Egypt and The Prezzy

Staring at the wreckage of American foreign policy in Egypt is an almost gleeful experience. The Muslim Brotherhood was nothing more than a politically correct gang of thugs which secured a politically correct patron in Pres. Barack Obama.

I’m sure I view this differently than the vast, unwashed monkey mass that Rush Limbaugh affectionately refers to as the “low information voter”. I’ve worked for both Israelis and Palestinians and probably view both through jaundiced eye since 9/11. Seeing things as they are means more to me than being polite to people who view the world through the distorting lens of television and blow dried universe it presents.

I wrote this in 2002, mostly in an attempt to straighten out my own feelings about the catastrophe that happened on that sunny morn in September:

July 5th [2002] -- … I was actually talking to my boss on the phone when the first plane hit. He was stuck in traffic on the George Washington Bridge when I told him about a commercial jet colliding with the WTC. He said he could see the smoke. I went into historical Dave mode, explaining that this wasn't the first time a plane had hit a tall building in New York City; the first time it happened, a B-24 hit the Empire State on the 72nd floor in 1947. My boss, an Israeli, was impressed with my knowledge, but didn't think it was an accident. He said to me: "what to do want to bet the pilot was named Mohammed?"

Then, the second plane hit.

At the time, I standing in my living room watching CNBC and waiting for a limo that was supposed to take me to La Guardia for a flight to Toronto to meet with a company whose name I no longer remember. Needless to say, I didn’t make it.

In my experience, limited as it may be, the Middle East is less about religion and more about tribal affiliation. This bit from today’s Debka – an Israeli news site – is probably more illustrative than any gibberish I could spew out. Here are power grafs:

By means of the successful military putsch in Cairo, Saudi King Abdullah had his revenge for the toppling of his friend Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, for which he has never forgiven President Obama whom he held responsible.

The Saudi-Gulf intervention in Egypt’s change of government also ushers in a new stage of the Arab Revolt for the Middle East. For the first time, a group of traditionally pro-US conservative Arab governments has struck out on its own to fill the leadership vacuum left by the Obama administration’s unwillingness to pursue direct initiatives in the savage Syrian civil war or forcibly preempt Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb.

You can read the whole thing here: 

The underlying truth that the Israelis are publishing of course doesn’t sync with the noise being propagated by the Anglo-American news machine, which howls about this being a coup against a properly constituted democracy. And it might be.

But there is another and more profound truth to be uncovered in the spectacular crash of the Muslim Brotherhood-led Egyptian government; one that might be a little easier to explain.

To say that Hosni Mubarak was a doddering old fool that ran Egypt like a family business is to be a Master of the Obvious™. The desire to impose a “more enlightened” regime has been the goal of worldwide progressives everywhere. That’s certainly one of the reason President Obama embraced The Muslim Brotherhood: it is a “people’s movement” and we all know how that can run a thrill up the leg of any progressive.

The truth, however, is quite a bit uglier. Images of actual Africans filtering out of Egypt paint an altogether unflattering portrait of our first African American President. They call The Prezzy out on the carpet like any other American Imperialist President:

Ah, but hope springs eternal, at least for some. The Progressive Dream for the Middle East of a People’s Republic united against the Evil Capitalists in Tel Aviv seems to have imploded again and this time the bad guys aren’t wearing yarmulkes. Instead, it was the tribe with Petro-dollars dispatching an uppity neighbor whose only export seems to be terrorism.

And who can blame them? They have the biggest house on the block, with a nice yard and an easy lifestyle. Then, all of sudden, the next door neighbors go from being quiet gun freaks who mind their own business to a gang of religious crackpots, out to proselytize the world.

Of course, the offended neighbors would act; who wouldn’t? And of course they would hold responsible the numbskull that purchased the property and allowed the nutcases move in.

All of which bring me bring me back to a post 9-11 worldview. If The Prezzy and his gang of politically correct thugs can’t seem to wrap their collective brains around what actually happening on the ground, we can expect more attacks like the one in Bengazi (remember Bengazi?) And for the most part, they’d be deserved. An arrogant superpower than meddles in the affairs of stable governments however onerous, deserves blowback. From the view of realpolitik – the only view to which I subscribe – the Egyptian counter revolution was perfectly predictable and in the end, infinitely preferable to another puppet dictatorship, however politically correct.