Whistle Blowing By Great Egyptians on Corruption and Terrorism

From the scene, they are gone.  But from our historical memory, they cannot be forgotten.  Makram Obeid on corruption, and Ahmed Fathi Soroor, on terrorism.  In present day culture, it is not common to celebrate thinkers and doers of the past.  But the focus on the New Egypt should also take into account the whistle blowers of yesterday.

Yes, they are gone either from life (Makram Obeid), or from power (Ahmed Fathi Soroor).  A nation that lives on celebrating only its present, is a nation which is bereft of nurturing its young on the model of those who loyally cared for its causes.

Let us begin with Makram Obeid Pasha on corruption.  It is the national malaise which contributed to the eruption of the Arab Spring.  That great Coptic whistle blower, having split from The Wafd Party of Al-Nahas Pasha, addressed a petition to King Farouk.

His petition on behalf of "Al-Kutlah Al-Wafdiya Al-Mustaqillah" was not in one or two pages.  Under the title of "The Black Book In the Black Era," it was a book of 268 pages.  Printed at night to escape the sanctions imposed upon him by the Wafd government of the post-Second World War.

Its super-high level of classic Arabic is music to my ears -a person who looks upon his native tongue as his primary anchor in the concept of Arabism as a culture.  Before we get to the substance, let us examine his last paragraph on page 268 as he beseeches King Farouk to make right what Makram Pasha perceived as wrong.  Lost in this translation, Makram, a Coptic icon who had learnt the Quran by heart, is the cadence of his summation.  He says:

"Your Majesty: Your throne is the refuge of this good nation.  We pray that Allah strengthen your hands so that they may pull us up from this abyss.  So that you may unburden it from its daily struggle for life's needs.  So that you may right what is wrong.  So that you may restore rightful entitlements to those who truly possess them.  So that the Egyptians may again remember what this government caused them to forget: justice in governance; freedom of expression; integrity in word and deed; the true meaning of national and personal dignity."

As if Makram Obeid Pasha, in 1946, was anticipating the signs raised in Tahrir on January 25, 2011.  Those signs read: "Livelihood; Freedom; Social Justice."  As a student at the Cairo Teachers' Institute, Makram Pasha invited me to his house where I was hypnotized by his love of the motherland.

How did he, by his book, raise the alarm with regard to corruption as infesting the governance of Egypt?

He posited that the heart of corruption is putting personal gain ahead of public gain.  As a Minister of Supply and Trade, he strictly applied the laws restricting exports needed for home consumption.  "Charity-Starts at Home."  Subverting this judicious rule, namely, equality before the law, Prime Minister Nahas Pasha would intervene, without the knowledge of Makram Pasha, to enable his wife's relatives to secure for them sugar, rice and other provisions for export and the black market.

Makram Pasha summed all up as follows: "The Prime Minister even tried to stop me from bringing before a military court (Egypt, following World War Two was still under martial law) his relatives.  The Public Prosecutor had charged them with illegally trying to export textiles needed to clothe the marginalized Egyptians.

His assessment was: "This is a scandal.  And it is one of many like it.  Nepotism, illegal commitments, the prevalence of making governance a personal game for profit.  These, Your Majesty, are all forms of corrupt behavior tending to exploit the Government only for the benefit of the ruling class.  It makes ruling a game whose goal is to corrupt the trust between those who govern, and those who are governed."

What more do you need for the clearest definition of corruption in any age, at any time, and in any country?  God Bless your memory, Makram Pasha Obeid.  You were truly ahead of your time.  You resigned, not once, but three times.  Because you put Egypt ahead of your position, your personal gain, the illusory glow of being the Deputy Leader of a great national party.  Your portrait still adorns the walls of the Wafd headquarters in Cairo.  The main gate is adorned by the symbol of historical Egypt:  A Crescent Hugging a Cross!!  A great image for all of us.  Except for the Muslim Brotherhood, on which several "Black Books" shall be written!!

Now we turn to Dr. Ahmed Fathi Soroor, Speaker of the Egyptian Parliament for many years under former President Hosni Mubarak.  This scholar of criminal law produced in 2007 in Cairo one of the most definitive papers produced anywhere in Arabic on the issue of terrorism.  His removal from office, his incarceration at Tura as one of the top leaders of the defunct National Party, and the charges levelled against him for alleged corruption are not reasonable justification for not benefiting form his unique legal expertise.

In its search for inclusiveness, the New Egypt is called upon to abandon what I call "The Hatshepsut Syndrome." If you lose power or die, all your achievements should be erased.  This is especially dangerous in countries like Egypt which needs every iota of knowledge in order to keep its caravan of progress moving forward.

At my request in his office as Speaker, Dr. Soroor who was previously Dean of the Cairo University School of Law, where I continue to be adjunct professor, gifted me with a copy of his paper.  Within 150 pages, it is a veritable gem.

Judicious analysis; multi-faceted research in Arabic, English and French; clarity of thought; superb organization of every aspect of terrorism; and a lawyer's approach to a highly controversial issue.  Let the New Egypt be not afraid from one of its great scholars as it battles terrorism in Sinai, on the Libyan border, and within its interior.  When you are sick in bed, calling for the help of a competent physician, you don't query that physician's personal history.  You need to be cured.

Under the title of "The Rule of Law Confronting Terrorism," here are the highlights of Professor Soroor's paper:

• In its Introduction, he confronts head on the spurious attempts to link between terrorism and Islam;
• He highlights one of the central facts about terrorism: lack of an internationally-acceptable definition of that term;
• He focuses our attention on other challenges: security challenges affecting public law and order, and concern for having those security challenges overwhelm the need to safeguard human rights and civil liberties;  
• On this crucial point he suggests a balance anchored in constitutional law, namely: espousal of the exigencies of necessity, together with the proportionality of response;
• He calls on the State to be a State of laws which observes the need for democratization, combined with safeguarding human rights;
• He focuses our attention on the globalization of human rights, fundamental freedoms and democratic values.  Astutely, Dr. Soroor puts that mix within one container which he describes as "the values of the international community;"
• He links between the legal challenges facing the struggle against terrorism both internally and externally.  On the external front of these challenges, he reaches out for the precepts of the international human rights law, as well as of the international criminal law;
• In dealing with the dilemma of defining terrorism, the author brilliantly separates between three types of terrorism: acts perpetrated by individuals, acts inflicted by groups or organizations, and State terrorism;
• He separates between terrorism and the struggle of oppressed populations for liberty; condemns disproportionate use of military means, and abhors "extra-judicial killing;"
• Soroor reminds us of Egypt's penal code as amended in 1992.  That is several years before the promulgation by the League of Arab States of its Convention on Terrorism (1998), and of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation of a similar Convention (1999).
• In the context of the above, Professor Soroor reiterates Egypt's attempt to define terrorism.  As provided in Article 86 of Penal Law No. 97 (1992), it states that terrorism is:

"Any use of force, violence, threat or intimidation, by a suspect in the pursuit of a criminal scheme, either individually of by a group, with the intention of adversely affecting public order or endangering society's peace and security.  

This includes causing bodily harm or affecting communal freedoms, or damaging the environment or communications or transportation means, or funds, or buildings of either public or private property, or their occupation or sequestration, or impeding the exercise by public authorities of their duties, or affecting the functioning of places of worship, of educational institutions, or hindering the application of the Constitution or the laws and regulations which are in force."

• This is the broadest ever definition of "terrorism," in both law and procedure which in effect underpins the comprehensive efforts of the New Egypt in combating jihadism in 2015.  That was nearly a quarter of a century since the promulgation of that law in 1992 in Egypt.  Professor Soroor aptly calls it "The National Program on Terrorism."  And this many years before the UN acted on this global issue, by the General Assembly in 1999, by the US after 9/11, and by the UN Security Council in 2004.

The "Egyptian National Project" as expounded by Dr. Ahmed Fathi Soroor, former Dean of our Faculty of Law, of Cairo University, also deals with the Geneva Convention of 1949.  He provides a broad construction of the theory of "the Right to Protect." His legal construction should be applied by Cairo in its attacks on terrorism in both Sinai, in the Center, and over the Libyan borders.

So let us not shy away from bringing back to life the work of our luminaries, regardless of the allegations, trials and tribulations of the two Egyptian Revolutions of January 25, and June 30.  Let us abide by the British adage: "Use whatever instrument you have at hand."  

Better still, let us abide, but in a different context, by the great poem by Ahmed Shawqi who admonished:

"These are our monuments.  Gaze on them after we are gone."

Our thought monuments on corruption and terrorism have been selflessly bequeathed to us by Makram Obeid Pasha, and Professor Ahmed Fathi Soroor.

Would someone volunteer to convey this blog posting to Professor Ahmed Fathi Soroor? 

For I know that when I stand before my students at Fordham University School of Law in New York City, lecturing on the terrorism plaguing the New Egypt, I feel his presence as a scholar who was amongst the first whistle blowers of the late 20th century on the dangers approaching Egypt.

The lessons which we should learn from that unique Egyptian scholar need to be re-learnt at this critical juncture.

Here Comes A False Turkish Don Quixote Ordogan!!

He is delusional!!  Working hard toward the Turkishization of the Arab Spring, especially in Egypt.  I knew that something was missing:  One finger in his right hand as he raised it in a Rabaa salute!!  And why a Rabaa salute by Sultan Ordogan: an approving nod towards the Muslim Brotherhood as it waged a coup in 2012-2013 against secular Egypt.

Don Quixote saw in Spanish windmills hostile knights to be attacked.  In his mold, Ordogan sees in the Egyptian Revolution of June 30, 2013 a tidal wave drowning his dream of a Caliphate.  Ordogan's problem does not lie within what he does within Turkish borders.  His constant attacks on the New Egypt reflects his being on the wrong side of history.

Our Turkish Don Quixote is welcome to have his palace of 1000 rooms (estimated cost at $750 million); to have his troops welcome Abbas in Ankara in uniforms of 16 stages of the Ottoman Empire; to declare his support for the Palestinian cause.  But Ordogan has no business interfering in the internal affairs of Egypt.  Especially as Egypt transitions to what El-Sisi calls "a strong State."

Having taught in Cairo modern Egyptian history, including Ottoman rule, I find Ordogan woefully lacking in knowledge of why the Ottomans collapsed.  The Empire (and the caliphate with it) did not fall because of its opposition to Jewish settlement in Palestine.  This is what Ordogan told Abbas during that recent state visit.  It collapsed because it became hostage to three evils: internal corruption; oppression of the Arabs and of minorities; and succumbing to the fatwas of ignorant ulamas (scholars).  Those ulamas advised the Sultans that training of the armed forces by non-Muslim trainers was un-Islamic.  The same stupid thesis of Nigeria's Boko Haram (western learning is un-Islamic).

By contrast, Egypt even while under Ottoman suzeranity, welcomed training by non-Muslims.  Thus Egypt twice was on the verge of burying the Ottomans under an Egyptian flag.  Though the Ottomans occupied Egypt as of 1517, Egypt declared its independence from the Turkish yoke twice.  Once in 1769 under the leadership of Ali Bek Al-Kabeer whose sway extended from Yemen to Damascus, passing through Jedda, Mecca and Medina.

The second, opting out of the Empire was in 1840 under Muhammad Ali, whose son, General Ibrahim was about to occupy Constantinople in 1839.  He was forced by England and France to retreat out of fear of a dynamic Egyptian empire replacing "the sick man of Europe" - the Ottoman empire.  As of 1840, Egypt continued to be nominally within Ottomanism.  But Cairo looked upon Constantinople only as a notary public for the selection of the successors of Muhammad Ali.

The Arab rebellion of 1916 against Turkish rule was a water shed in Arab history.  That rebellion was led by the Hashemites, not by Lawrence of Arabia.  By joining the Allies against Turkey during World War I, the Arabs put their aspiration for independence ahead of staying within a nominally Islamic Caliphate.

The Ottomans forced the Arabs to make that historic choice.  For it was the Young Turks who reneged on their treaty of 1912 with the Arabs which called for Ottoman recognition of Arabic as the Arabs national language.  After all, Arabic is the language of the Quran.  This Turkish chauvinism went further amok.  Great Arab national leaders were hung to death in 1915 in Damascus public squares.  That was in addition to the Turkish massacre of Armenians due to unfounded suspicion of collaboration with Russia.

So, Sultan Ordogan, please treat yourself to a refresher course in the history of the Ottoman Empire.  Simply leave the New Egypt alone.  Non-interference in the internal affairs of other States is the best recipe for regional and international peace.  Good fences make good neighbors.

Believe me!!  If you want to parade your honor guard in costumes going back to the 14th century, Egypt might retort by sending you papyri of ancient military Egyptian uniforms going back 7000 years.  Including chariots and charioteers!!  But I doubt that the New Egypt would fall for the trap of Ordogan theatrics.

The Turkish Ministry of Education has decided to introduce the old "Ottoman" language to its educational curriculum.  Egypt, since the discovery of the hieroglyphic language through the Rosetta Stone unearthed in 1801 by the great French archaeologist Champolion, has kept it alive.  Contrary to the purpose of reviving Ottomanism by Ordogan, Egypt values the teaching of hieroglyphic as well as the Coptic language at its universities.  In this respect, Egypt's reason is for culture not for hegemony.

While Egypt is working for the strengthening of its new axis with the Gulf, Turkey's Ordogan is working toward compensating for the European Union refusal to admit Turkey to its membership.  Hence the Ankara alliances with cul de sac pan-Islamic movements.  While the New Egypt was welcomed at all levels during El-Sisi's visit to Kuwait, including unambiguous Kuwaiti statements of support for the new Egypt, Turkey was critical of Egypt's calls on Qatar to account for its funding of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the context of Egypt's emphasis on internal development, Abdel-Wahab Al-Badr, head of the Kuwait Development Fund noted the following:  "The creation in Egypt of an additional Suez Canal to be inaugurated in August 2015 is expected to turn Egypt into a new Singapore.  80% of world transit trade shall go through Suez."

As the Young Turks cracked the whip against non-Turks in their dying Empire, the oppressed began to exit in droves seeking safe refuge.  To where did they flee?  To secular and tolerant Egypt, the permanent rebel against the Ottoman Caliphate.  In Cairo and Alexandria, the Lebanese Christians set the example.  They launched modern Egyptian journalism, including Al-Ahram, now the official printed medium of the Government.  They issued the great periodical of Al-Resalah.  On Al-Resala's high literature, we were nurtured in high school.  They established the modern theatre, cinema and comedy; made Egyptian songs the lingua franca of the entire Arab world.  And they propelled Arab nationalism on a distinctive secular course.

Thus the loss of the Ottomans was the gain of the Egyptians.  What remained in Egypt from Ottoman days were mere relics: The fez, the titles of Pasha, Bek and Affandi.  More durable are the jokes in Egyptian cafes about Turkish oppression symbolized by "the whip," over-taxing the poor, and empty fanfare.

At Davos (2015), El-Sisi, at that World Economic Forum, spoke poignantly about the New Egypt.  He stressed the national focus on making it a haven for foreign investors.  Reason: virgin possibilities, and legally insuring profit repatriation.  While acknowledging terror as a global menace, he assured his world audience of Egypt's capacity to undertake the twin tasks:  Development and combating terrorism.  

While Sultan Ordogan was on a visit to Somalia, a failed State, his nemesis, the Egyptian President had a mission with a real future impact.  At Davos, El-Sisi was deftly making an apt distinction.  Between faith as a private right, and interpreting faith to the masses, as a communal responsibility. Sadly, Sultan Ordogan chooses not to espouse that distinction.  His Islamism is under attack internally in Turkey.  It is also being challenged externally by his formidable opponent, Gullen.  Gullen is a Turkish Islamic powerhouse residing in Pennsylvania and calling for investigating Ordogan's corrupt practices.

Shouldn't Ordogan, in his foreign policy, give priority to securing Turkey's eastern border against the free movement of foreign jihadis?  By the thousands, those misfits pour via Turkey to join ISIS.  By contrast Egypt's eastern border has become a priority security issue.  A buffer zone has been created in Sinai with the aim of degrading the Friends of Jerusalem and their Hamas cohorts who are declaring Sinai an "ISIS Emirate."

Mind you, Ordogan is not the only aberration on the scene of globalized Islam.  More graphic events are taking place.  From the barbaric, as in the case of ISIS, to the ignorant or malicious, as in the multiple cases of self-declared experts in the Islamic faith.  Here follows some examples of the latter breed.

• Thomas Friedman declares recently in his Op. Ed column in the New York Times that "there is no real Islam."  Tom: There is, especially if you become at least versed in Muslim culture and the Arabic language.
• A so-called security expert on TV channel MSNBC (liberal) appeared on February 17 to make a startling declaration.  On the reputable talk show of Chris Matthews, that security expert has an incredible explanation for ISIS beheadings and immolation.  He declares that "it is important to remember that Islam spread by violence and the sword."  No, Mr. Expert!!  Islam does not recognize "offensive war."  Only self-defense is permissible, as in every other legal tradition.
• In regard to the air bombing by Egypt and the Emirates of ISIS in Libya, CNSNews.com carries a startling report on February 17.  "The United States does not support Egyptian and Emirati air strikes against Islamist militias in Libya."  Amazing!!  On the one hand, how can Egypt and its allies not forcefully respond to the massacre at its western borders of 21 Egyptian Christian citizens?  On the other hand, Washington, D.C. does not dictate Egyptian sovereign decisions, nor has Cairo ever interfered with US drone attacks in Yemen, 15000 miles away from D.C. 
• A statement of condolences was issued on February 17 by the Egyptian Consulate-General in New York.  It reflected Egypt's reasons for national mourning, and added: "We emphasize that that heinous act perpetrated at the hands of terrorism in Libya shall not weaken the unity or the stability of our homeland.  On the contrary.  Such barbarism shall only enhance Egypt's determination to uproot terrorism.

It is gratifying to note that there are also American voices of sanity reflective of a sympathetic understanding of Islam.  Even prior to the assassination of 3 Muslim students in the Carolinas, a well-known cartoonist in Arizona, Steven Benson contributed to the on-going debate on Islam and global security in a very impacting cartoon.  In the Arizona Republic, Mr. Benson published two frames: One with ISIS operatives clad in black, with swords raised; the other with anti-Afro-American Ku Klux Klan (KKK) clad in white with burning crosses.  The captions reflected the whole debate objectively through comparison.  Benson wrote: "ISIS is to Islam what these guys are to Christianity."

So please, Don Quixote Ordogan: Feel free to raise your hand in "the Rabaa salute" (four fingers) anytime you wish.  It reminds us not only of the defunct Muslim Brotherhood.  It also reminds us of the Nazi salute.  The only difference is that the Nazi salute kept the five fingers of the raised hand together.  In your Rabaa salute, I am puzzled as to where you hid the missing finger.  

You too, Sultan Ordogan is among the latest and meanest aberrations in the enduring Islamic faith.

Looking for ISIS Enablers? Find Some of Them Among Egyptian Editors

Ironically, some of Egypt's editorialists are in effect ISIS enablers.  Whether through malice or ignorance, they advocate a Cairo surrender!!  On the top of the great Muhammad Ali's Mosque, they, in effect, are advocating that El-Sisi should hoist an impossibility -a white flag.  The army which dared cross the Suez Canal in 1973 to destroy the Bar Lev Line and reclaim Sinai from Israeli occupation is not likely to heed Egypt's editorialists.

The attacks in northern Sinai by Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis (Friends of Jerusalem) may go on for a while.  Their terror warfare, though resulting on January 29 in massacring 30 army personnel and civilians, may go on for a while.  But with each passing day, Egypt's huge military establishment learns from experience.  Its response to the friends of ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood is becoming more sophisticated.

The pointed advocacy for surrender to global terror is in fact causing massive retaliation, especially through a widening the territorial buffer.  Hamas is bottled up in Gaza, and its calls for a Rafah Crossing bonanza are no more than exhalations of desperation.  You cannot hurt Egypt and, at the same time, issue deceiving proclamations of a Gazan-Egyptian brotherhood.

That crossing might one day be a bridge between Egypt and an independent State of Palestine.  For now, Hamas is no more than an Islamist rebellion against a putative State of Palestine.  Perhaps one day it shall submit to commonality with Egypt in recognition of a State of Israel.  You cannot deny, as Hamas Charter does, "the right of any Jew to an inch of Palestine," and call yourself a credible member of the international community.  Hamas should learn the basics.

Now to Egypt's editorialists -its adversaries from within.

• A genius by the name of Dr. Mahmoud Khalil mocks his country's renewal of the emergency law in northern Sinai for another 3 months.  That professor at the Faculty of Public Information of the prestigious Cairo University is stupidly sarcastic without cause.  He claims, through his empty suit, that "the military attacks (by Ansar) proves the inability of the present authorities to deal with the situation in Sinai."
• In his column (WATANTAN) of January 31, in Al-Watan newspaper, he sounds nearly gleeful.  From his comfort zone in Cairo, he opines more blatant imbecilities.  "Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis which carried the operation at Karm Al-Qawadees (northern Sinai) has augmented its lethal power many folds, while the opposing security forces have a diminishing prowess."
• Professor Khalil: Do yourself and Egypt a favor: learn the art of evidence!!  Have you counted?  Or does your measure rest on the mere ability to remotely explode a car laden with explosives, or sacrifice an ignorant suicide bomber?  Have you ever learnt anything from the ample lessons of terror warfare?  Apparently none!!

So you go on to call on the Egyptian government to abandon its legitimate warfare, come out from its fox holes with hands raised in the air, an declare, to quote your comic phrase: "We are a failure!!"  You should abandon your classroom and come out confessing your abject failure to even comprehend, let alone to "teach," a new generation of holders of degrees in public information degrees.

Turning now to Fahmy Howedy, an Islamist writer in Al-Shorooq of January 31.  He, apparently without any previous experience in military intelligence, boldly states: "What happened in Al-Arish, clearly points to significant failure in the gathering of military intelligence."  Sir!!  On what basis have you formed that judgement?  On the basis of its mere happening?

Have you ever been in Sinai?  I don't mean the pleasure spots of Sharm El-Sheikh, Taba and Hurgada.  I mean through the dunes and crevices of a vast province where trees have surrendered their existence to parched rocky hideaways.  I was there.  Several times.  So was my son collecting Sinai plants to discover their medicinal values -a report by a then 16-year old, now deposited with Cornell University.

If you, Mr. Howedy, wants to be an expert in desert warfare (which I personally gained as a UN officer in Algeria during its brutal war of independence) go to the scene.  Get some sands in your boots.  Get a few lessons on Bedouin life, on tribal disconnects, on the sacrifices of our desert troops, on psychological warfare.  Only then could you come back to us.  Proclaiming that "the measure of competence is the ability to sabotage an operation before its happening."  And you call this editorial wisdom?

Then in the language of a defeatist, Mr. Howedy, the Islamist guru of Al-Shoraaq, goes on saying: "Have the measures taken in Sinai diminished the threat of terrorism or enhanced it?  The operations undertaken by Ansar are performed with a high level of professionalism while the counter operations are rudimentary and are attributed by the government to the Muslim Brotherhood."

Mr. Howedy: Is that what your pearls of wisdom are all about?  Well, if you call raids by Apache helicopters, and the unremitting pursuit of terrorism in Asian Egypt rudimentary, this forces me to call you a simpleton!!  The term is defined as "foolish; gullible; a half-witted person."  The terror operations chain of custody couldn't be clearer -from the Muslim Brotherhood to Hamas to Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis to ISIS.  If you, Mr. Editorialist, cannot make that linkage, it is not surprising that the Brotherhood cells in Egypt and abroad draw comfort from your editorials.  So does Qatar, Turkey, Al-Jazeera TV, and the sheet called Al-Quds Al-Arabi, especially that of February 2.

Now to our editorialists as cartoonists.  Helmy Al-Tooni glorifies in the creation of a cartoon in the newspaper Al-Tahrir of February 1.  The cartoon by that Nasserite artist depicts Egypt as a bride in her wedding gown; flowers held tightly by her right arm; tears streaming her lovely youthful face; pyramids in the background.  An arrow has struck her heart.  With blood streaming, she bemoans the Egyptian leadership's presumed failure to protect, Bride Egypt, says: "Whoever married me must be able to protect me!!"

In support of this fallacy, another grossly misleading argument is advanced.  Another editorialist by the name of Assem Hanafi makes a fanciful claim: "The Muslim Brotherhood is armed with a domestically-manufactured bombs which they are at liberty to explode at any time, and at any place."

With this deluge of non-thinking editorializing by well-known writers within Egypt is it any wonder that that defeatism has infected foreign correspondents?  David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times, who is pre-disposed to constant attacks against the elected President of Egypt, El-Sisi, pushes the envelope even further.  On January 30, he, together with Merna Thomas, proclaims  to the world a habitual epitaph for Egypt's ability to confront terrorism.

In a lead paragraph, they both assert a misleading fantasy.  The Sinai terror operations are made to be unlike what is happening all over the world.  Those operations, they preach, are "prompting fears that the Egyptian government's campaign of home demolitions, curfews and sweeping arrests has failed to choke off a budding insurgency there!!"  Then they quote from their already predisposed habitual sources.

From Khalil Al-Anani of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies -a so-called expert in extremism, they produce a quotation.  Al-Anani says: "The insurgency is getting stronger and stronger, and the government's strategy is a failure."  And from Tamara Cofman Wittes, Director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, another defeatist is quoted.  She opines that: "It is clear that this extremely coercive approach is not working."  

I wonder what Ms. Wittes, a former deputy assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs is comparing the defensive/offensive Egyptian measures to.  With the existence in the U.S. of 50,000 private security firms?  With the uncontrolled gun possession in the U.S. of 300 million had guns, a gun per person in America?  With the unremitting U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and through the U.S. Africa military command?

Where has objective measuring of the advance in global counter-terrorism gone?  Apparently nowhere.  Except for a false focus on Egypt which is fighting on two broad fronts: Terrorism and the economy.

The icing on the cake should now be reserved to David Hearst.

In the World Post he surpasses all the above-cited doom-sayers.  He, as if through a bull-horn, shouts: "Egypt is more unstable than ever, with full-scale military operations in the Sinai and mass protests around the country that never seem to die down."  Last time I checked, I found unfortunately that the "mass protests in that never seen to die down," are in his own backyard: In Furgeson, Missouri.  Incredible.

Shouldn't the likes of Kirkpatrick, Al-Anani, Wittes and Hearst spend sometime learning that their doomsday chants about the New Egypt are akin to mere sound echo at the Grand Canyon?  The ABC of wisdom in today's international strategic studies is to shun combat predictions and to keep the U.S. safe from the unintended consequences of intrusiveness in the internal affairs of other States.

This is especially poignant when it comes to the New Egypt.  Post-Islamist Egypt has charted a course toward "The Strong State."  No room for an Islamization by the defunct Muslim Brotherhood.  Give it a rest, folks: Morsi.  This is in spite of an unfortunate reception accorded recently by the U.S. State Department to his acolytes, calling themselves the "Egyptian Revolutionary Council."

Those in D.C. who accorded that group a false sense of recognition should wake up to the realities of a possible Cairo - D.C. rapprochment.  On this point, let us cite the New York Times.

Written by David Brooks, a conservative with Republican party leanings, he, under the title of "Being Who We Are," says:

"The Middle East is not a chessboard we have the power to manipulate.  It is a generational drama in which we can only play our role.  It is a drama over ideas, a contest between forces of jihadism and the forces of pluralism.  We can't know how this drama will play out, and we can't direct it.  We can only promote pluralism -steadily, consistently, simply."

Well said Mr. Brooks.  From the Islamic reign of terror in Egypt, under the Morsi regime, a great lesson has been learnt.  The Muslim Brotherhood, a determined adversary of pluralism, was given a historic chance which they miserably squandered.  ISIS, their related organization, declared through The Friends of Beit Al-Maqdis, Sinai as an ISIS Emirate.  How brain dead can you get!!

Once more, we see the devilish features of ISIS and its new franchises clearly in the mirror of assassinating the Jordanian pilot and the two Japanese hostages.  These features inspire this invocation addressed to all those who predict failure of the efforts of Egypt in Sinai and other related combat activities against ISIS waged at present by the international coalition.  

Our invocation is: May those who predict failure in the elimination of Jihadism everywhere have their heads examined, their voices stilled, their ink running dry, and their predictions proving as false as their pitiful understanding of this global war of values!!

In this information warfare, the primitiveness of Egyptian editors is staggering.