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.
