For the past year, many in the United States and Israel have mourned the toppling of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Many of the same people who lamented his fall were quick to point out he was a corrupt despot who turned his country’s treaty with Israel into a “cold peace.” But once it became clear the main beneficiaries of the Arab Spring protests would not be the tiny faction of Egyptian liberals but the Muslim Brotherhood, the demise of a man who was once rightly derided for never losing an opportunity to make mischief at Israel’s expense was treated as a calamity. Yet, with today’s decision by Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court that dissolved the parliament that was elected in the aftermath of the change in regime, those who longed for a Mubarak rerun may get their wish. Let’s see if they like the result any better than the Brotherhood’s power grab via elections.
As Michael wrote earlier today, the Egyptian military may be seeking to emulate the example of Algeria, where in 1991 an election victory by Islamists was overturned by the government, leading to a long and bloody civil war. If, as he points out, that means a conflict that will prevent the Brotherhood from attaining total power in Cairo, it may be worth the chaos and suffering that will ensue from the court’s decision. But those hoping presidential candidate Ahmid Shafik, a Mubarak-era retread, in combination with the Egyptian military will put down the Brotherhood, should be careful what they wish for. As awful as the prospect of the election of an Brotherhood president along with the deposed parliament might be, Israelis should be extremely wary about the possibility of a civil war taking place next door in Egypt.
The problem for the West is that there are no good alternatives. In an ideal world, Mubarak would have been replaced by a genuine democracy whose leaders were not intent on turning the most populous Arab country into an Islamist fief. But we don’t live in an ideal world. The myth of the Arab Spring being a Facebook or Twitter revolution was always bunk. Egypt’s streets are ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood, the only real organized party in Egypt that can stand up to the remnants of the old regime. The army is rightly wary of the Brotherhood and fears that, at best, an Islamist-led government will emulate Turkey’s path in which the military loses power and a gradual path to religious despotism is set in motion.
Unfortunately, the idea that there can be a return to Mubarak’s authoritarian rule without the now comatose former leader is also a myth. Now that the democratic genie that has unleashed the Brotherhood has been let out of the bottle, the only way to put it back in is with the brute force that the Egyptian Army was clearly unwilling to use last year as Mubarak fell. If they do crack down and the Islamist mob resists, the result may make Assad’s massacres in Syria look like family picnics. No one can know what would follow the enactment of such a scenario. But if the best case is a repeat of the Algerian nightmare, the impact on Israel and the rest of the Middle East will be considerable.
Israel’s border with Egypt is enough of a problem now. If the Nile Valley becomes a war zone of some kind, the spillover into Gaza and other countries will make the whole region more dangerous and threaten the stability of other regimes, especially the shaky Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.
Such a scenario is enough to make a democratic transition to a Muslim Brotherhood government that would have had to make an uneasy alliance with the military to some extent look like an attractive alternative.
Despite the unfair criticism President Obama has gotten on the issue, it was never true that the United States could have saved Mubarak. If anything, the United States has even less leverage now. Those who have been carping about the loss of Mubarak need to pipe down and watch with the rest of us as we see which of the unpleasant possibilities for Egypt becomes reality.
I possessed no magical abilities to predict the future—but I rather place my bets on the Egyptian military. The country is not ready for democracy. Islamic dominated societies often go backwards and reject all previous accommodations with modernity. Do you need top get slapped back to reality? If so, it may behoove you to read Roseanne Klass's 1964 autobiographical work, Land Of The High Flags: Afghanistan When The Going Was Good. She was fairly optimistic. Sigh, things did not work out very well.
There is a fundamental contradiction between Wilsonian democratism, which the neocons adapted from the Trotskyists "permanent revolution," and support for the interests of the Zionist ethnostate. To my way of thinking, we should reject both, but if you adopt "self-determination," "democracy," and "human rights" as slogans, they collide with Israeli interests, which lie with ramshackle authoritarianism à la Mubarak and the quisling Abbas among Israel's neighbors. The best neighbors for Israel are inept police states. These are inconsistent with any "freedom agenda." Societies dominated by cousin-marrying extended families will never, on any account, manage to develop a strong civil society, needed for any reasonably efficient form of democracy. n nIf you adopt a non-ideological approach to the matter, sooner or later you are bound to ask what being Israel's ally offers us (for surely Israel is not our ally on this one-way street). The answer is damned little, and so the Israel lobby must shift back to the hasbarists' "the only democracy in the Middle East." And we come full circle on a merry-go-round of contradictions. n
your'e an idiot. all these neologistic grand syllogistic bromides stuck together with conceptual chewing gum and shoelaces and ending up decorating a core Jew hatred like glitter stuck on a turd. what is this bs? The Zionist "ethnostate"–you got anything else to sell in that part of the world, buddy? at least the Jewboy version functions, and none of of this has anything to do with Trotsky, not Zionism (positively or negatively), not Wilson, not nothing unless you mean a certain variety of Catholic critique of the dialectic expansionism of secular ontological truth claims but you don't because that's way over your pointy little head. You do realize that Israel is a real country. And a country with which Hamas (that's right fool) as well as Abbas share a de facto truce. When an alcoholic looks at the world through the day's twentieth bottle of beer everything is green, like a dystopian Oz. Here a columnist makes the modest suggestion to give the Muslim Brotherhood a chance to flourish and your inevitable response is to belch out an incoherent rant against the Jews. n nWe suppose you're probably too committed to exploring the nether regions of your own conceptual bowels to get the fact that the Jewish gene pool is sufficiently diverse that, gosh, even marrying within the faith we are not actually marrying cousins. Which is why we remain smart and you continue to display the thinking processes of generations of inbreeding.
"Want a Mubarak Rerun? Be Careful What You Wish For." n nI dislike this title. A military takeover does not make me feel joyous. It is simply a matter of looking at the available options—and arriving at a far from ideal conclusion. Wishing for? I am simply shrugging my shoulders and hoping for the best.
You know, I've really been unfair to Obama, saying he's the man who lost Egypt. n nIt appears the Egyptians have lost their country by themselves. n nThat's unfortunate.
Despite Mr. Tobin’s assertion that President Obama should be held blameless for his failure to shore up Mubarak, I am not convinced. How about some proof. Not only did Obama not shore up Mubarak, he openly rallied for his downfall.
Obama does not get the credit he deserves for his successes. All of The Commentary staff writers, and I respect them all, seem to believe that Obama has failed on all counts. But, you are all wrong. He has harmed Israel tremendously and he is not finished. Another success is continued Jewish American financial and moral support which is the key to winning the election. Not because our votes count more, but because gentiles are influenced by reports that Obama maintains the support of the vast majority of The Jewish American community. If The Jews don’t object to his policy towards Israel, then why should they.
Bottom line, The American Jewish Community is overall, a disgrace, at best. It does kind of make one wonder whether the same attitude prevailed during the holocost.
Maybe I should marry a gentile. Being Jewish is become a curse. Intermarriage for over 30 years has yielded Jews more gentile than the gentiles.