The Egyptian Solution

Writing about the current Egyptian crisis, former Clinton adviser-turned-critic, Dick Morris, advises President Obama to back Mubarak. (“Obama is losing Egypt” thehill.com, February 1, 2011)

If Egypt falls, Obama will have permanently damaged America’s vital interests. Look at what Carter’s abandonment of the shah has already cost the world and is likely to cost it in the future. We now face the possibility that a radicalized Egypt could be Obama’s gift to the globe.

Morris seems to be writing with Israel’s best interests in mind, rather than those of the U.S.. I’m sure Israel would rather back Mubarak, the devil we know, with whom Israel has reached a stable, working accommodation, rather than take a chance on replacing him with a more fundamentalist regime on Israel’s flank. So Morris raises the specter of a fundamentalist Egypt ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to Obama’s re-election hopes and to American interests. He leaves unspoken the more compelling argument in favor of Israel’s interests other than to state darkly: “If Egypt and Iran were to work in tandem, they could control the region.”

If Mubarak were to fall, a fundamentalist Egypt is by no means certain. Correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression of Egyptians is that, on the whole, they are considerably more liberal than, say, Iranian Shia, Saudi Wahabi and Afghan Taliban. When I toured Egypt a couple of years ago, I sensed no hostility toward Americans on the street, in the bazaars and markets, in the home of the upper-middle class Egyptian family with whom we dined or from the Egyptian farmer whose mud-brick home we visited, the walls of which displayed crude paintings of the Ka’aba and a ship (signifying his pilgrimage to Mecca) alongside a picture of Barack Obama above the depiction of his wife at prayer. Moreover, Egypt can ill-afford confrontation with the West, dependent, as they are, on Western tourism as their primary source of income. Nor can the Egyptian military afford to alienate its Western patrons. (Egypt is the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, after Israel, well north of $1.3 billion annually, of which 70% reportedly goes to support the Egyptian military.)

Backing the 82-year old dictator, who has announced he will not seek re-election in September, seems short-sighted, clinging to the expiring, tainted old order, rather than investing political capital in the Arab future, embodied in the liberal younger generation now in revolt, not just in Egypt, but throughout the Arab world, including Iran. Moreover, effectively backing Mubarak now would simply postpone the inevitable day of reckoning when he is off the ballot in September.

So let us consider the other side of the story. What if the revolution produces a functioning liberal democracy after Obama had backed Mubarak, as Morris advises? Obama and the U.S. would be seen ‘on the wrong side of history’ and, what is worse, hypocritical in failing to back liberal democracy, the very principle for which the U.S. has purportedly invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

In January 2009 I spoke with Jewish playwright David Mamet after his presentation at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco:

“You say Israel wants only peace within its borders. You are a writer with a great imagination. How do you imagine Israel attaining such a peace?” I asked. His first response was “I don’t know,” but quickly added: “I think the Islamic world will undergo a reformation – not unlike the Catholic reformation that began in the 16th century – but it will probably take a long, long time.” He paused and then continued: “Much as I dislike Bush, in a hundred years the world may look back at the establishment of a democracy in Iraq as the seed of that reformation.”

Prescient? In a strange twist of history, Obama may have the opportunity to fulfill a Bush legacy. Perhaps if he were to frame it that way, Obama might achieve that elusive bi-partisan support he seeks. Curiouser and curiouser.

Given the Egyptian military’s decisive swing vote in the current crisis, the U.S., by threatening to cut off military aid, may possess the leverage to make the Egyptian revolution succeed with the military’s help. Moreover, what downside for the U.S. is there in backing the anti-Mubarak protesters even if Mubarak clings to power? Dependent as Egypt is on transit fees from the Suez Canal, American tourists and foreign aid, Mubarak could do little more than pout and return to business as usual. There are no Soviets with whom Mubarak could threaten to side, as did Nasser.

At some point the U.S. has to take a stand in favor not only of liberal democracy, but also, more importantly, of de-escalation of conflict and confrontation with Muslims to achieve a modus vivendi with Islam, just as the West did with the Soviet Union. Backing the anti-Mubarak protesters and pulling Western troops out of the Middle East are essential steps toward a solution to America’s predicament in the region. Both steps are within Obama’s powers to command as C-I-C. Otherwise, given human nature, amply demonstrated throughout history, we can expect ‘provocation’ will be met with ‘retaliation’ in an unending algorithm escalating irreversibly to all-out war between the West and Islam in which all weapons will be unlimbered, risking annihilation.

No doubt the extreme right will cry “Munich!” and “Cut-and-run!” to which I would reply “Détente” and “Rapprochement.”