Middle East

On the Revolutions in Egypt

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It’s easy to see the last week’s events as an indictment of Islamist rule, but I don’t think that’s what is going on here. (Caveat: all I know is what I read in the papers and online. I’m not writing with the benefit of firsthand knowledge.)

Egypt has serious problems that have nothing to do with Islamism. The country that was the Roman Empire’s granary has become dependent on imported food and they’re running out of money to buy it. The economy is so bad, it would make Obama proud: high unemployment, rising prices, fuel shortages. Oh, and an “education” system that manages to combine massive illiteracy with a university system that churns out ever more graduates with degrees that aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. [Here I’m going to exercise great self-control and not go on about the specific linguistic and cultural features that make literacy in Arabic much more difficult than literacy in Western languages, because people do tend to back away slowly when I get going on linguistic matters. I hope you’re all properly appreciative.]

Last week Leslie Chang pointed out, in a New Yorker article, that she had “yet to meet a politician with a substantive plan to overhaul a system of food and fuel subsidies that eats up almost one third of the budget, or to reform the education sector, or to stimulate foreign investment.”

What I’ve seen and read about the protestors doesn’t inspire me with any confidence. Just as the last ones had pictures of Mubarak inside a Star of David, these have posters of Morsi inside a Star of David. They’re beating the previous protestors’ record for sexual assaults in Tahrir Square. I think what they’re unhappy about is that they’re unemployed and hungry and Morsi’s government hasn’t done anything to improve their lot. A government that rescued Egypt from its economic death spiral would probably make all the protestors happy. And if the government is anti-Semitic, anti-women and Islamist? Those would likely be features, not bugs.

So let’s not be too optimistic here. The fact that the protestors dislike Obama doesn’t guarantee that they are nice guys or that they will do any better than the previous regimes.

The Events in Egypt

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Check out this photograph of protesters against the Morsi regime in Egypt.

Then see this: Anti-government demonstrators in Egypt expressed anger and contempt for the Obama administration  as they took to the streets on Sunday to demand the removal of Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohamed Morsi.

The demonstrators maintain Morsi has become a power-hungry autocrat who is intent on making the Muslim Brotherhood Egypt’s permanent ruling party.

They also blame the Obama administration and U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson for propping up Morsi and facilitating the Muslim Brotherhood’s power grab.

“We are very critical of the Obama administration because they have been supporting the Brotherhood like no one has ever supported them,” Shadi Al Ghazali Harb, a 24-year-old member of Egypt’s Revolutionary Youth Coalition, told the  Washington  Free Beacon  on Friday afternoon during a telephone interview from Cairo.

The White House is “the main supporter of the Brotherhood,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the American support this president would have fallen months ago.”

See also this–a sign carried by Egyptian demonstrators: “Wake Up America, Obama Backs Up a Fascist Regime in Egypt”

…to which PowerLine responds:

Well, yes. So he does. What is bizarre is that Obama hasn’t just tolerated the Brotherhood’s rise to power, he has abetted it. It would be defensible to argue that we have little power to influence events in Egypt, and, moreover, attempts on our part to exercise influence are likely to backfire; therefore we should stand aside and do nothing. But why Obama would consider it a good idea to put America’s thumb on the scale on the side of the Brotherhood is beyond me.

The Obama administration has also–through its ambassador–asked the Coptic Church to urge its members not to participate in the demonstrations against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The ( Coptic) Pope politely informed her that his spiritual authority over the Copts does not extend to political matters.

Regardless, many Egyptian activists are condemning Patterson for flagrantly behaving like the Muslim Brotherhood’s stooge.   Leading opposition activist Shady el-Ghazali Harb said Patterson showed “blatant bias” in favor of Morsi and the Brotherhood, adding that her remarks had earned the U.S. administration “the enmity of the Egyptian people.” Coptic activists like George Ishaq openly told Patterson to “shut up and mind your own business.” And Christian business tycoon Naguib Sawiris—no stranger to Islamist hostility—posted a message on his Twitter account addressed to the ambassador saying “Bless us with your silence.”

The post at the link notes that:

Among other things, under  Morsi’s  rule, the persecution of Copts has practically been legalized,    as unprecedented numbers of  Christians—men, women, and children—have been arrested, often receiving more than double the maximum prison sentence, under the accusation that they  “blasphemed” Islam and/or its prophet.    It was also under  Morsi’s reign that another unprecedented scandal occurred: the St. Mark Cathedral—holiest site of Coptic Christianity and headquarters to the Pope  Tawadros  himself—was  besieged in broad daylight  by Islamic rioters.    When security came, they too joined in the attack on the cathedral.    And the  targeting of Christian children—for abduction, ransom, rape, and/or forced conversion—has also reached unprecedented levels under  Morsi.

Yet Obama’s ambassador attempted to dissuade these persecuted Christians from protesting against their persecutors!

More at  Pam Geller’s site. Note the picture with the sign saying “Obama Supports Dictator Morsi.”

It is hard to avoid the feeling that Obama is more sympathetic to radical Muslim organizations and regimes than to the millions of more moderate Muslims who would prefer modernization and civil liberties rather than  strict shariah and violent aggression against other faiths. Whether or not that has truly been his intent, it is certainly the way his policies have worked out in practice.

 

Who are they protecting us from ?

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The latest word on the NSA scandal, and it is a scandal, is that the FBI is not allowed to snoop on mosques.

Since October 2011, mosques have been off-limits to FBI agents. No more surveillance or undercover string[sic] operations without high-level approval from a special oversight body at the Justice Department dubbed the Sensitive Operations Review Committee.

Who makes up this body, and how do they decide requests? Nobody knows; the names of the chairman, members and staff are kept secret.

We do know the panel was set up under pressure from Islamist groups who complained about FBI stings at mosques. Just months before the panel’s formation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations teamed up with the ACLU to sue the FBI for allegedly violating the civil rights of Muslims in Los Angeles by hiring an undercover agent to infiltrate and monitor mosques there.

That makes sense. After all, all terrorists thus far have been fundamentalist Christians.

Oh wait.

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Conspiracy Theories

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Last week was a week for the conspiracy theories. First, we had Benghazi and the hearings which interviewed career State Department officers, most of whom probably vote for Democrats. The fact that they were ordered not to talk to Congressmen and denied any attempt at help when under attack, even from as close as Tripoli, invites speculation about motive. Peggy Noonan, a little unusually, hits this one out of the park.

Since it is behind a pay wall, I’ll quote a few bits.

What happened in Benghazi last Sept. 11 and 12 was terrible in every way. The genesis of the scandal? It looks to me like this:

The Obama White House sees every event as a political event. Really, every event, even an attack on a consulate and the killing of an ambassador.

Because of that, it could not tolerate the idea that the armed assault on the Benghazi consulate was a premeditated act of Islamist terrorism. That would carry a whole world of unhappy political implications, and demand certain actions. And the American presidential election was only eight weeks away. They wanted this problem to go away, or at least to bleed the meaning from it.

That sounds about right to me.

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RERUN–Benghazi

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(Here is something I wrote in November of last year)

At a minimumat a bare minimumthe Benghazi affair reveals a dismal level of incompetence pervading the Obama administration. There is also reason to believe that it reveals decison-making about life-and-death matters based on this President’s desire to preserve his “narrative,” rather than facing reality and acting upon it. And, I suspect, the more we learn about what happened in Benghazi, and  why  it happened, the more disturbing the answers are going to be.

I’m currently re-reading the memoirs of General Edward Spears, who was Churchill’s emissary to France in 1940. There was a disturbing amount of defeatism, and in some cases actual sympathy with the Nazi enemy, among certain government officials and other French elites. Weygand’s friend Henri de Kerillis, a Deputy and newpaper editor, had been consistently pressing Prime Minister Daladier to investigate some sinister behavior by members of the extreme Right.

“Il faut de’brider l’abces,” he had said time and time again to the Premier. He had done so again lately and received this strange answer: I have done exactly what you urged, I have opened the abscess, but it was so deep the scalpal disappeared down it, and had I gone on, my arm would have followed.” This was really very frightening, and I said so. “You cannot be more frightened than I am,” said Kerillis.

I feel sure that we are going to find that the abscess revealed by the Obama administration’s behavior re Benghazi goes very deep indeed.

5/9/2013: A useful source of information about the Benghazi debacle and the related investigations is the site  Special Operations Speaks.