Christmas Letter No. Two: How and Why Has Egyptophobe Michelle Dunne Gotten the Reputation of the Carnegie Endowment Undonne?

This is the second and final Christmas Letter addressed to Michelle Dunne from ELIFAS (El-Ayouty Institute For Arab Spring Studies).  ELIFAS is a truly biased and self-funded organization in New York City.  We are biased in favor of justice globally speaking, especially towards Egypt, the Arab homeland and Islam as a force of moderation.  These three entities have been the favorite targets of three American inter-related phobias.  These phobias are the result of the U.S. taking a sharp turn to the right as of 9/11, of America losing every war since World War II, and of the rise of China and India.

Devoting this Christmas Letter No. Two to an "analysis of Dunne's so-called scholarly writings" requires an ideological preface.  Here it is:

• The growth of international law has been largely the consequence of the growth of human rights since the Nuremberg and the Tokyo military trials of 1945 and 1946;
• In the train of that growth, came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.  On its heels came the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and two UN Conventions on Civil and Political Rights; and on Economic and Social Rights in the mid 1960s.  Africa's independence movements of the early 1960s gave an additional push.
• In consequence, and largely as a reflection of the Holocaust tragedy of the late 1930s and early 1940s, two theories of international law were born: the Human Rights Law (largely affecting individuals) and the International Humanitarian Law (affecting larger groups).  Together, these theories gave States some right to intervene in the internal affairs of other States where violations of human rights were perceived.
• These important developments stood largely inactionable due to the rise of the non-State actor, especially with regard to the illegal occupation by Israel of Palestinian territories beyond the line of demarcation of June 4, 1967.
• Yet three terms remained lacking of consensual definitions in the legal dictionary: Democracy; Aggression; and Terrorism.  The absence of translations into Western languages of the languages of the East, such as Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and Pashtu expanded the area of darkness about Eastern/Western understanding.  In these domains, the UN and other international regional organizations stood nearly motionless: they were inter-state systems facing almost leaderless mass movements of non-State actors unbound by the conventional legal strictures.  The catastrophe of 9/11 was only but one example of State paralysis of action in a globalized context.
• At that juncture, non-governmental organizations dealing with human rights issues generally took the wrong jump.  Organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Human Rights First, the Carter Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace began to meddle in the internal affairs of sovereign States.  This is while ignoring, perhaps for funding reasons, the infractions of human rights by States in which they are chartered.  
• Hence the under-reporting on Guantanamo, the destruction of Habeas Corpus jurisdiction (every person has the right to his/her day in court to question the legality of their detention); forcible renditions; the torture practices by the CIA; the military commissions replacing regular U.S. Article III Federal Courts; detentions for years without either charges or release; and the downgrading, under Bush II administration of the Geneva Conventions as obsolete.
• Rationale: The so-called "War on Terror" needed new tools.  Coercive interrogation, guilt by association, and claims of the need for total U.S. security became parts of the U.S. arsenal.  That arsenal included killing of U.S. citizens abroad in an extra-judicial manner, and floating hostility toward Islam and Muslims.

Enters the likes of Michelle Dunne; David Kirkpatrick; Fareed Zakaria; Tom Friedman; Michelle Bachman; Sara Palin; Ted Cruz; and the rest of the party of war, the Republicans.  Ironically, they saw victories in the destruction of Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan by an unrelenting military machine.  The Islamophobic side seems to be left as the preserve of Fox News and Bill Maher.  Books began appearing such as that by Sam Harris attacking Islam as a bundle of crazy ideas.

Through such a crowd of ignoramuses, the jihadis, including ISIS, won in two ways:  Their criminal interpretation of Islam became an accepted norm; and America's embroilment in wars in Muslim countries, sanctions on countries like Egypt became the best jihadi tool for recruitment and funding.

Against that lengthy, yet general background, we begin to examine Michelle Dunne's writings as reflecting her untoward intervention in internal Egyptian sovereign affairs.  This has been behind the transparent veil of concern for human rights.  The following is an illustration of Dunne's half-baked scholarship and holier than thou attitude.

In a Carnegie article dated September 22, 2014, entitled, "Syria in Crisis - What Egypt Can and Cannot Do Against the Islamic State" she posits the following imbecilities:

• "Many assume that Cairo will have a significant military rule to play in the fight against the Islamic State."  Then disparagingly, Dunne goes on to say: "Kerry recently bolstered the impression of Egypt's 'critical role' by including Cairo in his tour of the region, by touting Egyptian Sunni Muslim institutions as key to the ideological fight against extremism, and by stressing the importance of defeating extremism in the Sinai."
• Dunne is dead wrong about all the above because: (1) Cairo's role in the anti-ISIS coalition is bifurcated into (a) combatting Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis on national territory; (b) resonating to Al-Azhar's huge impact for more than 1000 years throughout the Muslim world in attacking the criminal jihadi interpretation of Sharia; (2) Dunne gives the impression that she knows what is needed to be done better than the U.S. Secretary of State; (3) Dunne looks myopically at Egypt, with its 100 million inhabitants as a marginal factor in the global war on terror; and (4) Dunne stupidly and cavalierly discounts the role of fighting jihadi criminal ideology by the precepts of Islamic jurisprudence.

Furthermore, she treats Egypt as if its contributions to the U.S. -led anti-ISIS coalition were to be taken for granted.  Egypt, Ms. Dunne, is not a vassal State beholden to Washington, D.C.

Michelle offhandedly posits the following: "Expedited Suez Canal transits for warships for which the U.S. government pays a handsome premium are routine features of the bilateral relationship."  In the same paragraph, she does not lose the opportunity to tarnish the legality of El-Sisi administration calling it again and again the result of "Egypt's July 2013 military coup that ousted then president Mohammad Morsi."

Attacking Al-Azhar and the Mufti of Egypt, Dunne, with her crooked pen dripping of Egyptophobia, describes these iconic personalities as "complicit" in the ouster of the heinous Islamic rule of 2012-2013.  Michelle Dunne unthinkingly speculates as follows: "Egyptians and other Sunni Muslims susceptible to recruitment by the Islamic State are unlikely to pay heed to statements by the grand sheikh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb or the grand mufti, Shawki Allam; many consider them to be no more than civil servants who put out a government-sanctioned brand of Islam."

Dunne's total ignorance on that score is plainly manifest in: (1) Her non-recognition of the return of Al-Azhar under the secular Constitution of 2014 to its prior status of independence; (2) Her non-recognition of the Al-Azhar's seminal document, co-authored with the Coptic Church in August 2011.  In that document of 11 principles, is included "the non-recognition of a State based solely on religion;" (3) Her stupidity in the heinous assumption that in Islam there is "government-sanctioned brand of Islam."  Michelle, as a presumed scholar, does not seem to know that Sharia everywhere is based on the Quran, the Sunna, and ijtihad. 

Egyptophobe Dunne ends up her diatribe in that poorly argued article made up of a mix of contradictions, by the following: "The political repression and human rights abuses associated with this crackdown, which are on a scale not seen in Egypt's modern history are a recipe for breeding recruits to Islamist militancy and ideologies such as that of the Islamic State."

Yes, Ms. Dunne: Right, Right, Right: Egypt by ousting a hated Islamist regime, has ensured the emergence of ISIS!!  Not the U.S. disbanding of the Iraqi army; not the U.S. contribution to sectarianism in Iraq through hugging the Sunni Sahwas one time, and casting them aside the next time; not by Obama's announcement of red lines in Syria then backing down under the pressures of a dysfunctional U.S. Congress.

It is all Egypt's fault!!  Your stupid arguments reveal the shallowness of your presumed scholarship, and the surface commitment by a discredited Carnegie Endowment to a proper engagement with the U.S.  Please remember again that Egypt is not a U.S. colony, but a sovereign State whose roots go back 10,000 years -40 times the age of the establishment of the U.S. which largely still treats Obama as a racial figure fit for demonization.

Now to another example of garbage emanating from the hateful pen of Michelle Dunne.  Co-authoring in the Wall Street Journal of Nov. 4, 2014, an article with Frederic Wehrey, she emblazoned it with the title of "3 Risks of U.S. Cooperation With Arab Allies Against Islamic State."  Dunne knows it all.  The rest of us in the Arab and Muslim worlds are non-thinking dummies!!

So just mention the word "Egypt" once, and the hate enzymes start oozing out of Dunne's pores!!  As if she is a pre-programmed hate machine.  To her, every act of Arab cooperation with the US is either suspect or futile.  The zone of hate now envelopes her in a trance of Arabophobia.  Thus in her "3 Risks" piece (only 3 Michelle?) she asserts that "while U.S. cooperation with Arab allies against Islamic State and other terrorist groups is essential, it is also problematic."  Real funny: she seems to treat the mirage of the so-called Islamic State as real!!

But Michelle: This is how alliances work.  They are not a fusion.  They are arrangements among sovereigns.  Leave it to Dunne.  She knows better.  Thus with regard to the Arabs, with whom America is deeply involved, regardless of the likes and dislikes of Michelle Dunne, she arrogantly says: "As they compete for influence, some are enacting repressive policies that fuel the extremism that they purport to fight..."  Again Arab security measures, not the espousal by the US authorities and media of the cause of Islamists, are to blame!!  For good measure, she adds: "And in the rush to build support from Arab partners, the U.S. is largely ignoring these policies."

Michelle's idea of inter-State relationships is terribly at odds with the way international comity works: cooperation in one area does not translate into submissiveness in other areas.  Otherwise it is colonialism all over again.  Just look at the rocky relationship between the UK and the European Union.

But Dunne's recipe -a recipe for increased US isolation in the Arab Middle East takes in a very confusing element.  She manifests her patent confusion about the meaning and content of terms when she proclaims haughtily that: "By focusing on winning the battle against ISIS, the U.S. will (WILL) lose the war against extremism."  Is there a difference?  

Please explain Ms. Dunne.  And she does: "America's counter-terrorism focus with Arab States reduces its leverage, and bandwidth, to advance reforms that would address the root causes of radicalization."  Oh, I got it.  Michelle, while shifting her arguments, is advocating that the U.S. should imperially take upon itself the task of intervention in the internal affairs of Arab States.  Are you nuts?!

This is aside from the plain facts of the tragedy of decline in the U.S. style and manner of democracy: Dollars buy Congressional seats; redrawal of congressional districts to curtail minority participation; and obstacles placed by several States in the path of one person one vote through ID requirements.  There is an Arab proverb which says: "You cannot offer what you don't have."

More laughable idiocies from the Carnegie's Michelle Dunne.

In Al-Jazeera, Dunne on Nov. 4, 2014, states without any credible evidence that: "The question is whether the scorched earth methods practised by Sisi and his government are helping to build legitimacy among the Egyptian population, including in economically disadvantaged areas such as north Sinai, the Western Desert, and upper Egypt."  El-Sisi does not need to build legitimacy.  He won the Presidency against Sabbahi in 2014 through the ballot box.

No end to her hysteria; no end to her venom!!  But for the record, she and her likes among the Egyptophobes and the Arabophobes must realize that: 

(1) US wars of choice in both Afghanistan and Iraq as of 2002/2003 have spawned criminal ideologies by jihadis who wished the Americans ill in order to get even;

(2) Total denial by the US of human rights on the field of battle and in detention camps such as Pagram and Abu Ghraib and force feeding in Guantanamo has super-charged millions of Muslims with hate for the U.S. and its institutions;

(3) American reliance on military means in the Middle East and Central Asia, without any meaningful attempt to understand Islam, in both its religious and cultural aspects, have compounded the task of many governments in the area with regard to containment of jihadism;

(4) The so-called human rights organizations have tried but failed to jump over the fence of sovereignties under the guise of protecting human rights;
(5) The recent Egyptian law on regulation of public demonstrations is much less stringent than its US equivalent; just remember "Occupy Wall Street;"

(6) It is patently stupid to measure the transition of the Arab Middle East from brute dictatorships which America supported for years with the same measures used in the US.

(7) In the U.S., we have a former Vice President, Dick Cheney, who is so insane that he still believes that water boarding is humane!!

Michelle: Bark as you must!!  As far as Egypt is concerned, your hate shall topple neither the pyramids, nor the sphinx.  Nor shall it bring your beloved Islamists back.  For I have just returned from Cairo after watching El-Sisi in Hurgada, calling movingly for "A Strong Egyptian State."  So Buzz Off.

Lady!!  You NEED A Psychiatrist Real Fast!!