December 14, 2005
Idealism vs. Realism in Egypt
By Pat
Buchanan
In 1933, a
neo-fascist "Young Egypt" movement, modeled on the Nazi
Party, was founded. Among its supporters were two young nationalist
officers, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat.
When, in
1942, Rommel's Afrika Corps smashed into Egypt and was 100 miles
from Alexandria, Sadat, colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood,
planned an anti-British uprising. In a proposed treaty with Nazi
Germany, Berlin was to recognize an independent Egypt, which was
to be pro-Axis. In return, Sadat wrote, "No British soldier
would leave Cairo alive."
In 1970,
when the dictator Nasser died, he was replaced by his vice president,
Sadat, who demanded return of the Sinai, lost in the Six-Day War.
Ignored, Sadat launched the Yom Kippur War, crossed the Suez Canal
in force, and, with his Syrian allies, threatened Israel itself.
President
Nixon reacted immediately, sending massive aid to Israel and warning
Moscow not to intervene, as Ariel Sharon led his brigade across
the canal to cut off food and water to Egypt's Third Army on the
east bank. Nixon and Kissinger intervened with Israel to prevent
the annihilation of the Third Army.
In 1974,
Nixon made a triumphal visit to Egypt. Four years later, Jimmy
Carter brokered the Camp David accord between Menachem Begin,
who had blown up the King David Hotel in 1946, and Sadat, the
Nazi collaborator. Begin, Sadat and Carter would all win the Nobel
Prize for Peace for Camp David.
Nixon's
Middle East policy was designed to secure U.S. vital interests
in the region, which required restoration of ties to an Egypt
led by a military dictator and ex-Nazi sympathizer. Neither Nixon
nor Carter insisted that Sadat hold elections before brokering
the truce with Israel or the permanent peace. They did not let
the best become the enemy of the good.
Nor did
the Israelis make such a demand. Indeed, in Israel in June 1967
with Nixon, I heard David Ben-Gurion himself express the hope
that Nasser would survive his humiliation in the Six-Day War because,
said Ben-Gurion, Nasser alone could conclude a peace with Israel
that Arabs might accept. Ben-Gurion did not believe you needed
to democratize Egypt before you made peace with Egypt.
This is
a slice of the U.S. record in the Mideast that Condi Rice dismissed
as six decades of failure last summer in Cairo: "For 60 years,
my country ... pursued stability at the expense of democracy in
this region ... and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a
different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations
of all people."
And how is the Rice-Bush democracy project coming in Cairo?
Not so good.
In September, President Hosni Mubarak, who succeeded the assassinated
Sadat in 1981, won yet another six-year term in an election marked
by fraud. In the parliamentary elections just ended, the Tomorrow
Party of Ayman Nour, leader of the secular democratic forces,
looked like the Party of Yesterday. It won next to nothing, and
Nour ended up in a jailhouse, courtesy of a Mubarak judge.
By harassing
opponents and excluding the Muslim Brotherhood, Mubarak fixed
the outcome so his National Democratic Party won 314 of 454 seats,
the two-thirds needed to make parliament a rubber stamp. But if
the biggest loser was the democratic opposition of Nour, which
got a pathetic smattering of votes, the winner was the Muslim
Brotherhood.
Denied the
right to participate as a party, the Brotherhood backed independent
candidates who swept to victory in 60 percent of the races they
contested. They would have done better, were it not for the thuggery
of NDP mobs and Mubarak's security police, which The Washington
Post described in an editorial, "Egypt's Ugly Election":
"The
last days of Egypt's month-long parliamentary election were shameful.
Government security forces and gangs of thugs from the (NDP) blockaded
access to dozens of polling sites where opposition candidates
were strong. In several cases they opened fire on citizens who
tried to vote; 10 people were reported killed. Inside the election
stations, government supporters blatantly stuffed ballot boxes
in full view of judicial monitors."
Where does
that leave Egyptian democracy? The Mubarak regime, once the pillar
of U.S. policy in the Middle East, has been delegitimized by brutality
and fraud, and has jeopardized its $1.8 billion in U.S. aid. The
Muslim Brotherhood, target of the thuggery, has seen its credentials
burnished and is now the alternative to Mubarak.
So it goes.
We hail the fall of Czar Nicholas and get Lenin. We go to war
to hang the Prussian Kaiser and get an Austrian corporal named
Hitler. We cut off aid to the "corrupt" regime of Chiang
Kai-shek and get Mao Zedong. We denounce Lon Nol and get Pol Pot.
We destabilize the Shah and get the Ayatollah.
How many
times must we relearn the lesson? The road to hell is paved with
good intentions, and the fruits of Wilsonian idealism are rarely
ideal.
Copyright
2005 Creators Syndicate
