Neophyte, Come Home!

Neophyte, Come Home!

©2013  Ross Williams

Been watching the news, lately?  A winter of discontent seems to have overtaken the ballyhooed Arab Spring.

Last we looked, the Egyptian Parliament elected by the suddenly free people of Egypt was consisting of 80% anti-democratic islamists and 20% various pro-democracy seats – of which a grand total of 2 seats, comprising 0.4% – belonged to the party of those student activists who first descended upon Tahrir Square to protest against Mubarak’s rule in the first place.

Most of the world’s republics choose their Chief Executive by a vote of the Legislature, and Egypt is no exception.  This is what makes the election of the Legislature so important in so many places.  The US, sadly, not being among them.

Just imagine what kind of President we would have if a Democrat Senate and a Republican House did the choosing instead of 80 million Americans.  Would we have had Obama?  Would we have had Bush?

But I digress.

With Egypt’s Parliament being 80% anti-democratic islamists, what sort of President do you think they’d select?

A] a statesman like Mohamed ElBaradie who, unlike some I could name, actually earned the Nobel Prize he was awarded, and who is respected worldwide, despite his connection with the UN, or

B] an islamist henchman named Mohamed Morsi, who supports Sharia, al Qaida, unlimited executive authority [as long as the executive is an islamist named Morsi] and has a severe loathing of both democracy and Israel.

That’s right.

Morsi became Egypt’s President – the world’s boobs call him The First Democratically-Elected President in Egypt’s History® – and upon taking office he accomplished these feats of anti-democracy unilateralism:

He arrested pro-democracy activists for being pro-democracy – those whose activities led to the elections that ultimately put him in power – including those from Western nations, to include a few dozen from the United States … including the son of an Obama Cabinet Secretary, Ray LaHood;

He suspended the type of free elections that put him and his islamist kin in power, returning to the same sort of elections that Mubarak had run: you can vote for anyone you like as long as it’s me;

He curtailed the majority of Western tourism traffic into and through much of Egypt, and by which Egypt made most of its money.  Western tourism was suddenly seen as “undesirable”, mostly because those tourists were not Muslim;

He suspended much of Egypt’s archeological activities as those activities were not based upon post-Islamic studies, but instead were dedicated to digging up dead Pharaohs.  Dead Pharaohs are not Islamic enough for the new regime;

He reinstated the Legislature that had been disbanded by the Egyptian Supreme Court, but gave himself “supreme” legislative authority anyway, just in case.  This legislative authority was declared to be beyond legislative or judicial review;

He denounced all Jews and publicly called for their extermination; and

He imposed Sharia law, which was greeted warmly by the 80% islamists in Parliament, but the 20% democracists opposed it, saying "it might lead to religious rule".

All this within three months.

Within five months of him taking office and reinventing himself as a second Mubarak only bigger and better, the protests in Tahrir Square started up again.  Most American neophytes would claim that this is nothing worse than being sent back to square one.  Those who know world politics understand it to be significantly more sinister than that.

Both Morsi and Mubarak are autocrats, yes, but their similarities truly end there.  It matters greatly upon whom their autocracies were levied.

Mubarak was onerously dictatorial upon islamists – primarily the Muslim Brotherhood and its subsidiaries, as well as the Salafis.  He left the academics, the intellectuals, the Jews and Copts, the Western tourists, the archeologists, and the run-of-the-mill political contrarian whose major input consisted of shouting “The King is a fink” … he left these people alone.  These people – if we are to believe the American neophyte – are 98% of the population in each nation of the Muslim world.  Egyptian women had more political freedoms than women in almost any other Muslim nation.

On the other hand, Morsi allowed the islamists to run rampant, killing Jews and Copts, burning their homes and shops, and instead imprisoned political contrarians and women wearing mascara, cut off Western tourism, hamstrung the academics and intellectuals, and – despite naming token women, Jews and Copts to positions in his government – declared that being a woman, Jew or Copt was effectively illegal, considering that Egypt was now under Sharia law.

Does any American neophyte sincerely believe that Mubarak is, in any meaningful way, comparable to Morsi as regards imperious despotism?

In a similar vein, does any American neophyte believe the world is better off with the Ayatollahs running Iran in place of the Shah?  The Shah was an autocrat toward the islamists who kept shooting at him; the Ayatollahs are autocrats toward everyone else in Iran and the rest of the world besides.

And just like the Shah of Iran, Mubarak imposed severe restraints on islamists’ activities because of their history of being … for lack of a better term … Grade-A Assholes.  The major islamist group in Egypt has been Muslim Brotherhood.  A brief – very brief – list of their activities over the past three generations includes:

Staging three coups, of which one was successful;

Creating two terrorist groups – Hamas and Islamic Jihad – and being a primary financial contributor to a third: Hezbollah;

Manipulating Egyptian politics behind the scenes for the purpose of joining other Arab states in perpetual war against Israel; and

Assassinating Anwar Sadat for his being smart enough to realize that perpetual war with Israel qua Israel was slow-motion national suicide.

For better or worse, Egypt doesn’t have the same rules as we do in the US, and Mubarak was allowed to do what he wanted to his country’s assholes.  And he did, relatively benignly all things considered.  The major imposition upon them was that they were not allowed to seek or hold office.  The neophytes in America, though, cried foul, for they believe that every nation on the planet deserves US political freedoms even if it is the freedom to obliterate everyone else’s political freedoms.  Furthermore, other nations are  obliged to have our political freedoms imposed upon them if they resist adopting them willingly.  …which is mighty high-handed and autocratic of these American neophytes, a sentiment that is echoed by much of the rest of the world, I might add.

Not that this high-handedness is unique to the American neophyte.  Our politicians suffer the same condition.  When American political ideals are imposed on other nations by Republican administrations, the American neophyte calls it imperialism, hegemony and regime change; when these same ideals are imposed on other nations by Democrat administrations, it is called self-determination.   ToMAYto, toMAHto.

For what it’s worth, the second-most influential group of islamists in Egypt is the Salafis, who are the political arm of the Wahabi-sect Sunni, … whose military arm is better known as al Qaida.

How does the American neophyte feel about it all now?

Because Egypt’s military has been caught so many times in the cross-hairs of Egyptian islamists’ power-plays – being forced to counter-coup and install Nasser, and then being the guys with the targets on their backs when islamists’ manipulation inspired yet another war with Israel … that Egypt invariably lost – Egypt’s military doesn’t like islamists any better than Mubarak did.  Can you blame them?

The military laid down rules when the Tahrir Square revolution first happened: they don’t really care who wins as long as it’s not the islamists, because they [the military] aren’t going to go through that again.  Once, twice, three times, was more than enough.

Eight months into the presidency of Morsi, however, and eight months of Morsi advertising that Egypt will indeed go through all that again, to include anti-Israeli agitation and islamist nonsense in general, the Egyptian military forcibly removed Morsi from power last week and restated their rules: they don’t care who runs the country as long as it’s not the islamists.  They don’t want to run the country themselves, but if it’s going to be a choice of the military or the islamists, then the military it is.

Once again, we are seeing American neophytes declaring that they haven’t the sense to come in out of someone else's war.  Huge wads of Americans are boo-hooing over this denial of Democracy by military force, and refusing to understand that Democracy was never in the game to begin with.  Elections, to the power-brokers in most of the world, simply exist as a means to placate idiot Americans, in Washington or otherwise, dumb enough to think that one election is as good as another.

And millions of these Americans, taking their clues from the clueless Jimmuh Cahtuh, all need to sit down and shut up.  They’re making the rest of us look stupid.