Alas, Mohammed Morsi seems fated to become a martyr for the cause of democracy in the Middle East.
He became Egypt’s first democratically elected president in June 2012. But army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi deposed him in July 2013 – in a coup that was, ironically, almost as popular as the student protests that ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.
True to form, Sisi then effectively elected himself president in June 2014. And now his military-appointed court has sentenced Morsi to death.
Whether Morsi committed any high crime or misdemeanor that warranted a coup (no matter how popular) is debatable. What is not, however, is that his death sentence signals a winter of discontent for Egyptian democracy, which budded with so much hope during the Arab Spring.
I’m sure neither student protesters nor the Western leaders who championed their cause ever imagined events unfolding in Egypt as they have over the past four years. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find another Western commentator who expressed concerns about what the Arab Spring portended – as I did … in real time.
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 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)
Sure enough, here – from “Egypt’s Arab Spring Spawns Military Dictatorship,” March 25, 2014 – is how Morsi’s sectarianism and Sisi’s authoritarianism have vindicated my concerns.
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Recall that, even though democratically elected to succeed Mubarak, Mohammed Morsi proved such a bigger devil that the very pro-democracy protesters who ousted and imprisoned Mubarak returned to their protesting ways and soon ousted and imprisoned Morsi.
Except that getting rid of Morsi begat General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who is proving yet an even bigger devil. Not least because he’s using mass show trials and other more brutal measures to politically cleanse Egypt of all traces of the Muslim Brotherhood. Reports are that he has imprisoned over 19,000 members since seizing power last summer and is now systematically executing those who held leadership positions.
Frankly, Sisi is ruling Egypt in a manner that makes Mubarak and Morsi look like Boy Scouts. Which is why nothing vindicates my early criticism of pro-democracy protesters quite like the fact that, after commandeering Tahrir Square to get rid of Mubarak and Morsi, they are now conspicuously MIA. Granted, these erstwhile democratic revolutionaries are sensible enough to appreciate that Sisi would probably do to them what Chinese leaders did to pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
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Therefore, what I find most noteworthy about Morsi’s death sentence is the way it exposes the double standard, if not hypocrisy, inherent in the way Western governments deal with leaders in the Middle East.
In this case, you’d expect President Obama to be – not only leading a chorus of those condemning Sisi, but also marshaling support to impose coordinated sanctions against his regime. Indeed, it speaks volumes that Obama has his secretary of state, John Kerry, over in Asia today – not only condemning North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for executing yet another member of his leadership team, but also marshaling support (most notably China’s) to impose even more sanctions against his regime.
‘(Kim’s) leadership (is) one of the most egregious examples of reckless disregard for human rights and human beings anywhere on the planet,’ [Kerry] said, citing what he called ‘grotesque, grisly, horrendous public displays of executions on a whim and a fancy by the leader’.
(Reuters, May 18, 2015)
To be fair, Obama has issued pro-forma statements condemning the mass trials and death sentences that have defined Sisi’s nascent rule. In fact, he made quite a public show in October 2013 of suspending military aid to Egypt to protest Sisi’s coup and the bloody crackdown that followed.
Unfortunately, Obama made a mockery of all that by quietly resuming military aid in March, despite there being no noticeable change in Sisi’s authoritarian rule.
The systematic use of rape, sexual violence and assault constituting torture has surged since the political coup led by President el-Sisi in Egypt, spreading beyond the confines of police stations and detention centres to officials openly assaulting people in the streets, at universities and people’s homes during raids, according to a new report.
The International Federation for Human Rights’ (IDFH) latest report, which focuses on sexual violence committed since the Egyptian military takeover in July 2013, claims the documented sexual harassment, rape, sexual assault, rape with objects, anal and vaginal ‘virginity tests’, electrocution of genitalia, sex-based defamation and blackmail by police, state and military personnel is being used to ‘eliminate public protest’.
(The Independent – UK, May 19, 2015)
In fact, Sisi has made quite a public show of fraternizing with presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia – both of whom seem all too willing and able to serve as more enabling patrons of his authoritarian regime.
Frankly, nothing indicates what little regard Sisi has for Obama’s political/democratic sensibilities quite like Sisi thanking Obama for resuming military aid by sentencing Morsi to death. What’s more, notwithstanding the alternatives Xi and Putin provide, Sisi can be forgiven thinking that Obama and other Western leaders would turn a blind eye to any reckless disregard he shows “for human rights and human beings” – just as they did with Mubarak throughout his 30-year dictatorship.
(It might seem contradictory, but given the utter chaos that followed the toppling of Hussein in Iraq, Mubarak in Egypt, Kaddafi in Libya, and Saleh in Yemen, I clearly had/have just cause for conceding that “Perhaps Only Authoritarian Regimes Can Govern Arab Countries,” July 14, 2014.)
Of course, like his predecessors, Obama will rationalize his decision to help Sisi sustain his brutal dictatorship by spouting all kinds of specious ways military aid to Egypt serves America’s geostrategic interests. I submit, however, that the United States has no more to show for the tens of billions wasted propping up dictatorships in Egypt than it has to show for the hundreds of billions (to say nothing of thousands of lives) wasted nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This record of fecklessness is especially poignant with respect to Afghanistan, where Obama surged thousands of troops in 2009 in a misguided attempt to impose national law and order. Not least because some of us warned back then that it would prove the deadly and costly blunder it has turned out to be — as I did in “With or Even Without more Troops, Failure in Afghanistan Is Likely,” September 23, 2009.
With respect to Iraq, I’m on record warning that ISIS poses no greater threat to the United States than the Viet Cong did. Further, that the media terrorize Americans more by broadcasting ISIS propaganda and threats than ISIS can ever do by actually attacking America.
Here, for example, is how I warned – in “Demystifying ISIS: Case against Obama’s Bush-lite War on Terrorism,” September 10, 2014 – against the fool’s mission of deploying American troops to take on ISIS, instead of leaving Afghan and Iraqi fighters to fight their own battles.
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I urge you to listen carefully for anything that convinces you that his war on terrorism (against ISIS) will be any more successful than Bush’s ill-fated war on terrorism (against al-Qaeda). Just be mindful that JFK convinced the American people that his war on communism (in Vietnam) would be more successful than his predecessor Truman’s war on communism (in Korea). And beware that a stupid war by any other name (like ‘a counterterrorism operation’) would still prove as stupid…
Warmongers … have already goaded Obama into a Vietnam-style mission creep — given that the 300 troops he said in June were sufficient to protect embassy personnel in Iraq have already mushroomed to over 1000, not including an untold number of military ‘advisers.’
If the Afghans and Iraqis Americans spent over a decade training to govern themselves, defend themselves, and sustain themselves can’t stand on their own against a rag-tag bunch of Taliban fighters and rampaging ISIS terrorists, respectively, then they deserve whatever fate befalls them. To say nothing of the dreadful spectacle of so many of those the U.S. trained either turning their guns directly on U.S. troops — in now notorious ‘green-on-blue’ killings, or using that training to professionalize the ranks of terrorist groups like ISIS.
Incidentally, Obama is making quite a show of seeking congressional authorization to train ‘moderate’ Syrian fighters as part of his war on terrorism strategy. But, consistent with the foregoing, nothing betrays the wishful thinking inherent in this quite like the shameful (and ultimately sacrificial) way thousands of U.S.-trained Iraqi troops threw down their U.S.-made weapons, abandoned their U.S.-made military vehicles, and hightailed it from just a few hundred poorly equipped ISIS fighters.
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Apropos of hightailing it, news is breaking as I write this that yet more U.S.-trained Iraqi troops are abandoning post. This time they are fleeing the city of Ramadi, with equally costly abandon, alongside tens of thousands of women and children, to escape advancing ISIS fighters. Their cowardly display of dereliction of duty even surpasses that of the captain of that sinking South Korean Ferry – who trampled over passengers a year ago to get on one of precious few life rafts to save his hide, while hundreds of women and children drowned right before his eyes.
Of course, that these Iraqi troops are fleeing is hardly surprising. Nor, alas, is the fact that U.S. politicians (mostly Republicans) are reacting to this news by decrying the loss of Ramadi as if it were Texas, insinuating that the duty is now for American, not Iraqi, troops to retake it.
All the more reason for Obama to reclaim a little of America’s moral high ground on the world stage … by letting China or Russia replace it: not only as the indulgent and long-suffering patron of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, but also as the compromised and self-sacrificing referee of sectarian/religious battles, which Muslims have been fighting amongst themselves for over a thousand years, and seem fated to continuing fighting for another thousand.
Especially given that oil-rich countries in that region now need to sell to America more than America needs to buy from them; and that aircraft carriers and other military assets (like drones) can protect and/or advance whatever strategic interest the United States has in that region (e.g., with targeted assassinations and by destroying terrorist training camps).
If Shia Iran fears ISIS establishing a regional Caliphate, let Iran stop ISIS! If either Jewish Israel or Sunni Saudi Arabia fears Shia Iran developing nuclear weapons, let Israel or Saudi Arabia stop Iran! God knows, if we can live with a nuclear North Korea, we can live with a nuclear Iran. Not to mention that, notwithstanding Israeli paranoia or American narcissism, if Iran ever developed nuclear weapons and dared to use them, it would probably nuke Saudi Arabia before even setting its sights on Israel or the United States. Such is the nature of the internecine struggle within Islam that is the root cause of so much that bedevils U.S. Middle East policy….
This is not the commentary to elaborate, but Jordan is the only country in that region that is worthy of the kind of aid the United States has been funneling to Egypt.
As for Israel, America’s long-standing security guarantees should suffice without having to give it billions in annual grants masquerading as “loan guarantees.” Especially given that Israel uses so many of those billions to expand illegal Jewish settlements and keep Palestinians walled in Apartheid-like territories – as I have lamented in such commentaries as “Instead of Peace, Israel Settling for Apartheid,” May 1, 2014. Hell, the United States is still doing penance for the Indian Removal Act and its “Trail of Tears.” Therefore, you’d think it would be morally averse to be touting an “unshakable bond” with Israel, which is doing to the Palestinians what it did to the Indians….
Trust me, America would be a lot safer if it limited its involvement with every other country in the Middle East to traditional diplomatic ties; instead of trying to navigate shifting alliances in religious/sectarian conflicts, to say nothing of fighting battles locals should be fighting for themselves.
America was foolish to follow Russia down the rabbit hole into the quagmire that is Afghanistan…. Therefore, if either China or Russia is foolish enough to follow America down the rabbit hole into the cauldron that is the Middle East, I say let it. Because nothing would signal the triumph of American foreign policy in this respect quite like jihadi chants of “Death to China [or] Death to Russia” replacing those of “Death to America” across the region.
Related commentaries:
Arab Spring spawns…
Demystifying Daesh…
Israel Apartheid…
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Monday, at 7:14 a.m. For technical reason, which I see no point in trying to explain, it never posted, and we could not sort things out until now (with one quote revised and updated ).