One of the commenters in my last post criticized me for misunderstanding the situation in Egypt. I stood accused of exaggerating the revolutionary reality of the post-Mubarak period. Apparently, this commentator is unaware of what I have written about Egypt since January of last year. So let me briefly repeat my original analysis from 18 months ago, since I suspect many have long since forgotten it, if they ever knew it in the first place.
At the time, I argued that the American elite press and most of its political class were guilty of two conflations, both of which stemmed from the characteristic tendency of broadly ignorant people (ignorant about the Middle East, that is) to project their own frames of reference onto circumstances very different from their own. The first conflation was to assume that the ouster of Hosni Mubarak was tantamount to regime change. It wasn’t. The regime has still not changed; it remains the military-bureaucratic apparatus that it has essentially been since July 1952. There was no revolution, therefore—only revolutionary ferment looking for an outcome.
At the time, too, I argued that the struggle to come was profoundly unequal: between a bunch of twittering twenty- and thirty-somethings who were divided among themselves as to what a new Egypt should look like and who had never managed anything, on the one hand, and a group of seasoned military men who are used to getting their way and who resemble Boy Scouts in no way whatsoever, on the other. I did not have to ponder long to figure out who was going to come out on top. And what we have seen over the past 18 months has been a kind of careful pantomime by the military in which it pretended to open space for democratic change, but never in fact did so beyond recall. So when Jimmy Carter said yesterday, representing the Carter Center, that he was “deeply troubled by the undemocratic turn that Egypt has taken”, he was speaking plain nonsense, as usual.
The second conflation was the near universal assumption in the West, though less so in a more cynical Europe than in the United States, that the crowds on the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities represented a democracy movement. As I wrote at the time, Arabs in Egypt and elsewhere have plenty of reasons to be angry with their governments, but that doesn’t mean that high in their priorities is a demand for procedural democracy as it is understood in the West. The ubiquitous references at the time to an Egyptian version of the Philippines’ “people power” struck me as absolutely ludicrous, and I said so. Note, too, that the issue of The American Interest that came out just after the upheavals took root, under my editorship, had on its cover the neutrally analytical question, “What Just Happened?” Inside the covers there was an article, among others, pointing out the desultory history of the once-lauded “color revolutions.” We were, in essence, trying to throw a therapeutic wet mop in the face of all those who had allowed wishful thinking to trump any honest assessment of reality. As far as I know, we were the only major American “thought” magazine to do so.
I also said back then, as did many others, that the space temporarily opened in Arab politics by the so-called, but much misnamed, Arab Spring was far more likely to be filled by radical Islamist forces than by any others. I think that what has happened in Egypt, but also in Libya and prospectively in Syria, bears that out.
Obviously then, this commentator came into my analysis long after intermission. That said, it seemed to me that, in light of the brazen behavior of the Egyptian military this past weekend, the streets would again fill, and that, ultimately, a violent confrontation was likely. I confess to being puzzled that it took so long for the streets in Cairo to show signs of life, and in that puzzlement I was not alone. When I last wrote, it seemed that, though revolutionists never constituted a majority of Egyptians and still plainly do not, there were enough cityfolk capable of making some noise and again creating telegenic scenes for the benefit of the international press corps. But now the crowds have materialized: As of last night there were tens of thousands of protesters on the streets, and that number is more likely to grow than to shrink. One protester guessed that the regime’s insinuation that Mubarak had died of a heart attack was designed to clear the Square. Today’s New York Times ends by quoting Mr. Moustafa: “They would say anything to get us to leave the Square.”
So far the crowds have been peaceful, but the press is full of intimations that things may not stay that way. Everyone seems to be waiting for the regime to announce the official results of the presidential elections. That announcement is due tomorrow. Until yesterday, there seemed to have been a consensus that Mohammed Morsi won the vote. Then out of nowhere a spokesman for Ahmed Shafik claimed that he had won 51.5 percent of the votes. This is an ominous sign—namely that the regime intends to steal the election. As the Times reports it, a protest leader issued a warning to the military forces surrounding the Parliament building to prevent elected members from entering it: “We’re giving the forces now standing in front of the Parliament until the official results are announced. After the official results, if one soldier is standing there…” To which a protester rejoined, “The struggle starts now. The people’s legitimacy will not be canceled out by the greed of old generals.” And the chant in Tahrir Square, reports the Washington Post today, is “If they want it to be Syria, we’ll give them Libya.”
Of course, neither one of these analogies applies to Egypt; all the same, we know what they mean. As I explained earlier, the Muslim Brotherhood is extremely reluctant to burn all bridges with its longtime, respected adversary, the military. The Muslim Brotherhood appears to be genuinely religious in the sense that they have rejected the advice of Satan as channeled through John Milton in Book I of Paradise Lost: “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.” No, they would rather serve than rule—though Egypt more closely resembles Hell than Heaven these days. Or put another way, playing second fiddle is better than playing third or fourth fiddle, and much better than not playing at all. That explains the initial reluctance of the MB leadership to fulminate against the military coup. Indeed, Morsi’s initial victory claim sounded like nothing had even happened. He preferred to emphasize the Brotherhood’s victory in the first-ever reasonably free presidential election in Egyptian history. Only in the past few days has MB rhetoric heated up, and one way to read that rising temperature is as a warning to the military not to steal the election for Shafik, or else…
The problem with this sort of threat is that, as everyone knows, the military has the guns and the money—and also probably at least the tacit acquiescence, if not the support, of a silent majority of Egyptians, particularly those who do not live in cities. The MB can mobilize a lot of people, but in the end it is not capable of tearing down the regime by force. As for those Egyptians who despise both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood (and there are lots more of them today than there were a decade ago), they are in a very tough spot. They may be loved and courted by Western journalists who seek out fluent English speakers, but they face a situation in which advocacy for democracy benefits the Muslim Brotherhood, who themselves, they know, are hardly sincere democrats. And they are hardly about to advocate for a new and improved military dictatorship. But those are their only choices.
So let us leave Egypt for now. We will see what tomorrow brings. But know that the stage is set, albeit more slowly than I expected, for some real drama.
***
As a coda, let me comment briefly on the lead article in Sunday’s New York Times, on the United Nations mission in Syria. Actually, I don’t even have to comment on the article itself; I can limit myself to the main headline, the first sub headline, and the second sub headline––all printed out in black and white before the names of the authors, David Kirkpatrick and David Sanger.
The headline reads, “U.N. Suspends Syria Mission, Citing Increase in Violence.” That’s funny…we thought the reason for the mission in the first place was the fact that there was violence. But moving right along, the first sub headline reads “Blow to Peace Efforts.” That’s even funnier, since the UN’s “peace efforts” never had a proverbial snowball’s chance in Hell to begin with. And then, “The Pressure on Russia and Iran Mounts as Options Dwindle.” So now we have gone from funny to funnier to downright hilarious. I’m sure that the Russian and Iranian regimes are deeply distressed that options have dwindled, so that it now falls to them to bring an honorable and rapid peace to Syria. As if… It is one thing to let foxes guard the hen house, quite another to invite them in, assuming they are vegetarians. The hens, in this case the Syrian people, know better.
We have already discussed several reasons the Obama Administration has indulged in manifest absurdities over Syria. Is the New York Timesso wedded to the Administration that it feels it must mimic these same absurdities on its front page? As I have said, we will see what tomorrow brings.
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