Sigh. I am so tired of the stupid way right-wingers look at foreign policy. They see the words “Muslim Brotherhood” and they pee their pants. What they ought to do is keep an open mind about the Muslim Brotherhood. The movement has evolved quite a bit over the last several decades and it’s different in every country. I wouldn’t describe the Brothers as pro-America, but their attitude towards our country is highly correlated to our relationship with the leadership of their respective countries. The Brothers in Syria probably see us as at least partial allies at the moment, while that’s not going to be true in countries like Jordan and Egypt where we have had strong historic ties to oppressive governments. How we react to the recent elections in Egypt will have a lot to do with how the Brothers there view America and whether or not we can continue to have a close strategic alliance.
I am willing to stipulate that we had reasonably decent reasons for embracing dictators and monarchs in the Middle East in the aftermath of World War Two. And we don’t want to be known as unreliable allies. But our strong preference going forward should be in favor of representative government in the Muslim world. This is particularly true in Egypt. Helping the military there crush the nascent democracy would be a blunder with enormous consequences. Insofar as there are people in Egypt who hate us, you can explain about 90% of that by looking at our relationship with President Mubarak and his brutal police state. We went through this with Iran and the Shah, and if we want to repeat that experience we can make enemies of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt now that they’ve elected a new president for their country.
We should encourage them to govern responsibly, respecting human rights, and honoring the peace treaty with Israel. And we should use all our leverage to ensure that elections will be repeated and that they will be honest. If we side with the Egyptian people against oppression, we will have friends in Egypt, even if the government is run by Brothers.
My strong suspicion is that the Brothers will prove to be ineffective and unpopular with the Egyptian people, particularly in the more cosmopolitan areas. If they have to stand for reelection in a few years, they’ll probably lose power. Our job should be to help them establish their democracy so that they will have to face the voters.
We may have had defensible reasons for allying ourselves with Mubarak for all those years, but we owe the Egyptian people this chance at self-determination. Literally. We owe them that.
How we react to the recent elections in Egypt will have a lot to do with how the Brothers there view America and whether or not we can continue to have a close strategic alliance.
Exactly. The Powerline writer assumes that the Brotherhood’s antipathy towards America is some eternal, inalterable condition that bears no relation to our actions. This may well be true of al Qaeda, for instance, but the MB and its electoral supporters represent a mass movement of ordinary people, not a cult of religious and political fanatics at odds with their own families and at war with their own societies.
We may have had defensible reasons for allying ourselves with Mubarak for all those years, but we owe the Egyptian people this chance at self-determination. Literally. We owe them that.
Even beyond that, we have indisputable national-interest reasons for doing so. If you look at the countries where the people who launch terrorist attacks against the United States come from, they almost uniformly our undemocratic Middle Eastern allies. Bin Laden from Saudi Arabia, Zawahiri from Egypt, KSM from Kuwait, the 9/11 hijackers from Egypt and Saudi Arabia and UAE, the Cole bombers from Yemen (back before we were taking military action in Yemen). Not from Turkey, a democratic ally. Not even from Iran, Iraq, or Afghanistan, countries we’ve been at war with. But from undemocratic allies, with whom we sided for precisely the narrow, unenlightened conception of national interest being pushed in the Powerline piece.
These people are clinging to a Cold War era definition of our interests, and of the threats we face. They think the way to keep us safe is to put “our s.o.b.s” into power in as many countries as possible. That was barely workable even in the Cold War, and is completely out of place in the modern world.
Empires rule through puppets. Puppets always are authoritarian. And we preferred the Sadat-Mubarak dictatorship more than the Nasser dictatorship because they were our dictators and not the Soviets.
But democratic countries with authentic democracy provide greater stability; the jury is still out on whether democracies are more peaceful, demagoguery and all that.
Given the fact that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has seized legislative powers, a Moslem Brotherhood president is a good counterbalance against corruption. Or that is the logic that Egyptian voters used in voting for the Brothers in the parliament. And the corruption in the military is substantial. Like the Peoples Revolutionary Army in China, the Egyptian military own a large number of corporations and have a vested interest in seeing no strong unions in those corporations.
Juan Cole sees the situation possibly spinning out in the direction of the model in Turkey, with restraints on both the religious domination of politics and on the military.
The US statement was very helpful to keeping the situation fluid and countering the impression that the US is manipulating to continue the military in power on Israel’s behalf.
The parliament already overreached in trying to put restrictions on modern cultural media. We’ll see if that position continues. If it does, you are looking at a culture war in politics similar to what has gone on in the US for a generation.
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A bit of history on Yemen, President Nasser and King Feisal – Helping al-Saud Royal Family in Yemen. Think of Camp Davids peace accord, Sadat assassination, Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Zawahiri, Yemen born Bin Laden family, mujahideen, Afghanistan, fatwa and our fight with Al Qaeda. No surprise whatsover …
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I am sorry, Booman. Real democracy requires separation of church and state. Of course, it also requires separation of corporation and state, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of Stuxnet.
How would you react if a political party that called itself “The Christian Brotherhood” started winning national elections here?
Think on it.
None of this is about the core elements of a given faith…real Christianity and real Islam as moral and spiritual codes have nothing to do with political parties. Not really. As soon as “politics” rears its ugly head both morality and spirituality are due for severe trouble. Power corrupts, and corruption is anti-moral and anti-spiritual.
Is the Egyptian Army any better than The Muslim Brotherhood? ? I dunno. That’s for the realpolitik morals counters in the Pentagon, the Intelligence services and the State Department to suss up. I doubt it. Would the United States military be any better than a party of fundamentalist Christians? I doubt that as well. Always remember…the lesser of two evils is still an evil.
I still think that Ron Paul has the correct answer for the U.S. Butt out. Anybody fucks with us after we have truly butted out, spare no efforts to destroy them. It would only take once for our big stick to send a message to the rest of the world if we had the will to actually use it instead of waging half-assed wars of attrition.
It would only take once.
Bet on it.
AG
We already have a party that is more extreme on some key issues than the Muslim Brotherhood. The republicans.
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Paul Mirengoff ripped by his own law firm for trashing Yaqui prayer at Tucson service
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Thanks for being rational and reasonable about the Muslim Brotherhood in general. You are correct in keeping an open mind, and advising others to do so as well.
Your job is not to “help” Egyptians establish anything. Your job is to stay the hell out of Egypt’s business, let Egyptians develop and evolve their own political system, and their own government in all its good and not so good aspects. Your job is to respect Egyptians enough to not interfere in their business.
Egyptians do not need your “help”. They are not children, and they are certainly not YOUR children.
We give $1.5 billion in foreign aid annually to Egypt. Do you want us to butt out and cancel that contract?
Do you want us to have no strings attached?
How about our military/intelligence relationship? Should we cancel all joint exercises and maintenance contracts?
If the government of Egypt requested we do those things, I’d understand your position. So far, they have not.
Yes
Yes.
Yes.
Are you truly this naive or is it that you have become just another mouthpiece for the current government, Booman? I really can’t tell anymore. The U.S. is heavily involved in not having a government in Egypt that would make such a request. It is involved on all levels, especially the covert. Your Obama partisanship is making you blind, I think. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Let them figure their own shit out. Nobody’s helping us, for sure!
AG
Do you know anything about history? Maybe you should read a book, like this one, for example:
Do you remember who brought them over to our side? Do you remember how that was done, and why?
If there hadn’t been a U.S.-backed Mubarak regime there would have been a Soviet-backed Sadat regime for quite a bit longer.
If you wanna talk, talk about what we should have done over the last twenty years to get Mubarak to act like less of a son of a bitch, or something.
Nasser was/is loved by the people; Mubarak and that Nazi-sympathizing Anwar Sadat, are not.
Awwww man…
How many “son-of-a-bitches” has the U.S. had over the past 60 years or so?
And how far have we fallen in that 60 years?
Gimme a break.
The chickens always come home to roost.
Don’t let them take flight and you won’t have to deal with all of the chickenshit.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
Once again we see that American exceptionalism, and American supremacism is alive and well among “progressive” Americans.
It’s always amusing to hear people talk at one moment about providing self-determination to Egyptians, Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, etc., and at the next moment about how to “help” them to become what will serve you best. Before it was by putting in place and supporting vile but friendly dictators, and now it is under the guise of “helping” them to become the kind of democracy that suits you best. And none of it – NONE of it is about anything but serving you.
Bloody hypocrites.
In what version of history did we put Nasser, Sadat, or Mubarak in charge of Egypt?
We supported the latter two. But we didn’t choose them. We didn’t choose the Hashemites. We didn’t choose Saddam Hussein. We didn’t choose the Sauds. We didn’t choose any of these leaders, unless you want to say we chose to restore the Kuwaiti royal family to power.
As far as I know, the Shah is the only leader we ever truly chose. Ask a Brit, as their record isn’t nearly so clean.
As for giving Egypt a billion and a half dollars a year, you bet your ass that we expect certain things in return. Personally, I am quite happy to make that demand simple. Stay at peace with your neighbors and have free and fair elections at regular intervals.
That’s a lot better than what we’ve been asking.
The British seem to have chosen the Sauds of all the possible tribal alliances.
True. Although the alternatives weren’t much different. In any case, we are not the Brits.
People shouldn’t try to use big words they don’t understand.
There is nothing remotely related to American exceptionalism in BooMan’s comment. You’re using one of your favorite words as a sort of punctuation mark to try to make a weak comment appear stronger.
So you object to the Obama administration using peer-to-peer contacts between American and Egyptian military officers last spring to encourage them to ignore orders from Mubarak to open fire on protesters. You object to that involvement in Egypt’s business, and think it would have been better for us to “not interfere with their business.”
Have I got that right?
Had he U.S. stayed out of Egypt’s business there would have been no Mubarak-led-and encouraged, corrupt Army or police force(s) to pose such a threat in the first place.
If we were to truly butt out of the affairs of other countries then…just as it is with us…it would be up to those people to get their acts together. No other countries are presenting millions of dollars worth of seminars or making peer-to-peer “contacts” with the people of this country in order to inform the populace and military regarding the corruption within our own ranks, right? If there were such things happening, they would be stopped in their tracks by the U.S. government. Why? Oh, I guess because we’re “the good guys,” right? How could anyone improve our lot?
Wake the fuck up.
Physician, heal thyself.
AG
So you’re saying it’s a bad thing that the administration used its influence to protect the protesters from being shot down by the military, and that it would have been better to stand aside and let it happen.
Have I got that right? Am I misstating your position?
I am saying…and I am getting tired of saying…that interfering with the internal political processes of foreign countries is a bad idea. If 60 years ago the U.S. had taken its hands off of the Middle East, by now we would already have found ways to deal with alternative energy necessities and “The Middle East” would be what it really is….just another second-rate sociopolitical system looking for a way to enter the 21st century.
Wake the fuck up.
Meddling with the internal affairs of other countries is always a bad idea.
Bet on it.
AG
Why won’t you answer the question?
Yes, Arthur, we got your dime-store cliched argument the first time. And the second time. And the third time. You’re right, you don’t have to keep repeating yourself. We get it, loud and clear.
So now, answer the question: do you think it was a good thing, or a bad thing, that the Obama administration worked to convince the Egyptian military not to slaughter the protesters in the streets Assad-style?
It’s a very simple question. Why won’t you answer it?
I will not “answer the question” because it is a two-dimensional question posed in a four-dimensional world, joe.
Was it a good thing or a bad thing that the Obama administration worked to convince the Egyptian military not to slaughter the protesters in the streets Assad-style?
I am not convinced that they did. I am not convinced that anything one hears in the media is true. I am convinced that whatever “they” did…and there are a lot of different “theys” in action that one could call “U.S. ‘theys’ “…had nothing whatsoever to do with saving lives and everything to do with preserving the status quo in the Middle East as far as it can be preserved in the interests of the United States. Did lives get saved? Yes, that is a good thing. If it was in the interests of the U.S. to have a Tahrir slaughter, do you not think that such a thing would have been encouraged? In what kinds of “slaughter” has the U.S. been involved world-wide over the previous 50+ years or so? Millions are dead and many more millions have had their lives ruined by U.S. interests since it entered the Southeast Asia sweepstakes. What difference would a few more make to the people who make those sorts of realpolitik decisions?
You have heard of “collateral damage,” right? You know…like when babies get burned alive in an errant drone strike? Any lives saved were merely “collateral saving.” Ain’t about “lives” to these people. It’s about winning.
Nothing more and nothing less.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
In your last comment, you insisted that the United States involving itself in events in Egypt was inevitably a bad thing, which we should never do.
Now, you’re arguing that the United States involvement in events in Egypt was beneficial even though we were pursuing our self-interest.
So, which is it? Is American involvement in Egyptian democracy inevitably destructive, or is it not?
And also, if something is good for us to do on the merits, what kind of moral cretin would argue that we should abstain from doing it if it would also benefit us?
Long term, involvement in others’ affairs always leads to trouble.
Short term? The fickle finger of fate is always in action.
“The operation was a success but the patient died.”
Like dat.
Hamlet: Scene III
Neither a borrower nor a lender be, nor any other kind of self-seeking hustler.
Shakespeare knew.
Marcus Garvey knew too.
So does Ron Paul
You don’t know.
But…you can relax.
You’re in a majority.
The majority of Americans are totally misinformed by the corporate media. This is a democratic mediocracy. The media rules the minds of the majority and the majority vote as they are told to vote. Convinced to vote by the very creatures who rule them in total self-interest.
I got yer “fickle finger of fate.”
Right here!!!
Have a nice day.
You’re gonna need one soon enough.
AG
Yeah, every success anyone has had in the Middle East is thanks to the U.S.
What a bunch of narcissistic blowhards.
It’s perfectly possible to debate whether the US should have supported various parties in Egypt over the years.
But it isn’t possible to rationally claim that if the US didn’t intervene, there would be no negative consequences to the US and sparkly ponies would have sprouted rainbows out of their butts along the Nile.
One thing libbies like you ALWAYS fail to understand is that the consequences of inaction are equal to the consequences of action. They’re just different.
I am not a “libbie,” cruzy. Not by a long shot. And “inaction” is not what I proposing here.
Just different action.
You write:
“No negative consequences?” I did not say that. There would have been truly hard times here as we adjusted. But as with any addiction, the only way for the U.S. to get off its oil junkie jones is to go cold turkey. I do believe that the U.S. has great resources…its people primary among them…and I further believe that it has willfully wasted its resources in the fruitless pursuit of world hegemony.
As far as sparkly ponies along the Nile or anywhere else in the world that is not directly contiguous with the country and system in which I, my ancestors going back 400 years, my family and most of my friends and colleagues have lived and will most likely continue to live…their welfare is up to them. I want no help from them nor do I offer any to them unless that help comes freely and without attached strings.
Am I a “libbie?” I dunno. Was my Tammany Hall Irish immigrant NYC mayor great-grandfather who taught my grandfather to stand on his own two feet a “libbie?” My grandfather taught me. Call him a “libbie” and he would most likely have put his foot up your ass, figuratively or otherwise.
Have a nice day.
AG
Egypt produces very, very little oil.
Swing and a miss.
Egypt is the military big dog in the region. Big dogs control neighborhoods. Own the big dog and you own the neighborhood. Feed the fucking dog steroids so’s he’ll be one mean, dangerous mothertfucker and the neighborhood will be more likely to do your bidding.
Duh.
AG
Yes, Arthur, you meant to do that. We know.
If you wanted to make an argument about regional security interests, you could have said so. There was no need to take a detour through oil.
Oil and Zionism…it’s all the same ball of wax.
Access to oil, support for Israel, and regional security are, in fact, three very distinct interests, ones that quite frequently come into conflict with each other.
Treating them as “one big ball of wax” is sloppy thinking.
Israel is our tool for keeping the Arab countries “in their place” through its military might so we can grab their oil.
Look at Iran right now.
Wow. That is so far removed from reality.
Israel has absolutely no ability to keep Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, or any oil-exporting country in the region “in their place.”
In America’s pursuit of influence in the region – both in terms of security interests, and oil access – Israel is an albatross around our necks. From a strict national interest perspective, our support for Israel is completely irrational.
So, no.
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait etc are our dictatorial puppets. But Israel is there to keep any national with nationalist, anti-Imperial aspirations in their place–like Iran.
If Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are our puppets, why is gas so damn expensive?
But Israel is there to keep any national with nationalist, anti-Imperial aspirations in their place
Remind me, was it the first or second Iraq War when that Israeli tank corp drove on Basra? Oh, wait, that’s right – it was none of them. Now I remember: Israel has made absolutely no contribution to any military action the US has taken, Israeli soldiers have never, not even once, fought beside American soldiers, and our alliance for Israel was, in fact, a giant pain in our asses as we tried to get regional support for the first Gulf War.
They bombed Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, just to name a few places.
Three episodes that had absolutely nothing to do with any American efforts, which advanced American interests not a whit, but which caused further problems for us bey generating greater hostility towards the U.S. because of our backing of Israel.
Nice own-goal. You just demonstrated that our backing of Israel harms our national interest.
Or then there’s the training and civil-society seminars that the International Republican Institute provided, on the American taxpayer’s dime through USAID, which the future leaders of the Tahrir Square protests attended. Perhaps the United States should have just stayed the hell out of Egypt’s business there, too.
Had he U.S. “stayed out of Egypt’s business,” there would have been no Mubarak against whom a Tahrir Square movement would have would have been necessary.
AG
Look, Arthur, I know you’re one of those people who feels compelled to draw a little mustache on every picture that makes the United States look good, but try to stay focused for a second:
Do you think it was a bad thing for the US to “interfere with Egypt” by trying to convince the military officers to disobey orders to shoot down the protesters?
Do you think it was a bad thing for the US to sponsor political training for the future Arab Spring leaders?
Do you think it would have been better for us not to do those things?
There would be no Muburak and no Egyptian dictatorship without decades of US support in the name of the Zionists.
No, Egypt would be rainbow puppy land.
Do you doubt that 99.999% of the problems in the Middle East are caused by the meddling of the criminal American Empire?
Rainbow Puppy Land.
You know, like it was under Nasser, when Egypt was an anti-American Soviet client state.
Nasser was a great man, an anti-imperial nationalist, and much superior to Mubarak.
Your commitment to democracy in Egypt sure is coming through loud and clear.
Joe take a look at the rap sheet of American Imperialism since 1945–the CIA coups, the wars of aggression, the crimes against humanity, killing, raping, and murdering of the people of the Global South–now, you want us to believe that American Imperialism has suddenly had a change of heart and just looooooooooooooves democracy and human rights?
Yeah, right. Tell it to the people of Fallujah.
“The old rap sheet since 1945” does absolutely nothing to answer the question of what Obama should have done in 2011.
There are hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Cairo and Alexandria. Mubarak wants to send the military to crush the protests. We’re faced with a choice of using our diplomatic and military ties to weaken Mubarak’s ability to do that, or to sit back and do nothing.
“America has been raping people in the Global South for centuries” tells us absolutely nothing about whether Obama should or should not have done.
It’s a just a dodge by people who don’t want to answer the question.
now, you want us to believe that American Imperialism has suddenly had a change of heart and just looooooooooooooves democracy and human rights?
I haven’t written anything about people’s hearts or what they love. You’re just changing the subject to something you’re more comfortable talking about, probably because you are utterly incapable of dealing with the question at hand.
Obama did nothing but arrange a coup for the military to take power and pretend it was building “democracy”. We’re seeing the fruits of that right now.
The American Empire does not, and due to its nature CANNOT support democracy in the Global South, especially the Middle East.
You should do a little more research on the subject of what the U.S. government did during the Egyptian uprising.
I don’t think your perceptions are based on a solid foundation of factual knowledge.
Your last sentence gives it away: you have your story and you’re sticking to it. Well, that’s just not a very reality-based way of going about trying to understand the world.
I judge the actions of the American Empire by its criminal and bloody history. The best prediction of future actions are past actions.
We see the Egyptian Revolution being strangled by the military as we speak–not bloodily, but surely and slowly.
Hopefully the Muslim Brotherhood can take Egypt down the same path the Iranian Revolution did–a mass nationalist uprising against western and Imperial domination and a declaration of their independence from US Imperialism.
I judge the actions of the American Empire by its criminal and bloody history. The best prediction of future actions are past actions.
And this is exactly your problem.
I judge the actions of the United States, first and foremost, by making sure I have a solid understanding of those actions. I don’t make a judgement about something I know nothing about – in your case, the actions of the Obama administration during the Egyptian uprising – by assuming that those actions just gotta fit in which my “predictions.”
You, on the other hand, make up excuses for why it’s not important for you to know what you’re talking about, because you can just assume that everything just gotta be working out according to your script.
It’s no wonder we have such different beliefs.
Then you’re an idiot. You need to understand the dialectic of Imperialism.
People like you were swallowing the lies in the 80s about how the contra death squads were the “moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers”, and were right there with General Westmoreland in Vietnam.
Yes, I’m an idiot for basing my opinions on facts instead of story lines.
Oh, and I spent the 80s walking around with as CISPES pin on my jacket. Sorry to blow up your little story line, champ.
I notice you said nothing about Vietnam.
Guilty conscience? Hit a little close to home?
OK: talking about Vietnam is completely irrelevant to the question of Obama’s actions during the Egyptian uprising.
Feel better?
Shorter joe: There’s nothing to be learned from history.
There’s a great deal to be learned from history.
It can be a very useful accompaniment to a solid understanding of the facts of a situation.
Only one of us has made a claim about both history and knowledge of contemporary events being unnecessary.
And it ain’t me, babe.
A good, solid understanding of history would be particularly helpful in this case, by demonstrating exactly how much of a departure Obama’s actions during Arab Spring were from, for example, American policy during the 20th century.
If fact, I wrote a rather lengthy comment on this very thread making the national-interest case for supporting democratic change in the Middle East:
I’m not really one for talking about “feelings” and “hearts.” I prefer to discuss situations, events, circumstances, and actions.
Agreed regarding the hand wringing over the Muslim Brotherhood.
However, let’s not forget U.S. policy was to support the dictator Mubarek for decades, pretending this was a democratic government.
Billions of our tax dollars have been given to the Egyptian military– if there’s a problem with them, a coup, it’s our fault and may be by design.
“May” be by design?
Please.
AG
LOL… I’m trying to give the benefit of the doubt here until I have more info.
Here’s an “action” for you, joe, one that shows just how much the US Empire values the lives of Muslims:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175558/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_till_death_do_us_part
Piss off, troll.
Is the article too disturbing for you?
Maybe you should go back to the corporate media if it’s too truthful for you. By all means, don’t learn about the TRUTH by reading Tom Dispatch and watching RT.
I wouldn’t know: I didn’t read it.
The topic line of your comment reads “Re: Egypt: Let’s Support Democracy.”
I have not intention of following you into whatever irrelevancy you’ve decided to talk about instead of supporting democracy in Egypt.
It’s a good example of “American actions”.
Hint: Obama doesn’t give a DAMN about Muslim life, and you can tell this by his Drone Wars.
“Re: Egypt: Let’s Support Democracy.”
Sorry, FAIL.