Bipartisanship finally erupted in Washington, DC last week when Democrats and Republicans alike began venting imperious indignation over the arrest of 19 American aid workers by Egyptian authorities for allegedly engaging in non-governmental organizing without government approval. In fact they are being scapegoated for the political unrest that is now a fact of daily life in Egypt.
There’s no denying, though, that this indignation is heightened because among those arrested and remanded for trial is the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a member of President Obama’s Cabinet.
This begs the question. Why has the relationship between the United States and its erstwhile puppet state deteriorated to the point where Egypt is now picking a fight with, and thumbing its nose at, the United States in this brazen and impudent fashion?
Hell, reports are that the military generals who now/still control Egypt were not even moved by a direct plea from President Obama himself to let his people go….
The reason for this of course is that these are generals scorned by the way the Obama administration threw their former leader, Hosni Mubarak, under the bus; especially after successive U.S. administrations had coddled him and them for decades like a parent would her unruly children.
(And you have to think that as soon as they saw this, America’s other most-favored dictators – namely, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and King Mohammed of Morocco – began looking to China as a more enabling and reliable superpower patron: more on this below.)
The generals telegraphed this feeling of betrayal, and highlighted U.S. hypocrisy in this context, by proffering the patently disingenuous explanation that they have no power to let the aid workers go because that authority is now vested in the independent judiciary the Americans themselves demanded as part of the post-Mubarak Egypt: touché.
In point of fact, it cannot be overestimated how much the stability Mubarak’s de facto dictatorship imposed on Egypt depended on unwavering and unconditional U.S. support. This is why I thought the Obama administration made a strategic blunder a year ago this month when it refused to endorse/guarantee Mubarak’s pledge to stay in power for only an additional six months to oversee the transition from his dictatorship to a functional and orderly democracy.
With all due respect to the protesters, the issue is not whether Mubarak will go, for he will. (The man is 82 and already looks half dead for Christ’s sake!) Rather, the issue is who will replace him. And it appears they have not given any thought whatsoever to this very critical question.
The devil the Egyptians know might prove far preferable to the devil they don’t. Just ask the Iranians who got rid of the Mubarak-like Shah in 1979 only to end up with the Ayatollah – whose Islamic revolution they’ve regretted (and have longed to overturn) ever since….
(Army pledges no force against protesters, The iPINIONS Journal, February 1, 2011)
I later observed that:
It seems the only thing that will satisfy these protesters – who clearly have no ability to lead Egypt’s transition and have no faith in the ability of anyone else to do so – is replicating throughout the entire country the festive state of anarchy that reigns among them in Tahrir Square.
(Egyptian revolution part II, The iPINIONS Journal, July 14, 2011)
So here we are with Egypt in terminal protest mode and the generals still as angry at the United States for abandoning Mubarak (and jeopardizing the military oligarchy he presided over) as protesters are angry at them for failing to usher in the Jeffersonian democracy they naively expected would be the proverbial door hitting Mubarak on the way out.
What is driving these tensions is that, just as the protesters clearly no longer fear military reprisals, the generals no longer fear U.S. reprisals. This is why, instead of being cowered by familiar U.S. threats about withdrawing aid unless they release the American aid workers, members of the Egyptian military who arrived in Washington over the weekend to meet with White House and Congressional leaders abruptly cancelled all meetings yesterday and returned home.
In effect, they are now daring the United States to withdraw its $1.3 billion in annual military aid and risk losing what little influence it retains in this most powerful country in the Arab world. And the United States will cave because repairing this fractured relationship is even more in its geopolitical interest (to help defend Israel, defend the Suez Canal, and curtail the influence of radical Islam – especially in the Sinai) than it is in Egypt’s. Not least because China is probably whispering in Egypt’s left ear that it would be more than happy to pick up the slack – without all of the self-righteous moralizing about democracy. And the Gulf States, led by Saudi Arabia, are already propping up the military with billions — no doubt fearful that a democratic revolution or an Islamist insurgency would threaten their idyllic governing monarchies.
Apropos of this, China demonstrated in dramatic fashion on Saturday just how far it is willing to go to enable other totalitarian regimes to brutalize their people to stay in power. Specifically, it joined Russia in vetoing a UN resolution on Syria that merely called on President Assad to stop using his military to massacre pro-democracy protesters. In other words this resolution did not even call for regime change or crippling sanctions like the fateful one on Libya did.
It is worth noting though that this resolution on Syria was supported by virtually every other member, including the Arab league. But the reason China and Russia were determined to brook universal condemnation for effectively sanctioning Assad’s crimes against humanity is that they are setting a UN precedent to give themselves cover if/when they are forced to brutalize their people in similar fashion to stay in power. Which of course is just one of the reasons why neither China nor Russia will ever earn the respect and admiration the United States enjoys in the international community.
That said, I suspect the generals are going to make the United States sweat. You can be sure they know just how anxious the Obama administration is to avoid any comparisons to the Carter administration’s hostage crisis of 1980. Indeed, the generals will probably emulate the Iranians by putting on a show trial to convict the aid workers/hostages only to make another show of pardoning them in a perverse gesture of goodwill between allies. And the United States will have no choice but to humbly abide this humiliation and pray it all plays out in weeks rather than months.
Alas, getting rid of dictatorships in the Middle East is not as black and white as getting rid of Apartheid in South Africa. And any Republican presidential candidate who suggests otherwise is just blowing smoke up your ass.
This is why I’m afraid the only way these protesters will get rid of the military leaders who have always ruled Egypt is if there’s a split in the military like the one now developing in the Syrian military. This of course would portend civil war.
I am reminded though that it took nothing less than a civil war for the paragon of democracy, the United States, to find its way. I just hope the folks in Tahrir Square are prepared to die by the thousands for their cause.
(Egypt: military a bigger devil than Mubarak, The iPINIONS Journal, November 22, 2011)
Related commentaries:
Army pledges no force…
Egyptian revolution…
Military bigger devil than Mubarak