Guiliani's Foreign Policy

Yes, I read Guiliani's piece in Foreign Policy, and yes he truly is a stupendous idiot. Among other absurdities, Guiliani believes that the Palestinians are not entitled to their own state because they have not "earned" their freedom through responsible behavior. Paul Woodward does not approve:

Presumably Giuliani thinks that democracy came to America prematurely and he would have supported George III had the king admonished revolutionary America's, telling them, first you must demonstrate your ability to govern yourselves -- only then can you be granted independence.

It's really a Kafkaesque notion -- the idea that a people must first demonstrate that they will use their freedom responsibly before it can be granted.

Giuliani bemoans the "corrupt and unaccountable governance" in the Palestinian territories yet this is the governance (under Fatah) that the United States has supported and that Palestinian voters rejected when they elected Hamas. And if Giuliani is such a big fan of stateless governance, why would he not have supported Hamas demonstrating (or failing to demonstrate) that it was capable of governing in spite of their being no Palestinian state?

Of course, given Guilianis' authoritarian leanings, perhaps he would have said exactly that to our rebelling forefathers. Here's Guiliani back in '94:

We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

"Freedom is about authority." He might as well have gone completely Orwellian and said "Freedom IS authority." So in short, Guiliani is a nut. And the Republican front-runner, thanks to the 30% of Americans who appreciate the guiding hand of a strong "leader" and really just want more of what we've already seen over the last eight years. Or, as John Edwards put it:

“What Giuliani is, is George Bush on steroids.”

For some Americans, that's a selling point.