body of the Palestinian people. They were elected overwhelmingly. You can call them terrorists all you want, but they are who the people of Palestine wanted to speak for them. In 2006, Bush pushed for and made parliamentary elections possible for the Palestinians. People warned Bush that this was a bad idea and nothing good would come out of this democracy experiment. Well, Hamas won 76 of 132 seats in parliament. George Bush once again fucked up the Middle East for Obama to try to fix.

You know it’s funny. We go around championing democracy all over the world, but then when countries elect someone we don’t like, we refuse to recognize their authority and try to install someone else. Democracy doesn’t work like that. We talk about our great constitution and our freedom of speech and the First Amendment. The First Amendment is there to protect unpopular speech. Our form of democracy is there to protect unpopular things and ideas. When a part of the country elects a Tea Party radical, we don’t say “Do it again. We don’t like them.” Democracy means that there may be people elected who may not be the best one for the job, but the majority desires that they serve their elected post. You sometimes have to take the good with the bad. You bite your lip and deal with the consequences.

This was never more evident than with the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Everybody knows that Al Gore won the election, but the odds were stacked against him, from the Bush loving lady who certified the election to the conservative cabal of the Supreme Court handing the victory to GW. We couldn’t say, “Do over.” We simply had to eat the shit and move on.

But for whatever reason, whatever it’s Iraq, Syria, Palestine or Egypt, when we decide we don’t like a leader, we intervene in the democracy that we have foisted upon them and then when something bad happens as a result we wonder why. We got rid of Saddam and put in our guy, then when his people come back to reclaim their power we scratch our heads and say, “How did that happen?” Egypt and all of these places have regimes that we have either supported or helped get rid of, then when the people who replace them are worse than who was there before, we wonder why there is chaos. Ukraine is a perfect example. We helped topple the government in power because they were aligned with Russia. Now there is a power struggle going on, people are dying and planes are being shot down.

Now there is a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas being negotiated in Egypt. Previous truces have failed because they have always favored Israel. Hamas and the Palestinians are not allowed to defend their area, but the Israelis can do what they want. Palestinians are not supposed to do a thing, but Israel can still blow up tunnels and if they see an Hamas leader or militant they are allowed to kill them. So in turn the ceasefires never lasted because they were one-sided deals.

That’s the way it’s always been over there. Palestinians were supposedly given control over the region in 2005, but they weren’t given control of their waterways and their borders. They were basically given a prison camp. Israel made sure that people couldn’t leave, they couldn’t come in. They made sure they couldn’t fish or build airports. They said to Palestinians that they couldn’t do a thing unless Israel gave the OK. That’s not giving land and autonomy to the Palestinians and that’s not the way to demilitarize the region. That’s like putting a rabid dog in a box and poking and teasing it and when it bites, you blame the rabid dog in the box.

Israel needs to give up control of that region completely and let them govern themselves and the US needs to come in and help with the rebuilding process. When Israel cries about how Palestinians say that they don’t have a right to exist, well guess what? Iran thinks the same thing, but they’ve managed to leave them alone so far. The French aren’t too fond of them either. You don’t have to love someone to deal with them. Israel’s problem is they want everybody to love them. If you don’t love and support them unconditionally then you’re an enemy of Israel or an anti-semite.

We give millions of dollars and all kinds of support to countries that hate us. Look at Qatar. We deal with them and the Taliban has a headquarters there. The sworn enemy of the United States who we fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan has an office in Qatar. Hamas has offices in Qatar. At one point Al Qaeda had offices there. Well guess what? We have a huge military base and just made an 11 billion dollar arms deal with Qatar. Is Qatar our ally or our enemy? They house people we don’t like and want to harm us, but we consider Qatar a friend to the US.

This is why the USA is the superpower that it is. Benjamin Netanyahu told the Obama administration “not to ever second guess me again” on Hamas. What happened when Netanyahu opened his mouth? A cease fire was negotiated and Israel pulled out of Gaza. Of course, they said, “Well, we completed our mission anyway, so we were already pulling our troops out.” That’s like someone who is fired and says they were gonna quit. Obama got on the horn with Netanyahu and said, “You like the money we give you? You like your Iron Dome shield? Then you’re gonna do what we tell you to do. You can talk like a tough guy, but let’s face it, without our support you would be wiped off the map by all of your neighbors. So shut the fuck up, withdraw your troops from Gaza, stop killing little children and women and get your ass to Cairo and work out a deal. You can talk to John Kerry like a bitch and tap his phones, but I will give you a black pimp slap and knock that fucking yarmulke off your fucking head, jerk off.” I’m paraphrasing, but you get the point.

So ceasefires are being negotiated and Israel is backtracking on their fresh talk. Without our support and money, Israel would be fucked. This country that is so high and mighty needed another $225 million dollars to fund their Iron Dome. Without that money, Israel could not defend themselves.

America is the greatest country on Earth. We are the ultimate superpower and we call the shots. But the policies of the past have put us in these messes that we are in today. Hopefully President Obama can reverse some of these policies before he leaves office. Let’s hope he can clean up the messes made by the Bush administration and the Republicans, a truce is negotiated and maintained in Israel and Gaza and we can get our boys out of Afghanistan and everywhere else they don’t need to be. Keep our troops out of harms way and let these people govern themselves and we’ll all be better off.

Follow Rob Black on Twitter @RealRobBlack Email: [email protected]