All of us are watching the news out of Egypt with more than a little shock. It is long past time to tell the truth about what is happening there. The United States was successful in undermining the Mubarak regime to the extent that it eventually was removed from power. This is remarkably similar to how we undermined the Shah of Iran. How did that work out? Are the people in Iran better off now than when the Shah was in power? The theory was that Mubarak was too dictatorial. Every time there was a demonstration, the Obama administration warned the Egyptian military and police to show restraint. They did. We are now watching the results on our television screens.
There are no good guys in Egypt, but there are definitely bad guys. The Muslim Brotherhood will turn Egypt back into a fundamentalist Islamic state, if given the chance. They already tried to do exactly that after the last election. No one should be disillusioned about the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood. Following is an English translation of their motto:
“Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
The Egyptian military is not above reproach, but it is a lot better than the alternative. The reason Mubarak ruled under emergency law for all those years was that the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Anwar Sadat. He knew that if he did not suppress the Muslim Brotherhood, they would do never stop until they gained complete control. Always remember that the Muslim Brotherhood was the father of al Qaeda.
Suppose we had an extremist group operating in the United States. They wanted to force everyone to adopt their world view. They wanted to force everyone to adopt their religious views. They organized violent mobs. They rigged elections to put candidates favorable to them in charge. When they were charged with crimes, crooked judges and biased juries acquitted them without regard to the evidence. They often tortured and killed those they opposed. How would we respond to that? We already know the answer, because that is exactly what the Ku Klux Klan did. This happened more than once. Every time it happened, they were only stopped when the government went to war with them, hunted them down and shut them down. We could not tolerate the Ku Klux Klan, because tolerating them is incompatible with Democracy. We didn’t solve the problem of the Ku Klux Klan by giving them a seat at the table of power. That would have been absurd! Sometimes the only thing necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to refuse to take sides.
The Muslim Brotherhood is the Islamic version of the Ku Klux Klan on steroids. They are not interested in democracy, they don’t believe in democracy. They aren’t interested in religious tolerance, they don’t believe in religious tolerance. They have already demonstrated many times that they will do anything and everything to gain power. We are talking about a group that has a history of assassinating political opponents. There is no possibility of real democracy in Egypt if the Muslim Brotherhood is part of the equation.
Unfortunately President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and RINO republicans like John McCain and Lindsay Graham are enabling the Muslim Brotherhood. The worst possible way to handle this mess is to give the Muslim Brotherhood a preferred seat at the table of power. Yet that is exactly what the U.S. is demanding. It is absurd. The fastest way to end the violence is Egypt is to allow the Egyptian military to, once again, suppress the Muslim Brotherhood. The good news is that the Egyptian military appears ready to do exactly that.
There are signs that the Arab world, led by Saudi Arabia, is uniting behind the Egyptian Military. Perhaps we should pay attention. Russia is ready, willing and able to step into the leadership vacuum. If we do not give the Egyptian military what it needs, it will obtain it from Russia. The United States spent years maneuvering Egypt away from a strong Soviet ally under Nasser to our best friend in the Middle East. I fail to see how letting Russia regain influence in Egypt would possibly benefit the United States or anyone else.
This is hardly new. I wrote about this in January of 2011. If you want to check it out, here is the link:
The astonishing thing to me is accurate that turned out to be, since I am hardly an expert on Egypt. I have never been there and only know a handful of people who went there briefly on vacation. Everything I wrote about in January 2011 was based on information readily available on the internet or the nightly news. This is not because I did brilliant research, I didn’t. It is because this was and is really obvious. Unfortunately, it is not obvious to those who are responsible for making decisions on our behalf.
TDM