In Egypt, Army Threatens Coup while U.S. Policy has backed the Regime

Posted: 01 Jul 2013 09:07 AM PDT By Barry Rubin The news that the army has given a 48 hour ultimatum that unless stability returns it will step in has proven the headline of this article correct. Is the one-year-old experiment in Egyptian democracy going to end in the way that could have happened much easier in February 2011--that is a continuity of the regime without Mubarak'? I should be sufficiently cautious to say that it is possible if everyone played nice they will stop BUT why should the opposition leave when they want the army to stage a coup? Surely the generals know that. Let us remember that four years ago Obama gave his Cairo speech sitting the Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the front row. President Husni Mubarak was insulted and it was the first hint that the Obama Administration would support Islamist regimes in the Arab world. Then Obama vetoed the State Department plan for a continuation of the old regime without Mubarak. Then Obama publicly announced--before anyone asked him--that the United States would not mind if the Brotherhood was in government. Then Obama did not give disproportionate help to the moderates. Then Obama pressed the army to get out of power quickly, which the moderates opposed since they needed more time than the Islamists to organize. Many will say that the president of the United States cannot of course control events in Egypt. That's true.'But he did everything possible to lead to this crisis. Remember when Obama apologized for America's past support of dictators? Well, how about this one? I wonder if one day people will write that President Barack Obama is remarkably inept at foreign policy. Readers often say to me: You talk of stupidity and incompetence but he is doing this on purpose. Let me make this clear: you can have a bad policy and a bad strategy but make it look good. The point is that Obama policy is so obviously bad—having circles run around it by Iran; the shameful Benghazi affair; the love affair with the Turkish regime; Kerry behaving as if he’ll have peace in the Middle East next Thursday and he cannot understand why no one ever thought of this before. The height of administration wisdom in the Middle East is as if the most useful book has been The Dummy’s Guide to Ventriloquism. The implication of this, however, is that it is the public that is dumb or misled. Try this one out. Say to a friend or someone: Does it bother you that the United States is backing a regime led by anti-American, anti-Christian, antisemitic, anti-women, and anti-gay rulers who are unrepentant former Nazi collaborators? I usually find that people who are selected at random politically sort of shrug. Then ask, do you believe that such rulers will become moderate?. Let’s analyze Obama’s statement to see why I say that his policy is stupid and incompetent regardless of what you think his goals were: PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Well, on Egypt, obviously we’re all looking at the situation there with concern. The United States has supported democracy in Egypt. It has been challenging given that there is not a tradition of democracy in Egypt. And the Egyptian people have been finding their way.”  Here is one of many occasions where Obama is not really Politically Correct because he is ignorant of history and looks down a Third World people as backward. --Egypt has a lot of experience with democracy during the 1922-1952 period. --Might it be questionable also whether the United States should support democracy if that is so challenging that U.S. interests cannot be secured that way? --Might the U.S. government have done more to help Egyptians “finding their way” by encouraging the military to take longer to make a tradition rather than keep demanding  things go faster and faster, which is what the better-organized Muslim Brotherhood wanted but not the moderates who needed more time. “Our most immediate concern with respect to protests this weekend have to do with our embassies and consulates. And so we have been in direct contact with the Egyptian government, and we have done a whole range of planning to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to keep our embassies and consulate protected, and our diplomats and personnel there safe.” Of course, that is the job of the president but I feel as if this statement was rather cowardly. He should have said that our most immediate concern is that violence not break out; that “extremists” not exploit it, and that Egypt remained stable. Question: Why did Obama use this formulation? Think? Because of Benghazi of course. This time, though, Obama has communicated that he's trembling before the crisis, what a great Middle East expert once called the "preemptive cringe." Clearly he should know that his saying this is likely to make it more likely for American diplomats and institutions to be targeted. (Remind you of a certain video?) There is a big problem, however, Who gets dibs on the American embassy: the regime and its supporters who think that America is the Great Infidel or the opposition which thinks that Obama has sold them out their worst enemy. The answer: Even hours regime supporters burn down U.S. facilities; odd hours the opposition does. Who says Obama isn't bringing people together? Obama then did continue: “But, more broadly, what we’ve said publicly and what we’ve said privately is that we support peaceful process -- or peaceful protests and peaceful methods of bringing about change in Egypt. I think every party has to denounce violence.” A peaceful process toward what? A smart Obama might have spoken about the rule of law and the courts, thus giving some hope to the opposition. The judges will soon rule on the legality of the last parliamentary election. He could have dropped this in as a hint. As for “denouncing violence that sounds good but why doesn’t he mention that the Islamists, especially the Salafis, have been using violence. Again, this is why the opposition knows the Obama Administration is on the Muslim Brotherhood side. . “We’d like to see the opposition and President Morsi engaged in a more constructive conversation around how they move their country forward, because nobody is benefiting from the current stalemate that exists there.” Zoinks! A “more constructive conversation?” What is this a community organizer’s seminar?  This has  been parallel to what Obama has been calling for during the Syrian civil war. How about setting some strategic goals? “And we do not take sides in terms of who should be elected by the Egyptian people. We do take sides in terms of observing a process for democracy and rule of law.” We don’t care who wins, says Obama, we only care about the process.In other words if you have the votes you can go on getting U.S. arms, money, and diplomatic support while you burn down churches, etc. “And that all the players there engage in the necessary tough compromises so that they can start focusing on the things that probably matter most to the ordinary Egyptian, which is jobs, energy costs, food costs, housing, schooling for their kids, creating economic opportunity.” Sounds like a New York Times editorial which tells people what they don’t plan to do. They aren’t going to care about such a focus. When has any ideological dictatorship, whether or not elected, done so? This is a fantasy world. Anyway, how well has Obama focused on these things? Jobs are down; food and housing and energy cost more, nothing has been done toward energy independence, schooling is worse, and where’s economic opportunity? ”And Egypt, I think, for the last year and a half, two years, has had great difficult focusing on those vital issues.’ Now why is that? Because you supported a situation that ensured Egypt would be unstable! YOU DID IT! Imagine this scene, the back of an old taxi bumping along in the dark, near a waterfront area. Obama: Look, kid, the dictator we got you for a dictator...he brought you along too fast. Egypt: It wasn't him, Charley. It was you. Remember that night in al-Tahrir Square? You came down to my dressing room and said, "Kid, this ain't your night. We're going for the price on the Brotherhood. So what happens, he gets the title shot outdoors in the ball park...and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville! You was my ally, Charley. You should have looked out for me a little bit. Let's face it. It was you, Charley! Obama went on: “So, again, top priority: Making sure that our embassies and consulates are prepared for this wave of protests. Number two, we are supportive of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly inside of Egypt, but we would urge all parties to make sure that they’re not engaging in violence, and that police and military are showing appropriate restraint. And number three, how do we make sure that we get this political process back on track. And that’s a difficult and challenging situation. But Egypt is the largest country in the Arab world, and I think the entire region is concerned that if Egypt continues with this constant instability, that that has adverse effects more broadly.” Political process?” What junk in strategic terms. Look, the Muslim Brotherhood wants to fundamentally transform Egyptian society. It wants to divide the society and set groups against each other. It wants to act in a way that undermines the already sick economy. It wants to thoroughly vilify its opponents but then demands “compromise” which means surrender. Surely Obama must be familiar with situations of that kind? This article is published on PJ Media.

BREAKING NEWS: Egypt's Army Threatens Intervention: Gives 48 Hours Posted: 01 Jul 2013 08:02 AM PDT Egyptian television has just broadcast a statement by the armed forces.If the current turmoil is not resolved within 48 hours, the armed forces will have to announce a new "roadmap" for the future and will enforce new measures that would include all factions. This is either a warning that everyone better get off the streets or an actual coup threat to remove the government.

As Slander and Hatred Mount: Where is the Rallying for Israel Posted: 30 Jun 2013 09:22 AM PDT I have a particular respect for the second Lord Melchett, Henry Mond (1898-1949). My interest in him began simply because of the nearby street named after him, but then expanded when I did my research for a book, Assimilation and its Discontents about Jewish history.  And now he has illuminated, from an obscure 75-year-old book, the current international Jewish situation.   Let me start at the beginning. The first Lord Melchett, Alfred Mond, built on his own father’s success as a chemist and became an extraordinary business success. He died in 1930 and was succeeded by his son, Henry. Both men were strong and active Zionists, both in donations and in politics. Despite Alfred’s support for Zionism, the family’s social ambitions he was raised in the Anglican church. After becoming the second baron Melchett, Henry returned to Judaism in his 30s. The first piece of wisdom Henry taught me was a story he told that went like this. He and his wife were founders of Tel Mond and he was head of the British Agency for Palestine. Mond also tried to help Jews escape Germany. When he was a Liberal member of parliament during the time of Nazi rule in Germany, Henry was asked, to his astonishment, why he spent so time for Jewish and Zionist causes. He replied that Britain had many people to defend its interests; the Jews had very few. Still, today more true than many people realize despite the numerous and often well-funded groups that do little or nothing effective. But I digress. I hadn’t known that Mond had written anything much but today I pulled down a dusty book entitled Twelve Jews, published in that fateful year 1934. Mond’s contribution is a chapter on Chaim Weizmann. What caught my eye was this passage: “In 1933, when the Hitler menace struck Jewry the greatest blow it has received since the Middle Ages…Jews who had avoided Zionism like the Plague became supporters of the movement both in opinion and act. Weizmann had the extraordinary experience of addressing a meeting…on a platform where his two immediate supporters one either hand were L.G. Montefiore and Mr. Anthony de Rothschild, who had been signatories to a letter protesting against the Balfour Declaration as being impracticable and undesirable sixteen years previously.” Now I don’t want to exaggerate but I suggest that the menace facing the Jewish people today is the greatest certainly since that time and the second greatest since the end of the Middle Ages. I will stress that it is a distant second but number two, indeed. The voices baying for Jewish blood, the fashionableness of antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric, are once again at a peak. There is Iran’s nuclear program, the rising forces of openly genocidal Islamism, the threat in Europe and even America from certain sectors of society, the intimidation on some campuses, the intellectual ant-Israel and antisemitic sentiments stemming from the far left and even from “polite society,” as well as the advance of assimilation among other factors are deepening. Personally, I am quite optimistic about Israel, far more than the Middle East or Europe. Yet, still many others aren’t. So let me ask this question: Where is that solidarity displayed in 1933 today? Where are the people who have come out for the defense of Israel, even if they formerly lacked enthusiasm for it? Of course, I am not referring to those for which this statementdoes not apply. I am referring mainly to the intellectual and cultural elite, the professors, cultural figures, and journalists who form the elite that wants to forget it is Jewish, except for the revolutionary leftist heritage, social justice rhetoric, and wrapping themselves in the suffering of the Holocaust? I see two main reasons for this.   One is pure, raw, and unadulterated cowardice. This would be forgivable except that those who speak out are not risking physical well-being but merely social cachet. This was, of course, the rationale of Montefiore, whose distinguished ancestor did so much for the well-being of the Jews in the Land of Israel as did some of the Rothschild family also.  The openly express reason that these men had opposed the Balfour Declaration was that it might undermine their social status as Englishmen if they could be accused of a dual loyalty and even associated too much with their grubby communal colleagues. They understood, to their credit, that the nature of the new threat required a different response, just as many dropped their previous objections and gave help after independence was attained for Israel in`1948. They prefer to bask in the light of following certain national political leaders even when they do not act as they should toward these issues.  The other rationale for failing to rally publicly to the support of Israel and increasingly imperiled Jewish communities, again to speak bluntly, is that their problems were their own fault. Israel just hadn’t taken enough risks and made enough sacrifices and concessions for peace. The arrogant and ignorant who have not taken the time to inform themselves—it is tempting but too wordy to name  names so I will resist it—are a disgrace. I have always maintained tongue in check that no Jew need starve because they can make a good living as a critic of Israel—again, I fight back the temptation to give names but invite you to do so. This in itself falls into two broad categories. The first is the belief in the creation of a utopia in which Jews should instead sacrifice themselves on the altar. Here the statement of the wealthy spoiled brat Rosa Luxemburg on this matter: “What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putamayo and the blacks of Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play ball… I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears.” Cool, except the Germans took Luxemburg’s leftism out on her and on the Jews. Then the Communists showed how much they cared for the "wretched of the earth."  When the equivalents of such people today think of people under threat they think of the heartbreak of Islamophobia. The tiresome pose of the Jewish citizen of the world who trumpets his or her own nobility endlessly continues to be absurd. Israel is a reality and as such is not noble enough for them in its warts. They must have an abstract cause; they must show themselves selfless to the echoes of their own self-praise, and much to their profit.     The other aspect should be uncomfortably reminiscent of the rich Western Jews who looked down on the inferiority of the ‘’Yidden” of Eastern Europe with their embarrassing religiosity and vitality, their obsolete customs which were giving the good, modern people a bad name.  The alleged morally superior can criticize and so show their neighbors that they are perfect, untouched by doing anything that might require getting their hands dirty, wrapped up in the costume of altruism. It is a disgrace that a Jew can bash Israel, side with the enemies of its people, and smugly pretend virtue and profit by social status and professional benefits from such “neutrality.” Melchett concludes with a story about his father when they visited Babylon in the 1920s. In referring to the battle that was still being engaged in, the senior Mond said: “You see, had it not been the case centuries ago, that some small proportion of our people were prepared to return to [the land of Israel], to be the Zionists of that day, we should all have perished in the civilizations that perished with Babylon. It is only because of those few who returned at that time, that you and I are able to stand here and look upon these ruins. And where are those that took us into captivity in Babylon?”