Sympathy for the Leftist Devil
Why am I so sure of this? Apart from the fact that its leaders have been saying so since Sayyid Qutb in the 1950s, the Muslim Brotherhood’s English-language website has posted two of my essays on the topic, one on the impending demographic and economic collapse of Muslim countries, and another on the Obama administration’s stupidity, concluding (in June 2009): “For his trouble, Obama will get more bloodshed in Pakistan, more megalomania from Iran, more triumphalism from the Palestinians, and less control over Iraq and Afghanistan. Of all the available bad choices, Obama has taken the worst. It is hard to imagine any consequence except a steep diminution of American influence.” You can read my work on the Brothers’ website (but not at the Weekly Standard, Commentary, or Fox News, where promoting Muslim democracy remains the mantra). From this I conclude that the Muslim Brotherhood is better informed than the Weekly Standard, et. al.
The most miserable people in the world, though, are the liberals. Liberalism boils down to the assertion that clever governments can save people from themselves. Palestine was supposed to have been the test case, where enlightened liberals would save people from their proclivity towards tribal hatred. Not only has it turned out badly for the Palestinians as such, but for the Arab world that has collapsed around them.
What should the United States do about it? The answer is: Make things worse. If the Brothers are taking power in Egypt because the military can’t rule, we should undertake to make it impossible for the Brothers to rule. The human cost of such a policy will be horrific, and I use the word advisedly. It was a catastrophic mistake to help overthrow Mubarak. The consequences of that mistake are that no Egyptian officer will stand up against the Islamists for very long, because the U.S. cannot be trusted as an ally. That applies elsewhere. Two years ago, America might have thrown its weight behind pro-democracy forces in Iran. Now it is simply too dangerous to bet on regime change. The most prudent course of action is to disable the regime, even though the human consequences for the Iranians will be horrific.
We are not particularly good at this kind of stance. It does not square with the inherent benevolence and naivete of our national character. But we are being pushed into this kind of policy, like it or not, just as the Muslim Brotherhood is being pushed into a Leninist dual power exercise by the collapse of the Egyptian economy. The consequences will be tragic, to be sure; our job is to make sure that the tragedy happens to somebody else.
I guess Mr. Goldman is right again. And the islamists should quit: they are no long time alternative.
David – I understand that the Israeli officer bonked the Danish ‘activist’ after the adctivist threw a bicycle at him. The media forgot to show that.
A case of the ‘bonked’ bonking the bonkers. quite right too. Hit back twice as hard.
And two of the soldier’s fingers had been broken. He was a hero who had gone into a live area to retrieve the body of a fallen comrade, after the army said it could not be retrieved. He was the head of an important combat unit, now relieved of duty, and should not have been doing that sort of thing.
It’s a bit personal here for me; we just lost one top officer expert in keeping the enemy from killing me and my family.
Not only that. There is no chance of any reporter asking the Danish activist why instead of, say Darfur, where people are staeraving and being murered and raped by the tens of thousands, he is supporting those who are well fed, are being treated with kid gloves, dance in the streets for the murder of a baby and want to finish Hitler’s work.
Pro-palestiaina activists are closet nazis. That is what they are.
If the US had a Cardinal Richelieu in charge then I would support your policy 100% but we don’t and I think such an attempt would be amateurish and worse than ineffective. At this stage I have no idea what credible policy the US would have in regards to Egypt. Perhaps the best the US can do is wash its hands of the place and let proxies do the dirty work.
Consider the following alternative history:
Suppose Churchill, via a series of emotional speeches in Parliament, had managed to initiate a preemptive war against Germany in 1936 which overthrew Hitler and the Nazis and disrupted German plans for expansion while appearing to participants to have been a confused and bloody muddle. Folks in that alternative history’s year 1939 would be talking about “that idiot Churchill” from a position of blissful ignorance of the horrors which they missed and which our timeline experienced in the “real” WWII (1939 to 1945).
I pray for decisive steps against Iran (what that might look like is an interesting question), even if our security chiefs think we are not ready. As the Israeli strategist Ron Rira points out, the primary thing is not so much the physical destruction of Iranian systems which US operations would cause as the declaration of strong US political will (“A War of Wills” http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=971).
ooops – Lt. Col. Ron Tira (http://www.sussex-academic.com/sa/titles/middle_east_studies/tira.htm), not “Ron Rira”
Michael K, your, “Perhaps the best the US can do is wash its hands of the place and let proxies do the dirty work.”….is the only sensible strategy for us Americans in West and Central Asia.
I’ve jumped at every opportunity to urge our containment of the Middle East, or more accurately described as Central and Western Asia.
Certainly the past ten years in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown the Muslim/Islamist world that America’s stupendous military power on its apparent short leash is not the most effective way to fight our Muslim/Islamist guerrilla enemy the way we’ve fought all of our previous wars.
Also dropping atomic shells at selected locations will probably not defeat this malignant state of mind which is Islam, it’ll simply reinforce the idea of ‘evil America’. They’re much better propagandists and infiltrators.
Goldman’s idea of an eventual internal collapse of individual Islamic nations (if I’ve not misunderstood what he says here) offers us the most hope, long term. It also benefits America in saving our young lives, and saving our money supply to fight the stupendous whirlpool of debt we’re accumulating under our present socialistic government.
Let’s get out, stand aside, and aim to divide and conquer that way. Medieval sieges worked. We don’t need catapults and Greek Fire, we need armed and watchful patience.
I beg to point out that Al Queda no longer has a peaceful safe haven in Afghanistan from which to train and plan terror attacks. They are on the run and scared.
The boys did a good job. If they can’t turn Iraq and Afghanistan into Massachusetts or Israel over night thats no failure. And now the terrorist know that when Americans fight they kill. its not a bad thing for them to know bluster as they may.
No, instead they have a safe haven in Pakistan. What’s the difference?
Our troops did an amazing job and continue to do so but it’s not about the performance of our troops, it’s about the performance of our politicians. And we all know how that story ends.
Why do you think WWII was fought and won in 6 years while Iraq and Afghanistan have taken twice that just to reach an uneasy stalemate?
While I don’t know if the Pakistanis are still cooperating in this program, too many terrorists have met their end with a drone fired Hellfire missile to count the country as a safe haven. And it certainly wasn’t safe for Osama….
The answer to that is simple:
In WW2 we declared- out loud and unapologetically-that the very systems and ideologies we were fighting were simply evil. A corrupted form of unconvertable evil, that has no place among civilized people.
The only course of action was to destroy this evil. Completely. It required nothing less than Full and Unconditional Surrender of their very belief systems, and the imposition, by force, of a better way to live.
In other words, the complete and utter physical destruction of everything that defines them (cities, holy sites),the enforcement of “our way” upon the smoking ruin and dazed survivors, and the the execution/perpetual expulsion from society of all their leaders,as well as those who sympathize with them.
This was done then.
It has not been done this time.
I meant absolutely nothing at all about any “failure”, and I’d never entertained the least hope that Iraq and Afghanistan could ever be turned into Massachusetts or Israel. I meant, and mean, that ‘enough is enough’, they’re simply not worth any more American blood.
Yet now we are pulling out of Afghanistan without having defeated the Taliban. The Taliban, in their turn, will again allow safe haven to their Al Queda fellow-traveling ideologues, and the result of US efforts will be for naught. You cannot defeat an enemy if you allow him to recoup and regroup. I thought that we had learned that in Viet Nam, but apparently not. We may disengage from Al Queda; it’s a sure bet that they will not disengage from us.
Furthermore, reflect for a moment, if you will, on the horror that the women in Afghanistan are now facing: not the least of which is re-enslavement as chattel property.
Another scenario — Suppose Roosevelt’s goal in WW2 was not Unconditional Surrender, but the existing Axis regimes were allowed to continue on their homeland, or had been replaced by Weimar type regimes without military occupation.
Unthinkable. But what happened with the Soviet Union? Should the U.S. be more active in the FSU?
No cahnce. Main reason of WWII was not Versailles (atyt least not for the reasons usuaaly stated) but the German people not feeling defeated given that not a single allled soldier was on Geramn soil when Germany sued for peace. This allowed demagoggues to say Germany had not been defeated but betrayed. Churchill makes it well clear in his “History of WWII” he didn’t want to repeat the same scenario: this time it had to be made welle clear for the Germans they had been soundly defeated and that it would be begtter for them to stop playing this kind of games.
Also. Gievn what the Germans had done in WWII. Not only the Holocaust but also the millions of Soviet POWs deliberiately starved or the atrocities against Russsian civilians (eg rape of Russian women was not punished) a negotiated peace was unthinkable.
JFM gave a good answer.
I would just add that FDR and his team had to deal with the great mistrust of Stalin for the West. He apparently understood that an attempt to find a group in the German establishment which could effectively depose Hitler and negotiate a separate peace would probably only have had the result of breaking up the US/UK/USSR alliance.
The US and UK had a very effective arrangement with the USSR: we fed them aid and they spent Russian soldiers to kill German soldiers. There is no way dubious secret negotiations with shadowy groups claiming to represent German generals (for example) would have been worth risking that arrangement. FDR would probably have assumed that there was at least a 50% chance that any such negotiations would have been a Nazi provocation to split the alliance.
The announcement of “unconditional surrender” as a war objective had a clarifying and galvanizing effect on the alliance and on US home-front morale.
FDR was also working with a number of card-carrying (and I mean that literally) Communists in his administration, and even more Soviet-sympathizers. The primary impetus for the Americans to join WW2 was not to help Britain but instead the assault upon the USSR by the Nazis.
We must defend Communism!
Winston Churchill was an early,great and unquestionable opponent of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, he understood that the greater and more immediate threat to the West was from the Nazis. Why don’t you go and argue with Churchill?
“As Churchill tried to forge an alliance with the United States, Hitler made him the gift of another powerful ally – the Soviet Union. Despite his intense hatred of the Communists, Churchill had no hesitation in sending aid to Russia and defending Stalin in public. “If Hitler invaded Hell,” he once remarked, “I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons. (http://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/collections/churchill_papers/biography/)”
Mr.Goldman’s predictions have come true – his “I told you so” moment is well-deserved.
But what are the next predictions? We can safely assume that the Obama Administration will not due what is in the US’s best interests by encouraging remedial chaos.
But what will be the NEXT set of bad decisions we will make? Will we embrace the Brotherhood and rush succor to the Egyptian people that will build support for their government? (We Americans are such patsies!)
“The Brotherhood, on the contrary, knows that Islam is fragile, that the Muslim world is fighting a desperate rearguard battle for its existence against the encroachment of Western culture and economic globalization, and that time is running out.”
It is likely that Obama would agree with you that the miserable liberals (Wester culture) are the biggest threat to the Muslim world. I wonder if Mubarak’s removal accelerated or suppressed that war of cultures. You never know, you and Obama might also agree that the cultural war has been accelerated so the remaining time has been shortened.
“Hafez al-Assad [sic]” that would be Bashir. And not all of those being slaughtered are ‘his own people’. Some are foreign Qatar/Saudi funded mercs who bought the hype only to discover they’re getting killed rather fast. But the firing on funerals is horrible, and hopefully Assad is persuaded to take exile in Belarus. We are in a perverse situation whereby post-Gaddafi it’s considered safer to be America’s enemy than to surrender WMDs and invite in Western majors…
With the current extent of killing in Syria one can be forgiven for confusing the current Assad with his father, though I have to note that on a per-day basis his rate is way lower.
“We are in a perverse situation whereby post-Gaddafi it’s considered safer to be America’s enemy than to surrender WMDs and invite in Western majors…”
I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t safer to be America’s enemy than America’s friend. At this point I’d say not yet, but it might come to that.
Pnina — thank you! It’s hard to state the problem of our screwed up foreign policy more succintly, and I say this as someone who disagrees with David on the neccessity/effectiveness of bombing Iran. But David wasn’t exactly a fan of the Obama Administration’s excellent (and contemptuous toward Congress) Libya adventure.
I’ve had some fun with some of the pro-TSA groping, pro-Establishment Twitter dudes by pointing them to Bar Rafaeli, a truly beautiful Israeli woman who is none too impressed with TSA’s groping of women in this country. Israel gets the job done without such security threater idiocy and giving too much power to individuals that cannot help but draw pedophiles and thieves to the TSA ranks. I’m sorry I know 90% of TSA probably honest but the job is like sugar to ants for the wrong sorts of people.
But David — truly amazing that the Brothers have published your essays. Seems our enemies often speak more truth about us than our friends, even though the Book of Proverbs says otherwise (‘wounds from a friend can be trusted’).
Technology prevents history from repeating itself. The Muslim Brotherhood publishing of the essays may prolong the game but in the end the miserable liberals should prevail.
It’s not at all remarkable. The Brothers are smart and look at their predicament realistically — unlike, for example, American conservatives.
“This analysis is now becoming conventional wisdom.”
I would have figured that it was pretty much a given and always obvious to all. Unfortunately, it does not seem so.
This is one of those arguments that occurs over beers across the planet, repeatedly. Did we do the right thing by “allowing” Mubarak to fall, or by “allowing” Somoza, or Chiang-Kai-Shek, or the Shah of Iran, or any number of other leaders, to be overthrown? The question always annoys me, on several levels, because it assumes a number of at best dubious “facts” and makes several assumptions, most of which have dubious support at best. It also ignores a number of issues which we only ignore at our peril.
The first big assumption that these questions make is that whether Mubarak fell, or not, was entirely up to the United States. This part of the supposition presupposes that an omnipotent President Obama, because of his reckless disregard for the safety of Israel and his presumed support of Palestinian and other Muslim terrorists, simply “allowed” Mubarak to fall from power. The problem with this story is that it isn’t at all clear that we could have propped Mubarak up even if we had wanted to, and given that we could have propped him up, there’s absolutely no guarantee that this would have lasted indefinitely. He’s in his 80s, and there’s no guarantee that any of his children could have assumed power on his passing (assuming the United States is willing to sanction an alliance with one of these dictatorship-cum-monarchies that exist here and there around the world).
The second problem is that our meddling in a foreign nation’s internal affairs is always a problematic thing. We intervened in several Latin American and Asian countries over the last 65 years, fomenting or at least acquiescing in coups in a number of them, and in pretty much every country the vast majority of the populace still resents what we did. If the country is friendly with the United States, it’s *in spite* of the fact that we sponsored a coup that overthrew their government, not because of it. Sometimes they just flat-out hate us, with no qualifications. I’m not saying that this is a deal-breaker (sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do) but if we’re going to do something that pisses off a whole foreign nationality, it had better have a pretty big upside.
Third, given that we keep Mubarak in power, what’s to say that he doesn’t do something to bite the hand that feeds him, so to speak? If we help him stay in power, and it in any way is obvious to the Muslim Middle East that this is the case, he’s then pretty much forced to show that he’s independant of those evil Americans. Maybe he allows Hamas to operate more openly across the border with Israel, maybe he breaks off diplomatic relations with Jerusalem, who knows? Point is, even if we succeeded in doing something like this, and even if it was successful, there are no guarantees that it’ll work out in our favor.
Lastly, we supported dictatorships during the Cold War supposedly because the struggle against the Soviets was a life or death match between superpowers. Radical militant Islam isn’t a superpower, whatever else it is. I’ll grant you that the situation is serious, and that measures have to be taken; but if we keep on propping up corrupt dictators on the “at least he’s OUR corrupt dictator” logic, then eventually we’ll find ourselves morally bankrupt and without allies around the world.
Yes, I know we have to be smart about this sort of thing, and yes, I know that Egypt has now fallen into the hands of radicals who are bent on the destruction of Israel. However, Israel fought Egypt 4 times with conventional weapons (’48, ’56, ’67, ’73) and won each time. With the government in disarray and the military’s leadership disrupted by the uprising that ousted Mubarak, it seems likely that the Israelis will be able to handle the Egyptians a 5th time, if it comes to that. The Iranians are in some ways more of a threat, if they manage to develop a bomb; that one is harder to solve, and needs to be looked at carefully. However, rigging elections or preventing them in order to try and control the rest of the world just isn’t going to work any more.
We were damn “lucky” to win those wars. One can think of countless things that could have gone wrong. And “going wrong” doesn’t mean occupation or subjugation or defeat; it means a second holocaust.
BTW, Jung Chen claims the Eisenhower’s pressure the Chiang was a strong factor in his fall and the eventual murder of seventy million people.
Re your, “BTW, Jung Chen claims the Eisenhower’s pressure the Chiang was a strong factor in his fall and the eventual murder of seventy million people.”…
Who is this “Jung Chen”, and what specifically was Eisenhower’s pressure on Chiang Kai Shek to cause his fall and the subsequent murder of seventy million people?
I’d be interested in knowing about this “Jung Chen” and his personal political leanings.
The collapse of the Chiang’s Nationalists and their move to Taiwan was a complex internal Chinese affair long in the making.
I don’t believe that any US policy can stop the encroachment of the Brotherhood in Egypt. This should lead to a typically Islamic dual approach of embracing one’s own oppressors while heading deeper and deeper into a completely dysfunctional society. Suleiman, who I believe sincerely wants to save Egypt, warns of those security-conscious Israelis (“they will use any excuse to take the Sinai”). Well, Egypt has broken the Camp David Accords in most ways. It probably won’t be long before Netanyahu has to take a decision regarding the Sinai as the Egyptians let it become a full-time terror base.
Having Mubarak step down in favor of his son would have done the trick, along with some shipments of wheat to bring down the price of bread in that country. The uprising is about the price of food, that’s all. Egyptians are going hungry.
Of course, the price of food is higher than it needs to be, because we are growing fuel (ethanol) instead of food. AGW “green” nonsense is making people starve. AGW = hungry people = Arab Spring = evil, hostile, Islamist regimes.
WE caused this. Us. Our stupid politics.
Marc,
These is truth in what you say, but long term, there is still a food shortage problem. Diverting crops to biofuel was a contributor, but a newly wealthy and hungry China is equally important. They are eating more meat, and have the money to buy the grain to feed their appetite for it. Egypt used to be the world’s breadbasket. They must become more self sufficient.
That does not diminish your point, however. Pouring corn into our gas tanks is like throwing gasoline onto the fires that are erupting in Eqypt.
My family and I were in Egypt four years ago – Cairo and Alexandria. Our guide in Cairo told us that they had realigned the Nile to keep it from flooding the city each year and as a result thousands of farmers had lost their land and living. He went on further to explain that more than 70% of their food was now imported with the U.S. supplying the bulk of it. He made it very clear that the hatred for Mubarak by the populace was very high. We saw hundreds of new luxury homes being built but he told us they were not for Egyptians instead they would be sold to wealthy foreigners like the Israelis, Syrians and Libyans – Egyptians by and large could never afford something so grand so he said. We rode in brand new air-conditioned tourist buses while the Egyptian people rode squashed into open-air trolleys hanging from every window and doorway in 100+ degree weather. The older Egyptians, women and children would smile and wave at us but the men from 14-45 would yell, shake their fists and sometimes act like they were shooting at us. Everywhere we stopped had armed guards and we even had an armed guard on the bus with us. I wonder today if the Egyptians lives have seen any improvement with Mubarak removed from office. Our guide talked about wanting fair elections not an over-throwing of the government. I feel very sorry for the Egyptian people. Yes, I know they are not our friends that was made clear on our trip but when you spend time with them you realize what most of them want is what all of us want in life – to raise your children and have a job that meets your family needs. I’m sure the removal of Mubarak did not turn out well for most of the Egyptian people. Without significant tourism there is no commerce in Egypt. We do have leverage since we supply Egypt with most of their food. It will be devastating for their people but may be the only way to eradicate the cancer. The president did this and now look at our choices – awful.
“The Brotherhood, on the contrary, knows that Islam is fragile, that the Muslim world is fighting a desperate rearguard battle for its existence against the encroachment of Western culture and economic globalization, and that time is running out.”
Mr Goldman – - I am a fan, but this statement more than puzzles me. It at least Appears that the Brotherhood imagines that Islam is ascendent, not “fragile” and not “desperate.” A significant strength is its poverty, overcrowdedness, lack of education of citizens. These elements are strength because they create a passion for the cause of Islam, and a feeling of not-much-to-lose for the foot soldiers who show up at the rallies.
In short, they are strong because their young men are FAR more passionate about the cause of Islam than our young men are about the cause of whatever-the-hell-we-are-fighting-for — cheap stuff at Walmart? being allowed to drink beer? getting to see tits in magzines?
Come to Egypt and watch Egyptians struggle with ordinary doorknobs like they’re Rubik’s Cubes. This is where the fragility comes from. Once you understand the concept that every door in Egypt is an adventure, you’ll understand Egypt’s problems. Trust me on this one. Otherwise as nice a people as you’ll ever meet. However even nice people will lose it when they can’t get into or out of a room, let alone organize a parliament. And they have cable TV that shows the rest of the world effortlessly using doorknobs which only adds to their frustration, and in this regard I give you the source of Sayd Qutb’s almost completely moronic essays.
You might consider writing an essay on Egyptian doorknobs and getting it published. It sounds like a metaphor worth developing.
It’s not a metaphor really although I somewhat presented it as one. It’s a running joke between my hotel owner and myself now. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve opened doors here for guests – in 2 seconds. One time the entire staff and 3 guests worked outside my room for 30 min. while I was trying to sleep. I couldn’t take it any longer. I opened it in less than 30 sec. They will try to lock their room with a key, without realizing they just have to push a button. This is true at least 90% of the time. They will slam the door 5, 10 times as if that will do the trick. This is not anecdote but amounts to a case study over 2 years – hundreds. The guy who calmly exits his room is a passenger pigeon.
And really they are the nicest people you ever want to meet, but the idea of them going up against the Israeli army is a sad joke. I look at the owner of my hotel and say “Egypt: every door is an adventure, if not a WWE wrestling match.” He laughs. He’s leaving for America. He’s Christian.
So doors are why I’m against immigration. If you can’t open a door what are you going to bring to the table in America, especially when the liberal Left gets done convincing them to march in the streets blaming my racism for the fact they can’t open doors?
I was watching a Muslim Brotherhood guy in Parliament yesterday. Even though a microphone he could never create was stuck right in his face, he shouted to the large room. This is an analogue to cell phones in Egypt, where people imagine they are as far away as whoever they’re talking to. To say Egypt is a noisy place full of shouts and slamming doors is an understatement. Alexandria used to ponder Gordian Knots – now it’s the wonders of a doorknob.
Dear Fail Burton and Mr. Goldman,
Doorknobs indeed!! I have never been to Egypt proper, but I have been to Sinai and to 8 other Arab countries, and I definitely smile with a glimmer of recognition at what you so wisely and amusedly say. And of course they can’t stand up to the Israeli army. (Thank God) Thanks for bringing a smile.
But the passion, willingness to put their lives on the line, that there is not much to lose, that there are so many of them (Egyptians, Arabs, and Muslems), that their culture admires ruthlessness, that they control so much oil wealth, that they rule over such a vast extent of land, that they are able to get ahold of and use technology that we create, that they so deeply believe in that which we believe is insane, that genocide appears to be an acceptable way of life (see Sudan), that they don’t care a whit about their own people, that their women pop children out about six times more than our …. and on and on … makes me believe that 1. they believe they are ascendent; and 2. they may well defeat us.
I concur with writings by various analysts (including our host) on the fragility and challenges of Islamic societies and your description of life in Egypt brought back memories (I had the chance to bum around there a bit during my tour with the US Army in W. Germany in the 80s). But I think you tilt over a bit too much into condescension.
“but the idea of them going up against the Israeli army is a sad joke” – Folks in the IDF said something like this prior to 1973 and 2006. The Brits probably said something similar prior to the Indian mutiny.
“So doors are why I’m against immigration” … substitution of the melting pot culture with the welfare state and giving immigration policy the goal of family re-unification is why I’m opposed to immigration. If we fix that, I’ll take as many qualified, reasonably vetted Egyptian cardiologists and economists as can make it out of that sad country.
The Muslim world can be an incredibly frustrating, disappointing and often cruel place. But I’ve also experienced there the sort of hospitality and gallantry which sometimes seems rare here (at least on the East Coast). For example, during the recent insurgent attack on the parliament the NYT reports that an Afghan MP grabbed a rifle from his bodyguard and went up to the roof to shoot it out with the INS for an extended period until Afghan security force arrived. It’s hard to imagine Sen. Harry Reid doing the same.
The U.S. didn’t help throw Mubarak out and people who say such things never have a shred of proof to back up the assertion nor anything to say how we could’ve kept him in power; you don’t think the Egyptian military tried? They could do nothing in the face of hundreds of thousands in the streets in Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said. We had nothing to do with it, one way or the other. You think the average American in Washington knew who Khaled Said was or that some guy in Tunisia would set himself on fire?
The revolution happened for the same reason Nasser came to power. Three increasingly out of touch Presidents just like the increasingly out of touch dynasty that Nasser replaced. The French and English couldn’t stop it then, nothing could’ve stopped it now.
I’m all for considering the beam in our eye rather than the mote in the other fellow’s, but the fact is that the Egyptians are among the world’s biggest losers: graduates of the state-run diploma mills can’t get a job in the mailroom of a multinational corporation. Nearly half are illiterate. If you are a young Egyptian male, you know your job prospects are zero (unless you get a government job, or you are among the few that study at foreign universities); your family is at risk; your kids have no prospects; and your country is going down the drain. And your traditional culture is under bombardment from Western pop culture. I’d call that fragile. That’s what produces suicidal militancy. People know they have nothing to lose.
Gosh, David! Halfway through reading your post, I was thinking you were talking about the United States.
Dysfunctional countries like those in the Muslim and Third World have too much pride and disillusionment and cannot/will not ask “functional” nations for help or advisement on how to manage a society or economy. When it’s hammered in to your head for your whole life that they are superior to Western Infidels and Jews, there is no hope from our standpoint that it will ever get better plus it is impossible for us to even try to help them and profoundly naive for us to think we can even try. Only stupid Liberals like Obama think we should forever pour our resources in to these places when we should actually avoid them unless they threaten us with piracy, nukes, or disease.
A prime, non Islamic example would be Zimbabwe’s Mugabe who oversaw Rhodesia’s decline form Africa’s “breadbasket” with Western infrastructure to Africa’s “basketcase” under the auspices of Black Pride.
The joke known as the arab spring was a brainchild of Hilary Clinton and the pro Islamist claque which she has installed in the state department. The overthrow of Khaddafi in Libya has not made that country any better; the defeat of Mubarak in Egypt has not made this country any better and her vaunted support for the Islamic bandits in Kosovo and Serbia has not made that area any safer. Clinton and her Ivy League gang have no idea of what is going on in the world. They have their well financed academic milieu which sits around and drinks and fornicates until dawn and then they come up with all the answers to the world’s problem after they sober up. Clinton is now pushing for intervention in Syria, another basket case. It is hard for an intelligent people to know who the good arabs are and who the bad arabs are but the Ivy Leaguers they know everything and they control the media to flak their perverted ideas of reality. Hilary Clinton sucking out of beer bottle at a Colombian night club surrounded by her girlfriends says it all.
Boy! Have you touched all the bases!
Now why the dickens don’t the Country Clubbers at the GOP call them out as bluntly as you do?
Probably ’cause they’re cut from the same cloth, all 60s creeps and they’re spawn ever since.
PS: Hillary’s butchy head staffer’s mother is a mover in the Muslim Sisterhood.
Sad part about this is that most of this could have been avoided in Egypt. We should have just left Egypt alone and let Mubarak deal with the demonstrators in his own way. Would there have been deaths and shootings? Probably, but the cold hard truth of the matter is that that would have been Mubarak’s problem, not ours. Obama had to stick his nose into somebody else’s civil war, again, and now we’re responsible for what happened in Egypt and look at the consequences. Just like in Libya. Obama stuck his nose in another country’s civil war and now look at what we have. We have a Libya that is just as unstable and dangerous as Somalia, only with a lot of oil and a lot closer to Europe. Swell. Next time, before you overthrow a dictator, make darn sure you know what is going to replace him. If not, or if you can’t do that, then stay out of it. We don’t need to stick our noses into every civil war on this planet.
Amen.
D. Goldman nails it down very realistically. In the end the arab-muslim countries have no choice, so they hope (collectively)another war will save them. I expect them to wage a war against Israel and peacefully, though en masse enter Europe and break loose then. That will be the moment they undersign their definitive and last chapter of their history.
The West will suffer too and be partly destroyed, though this stems from their own weak (and wrong) political and strategic choices.
King Solomon very old and wise dictum still stands:
Pride goes before ruin, Arrogance before failure!
Hosni and Suzanne Mubarak were doing their best to end female genital mutilation in Egypt. People everywhere should be aware of this problem and pressure Egypt to end the practice.
http://www.tnr.com/article/world/96555/egypt-genital-mutilation-fgm-muslim-brotherhood
I think it was planned by Obama all along to get the Muslim Brotherhood in power.
It can’t be good to be a pro-Palestinian activist these days.
No it can’t be good being a Palestinian these days as Khaled Abu Toameh writes in Why Is Jordan Keeping Out Palestinian Refugees?
about King Abdullah of Jordan refusing entry to those Palestinians fleeing the eye doctor’s wrath in Syria.
Photo: Senate Democrats Not Even Showing Up for Budget Meetings At This Point
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2012/04/18/photo_senate_democrats_shame
Agree with JFM above. Lend Lease paired up America’s miraculous productive might with Russian blood and brute force. Nazis didn’t have a chance post December 8th 1941 when they failed to force a negotiated peace by Stalin. Likelihood of U.S. entry into the war was what kept Stalin from following through on half hearted peace feelers put out via Bulgarians in October 1941. Even the Germans’ relatively spectacular advances in southern Russia in the summer of 42′ were just stepping deeper into the Bear’s trap, with Romanians/Italians increasingly having to cover their flanks. Stabilizing the lines after the hasty retreat from the gates of Moscow when the Siberians and heavy KV tanks rolled over them alone cost the Germans 300-400,000 men.
This is what Americans absolutely need to hear but will not hear, and not listen if they do, as we continue to espouse, with great anticipation, the coming of the “new Middle East” steeped in western style dedication to human rights, dignity and all the personal freedoms that go with it, particularly our devotion to the religious kind.
The west as it is currently constituted absolutely cannot countenance even one civilian casualty while conducting wars dedicated to the liberation and democratization of societies, dragging them kicking and screaming with the “path to glory” lubricated by the blood of the troops we assign to do the impossible and God help them if they cross the politically correct line in the process.
This illuminating and important article is quoted with enthusiastic appreciation here:
http://www.theatheistconservative.com/2012/04/20/when-its-good-to-make-things-worse/
Oscumbag supports the jihadists because he is one of them.He is helping Islam take over the entire middle east, country by country, and few are willing to see it. Oratsbutt is a traitor, doing all he can to overthrow our Constitution and install a New World Order as per his CFR masters.
Think some in D.C. are pissed off about Russia now defending its base at Tartus in Syria? Imagine how they’ll react when Greece invites the Russian Mediterranean fleet to set up shop in the Pireaus. Once again it seems random bloggers like Stanislav Mishin aka Mat Rodina can see further ahead than the hacks at the Jamestown Foundation and other D.C. think tanks that claim to have insight on Vlad the Bad’s Revived Evil Empire.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/05/us-greece-kammenos-idUSBRE8440ED20120505
Rising star in Greek conservative politics derides EU as ‘German dominated 4th Reich’, says Greece should rely more on trade with Russia, China and Israel (energy)
To all Belmont Clubbers who haven’t heard from me over there: Senor Equis told you this was coming.