How Appalling To See a Mainstream Writer Like David Brooks, Seemingly Legitimating The ISIS Mega Crooks!!

He is an admired Op Ed page writer employed by the New York Times.  When I buy that paper, I begin reading it not from the front.  But from the back.  Looking to learn something new from Paul Krugman on economics.  He is a Nobel Prize Laureate at Princeton University.  And from David Brooks, a distinguished commentator on American social trends and values.

Being a creature of habit, I did the same on August 28.  Both Krugman and Brooks were on the same Op Ed page.  What a jolt from reading Brooks!!  Under the title of "When Rapists Win."

To his credit, he begins, in his inimitable style, to assess ISIS as we all know it.  His first line sums it in a few words: "The ISIS atrocities have descended like distant nightmares upon the conscious of the world."  Yet, amazingly, his column proceeds, unpredictably, to an abyss of illogic.  Seemingly to legitimate the ISIS mega-crooks, by conceding to them their grounds.  On what basis, if I am reading him correctly?: On the basis of a fait accompli.

Herein lies the roots of my disgust with one of my favorite writers.  Samples raising red flags:

• "(ISIS) offers a confident vision of the future.  It fills the vacuum left by decaying nationalist ideologies;"
• (Its) intent is to use this as a wedge with which to expand beyond its base in Iraq and Syria and weaken secular nationalist borders in Lebanon, Jordan and in even more innately nationalist countries like Egypt;"
• "This is a war about a vision of history.  ISIS have legitimacy because it controls territory and has a place to enact them."

Mr. Brooks: "A confident vision of the future?!"  Does jihadism have "a future," or "a vision?"  Only because they marched in and occupied land where no government existed?  Where the Sunni population, crushed by the Maliki sectarian rule, which had been propped up by America's crazy invasion of Iraq in 2003, sided temporarily with the ISIS hordes?  And in Syria, Bashar had to vacate the northeast to hold his crumbling lines around Damascus?

Mr. Brooks: You are theorizing imaginatively about the issue of territorial control, illegally achieved, as if it were irreversible.  You are claiming for ISIS a pasture which our own government, the U.S., does not concede.  Let alone, the international coalition of 40 other countries.  Not even the Kurdish Pesh Merga which has pushed ISIS out of Kobani and other areas.

Your expression of defeatism is not only unsupported by the facts on the present ground of battle against that paper tiger, called the Baghdadi Caliphate.  It flies rudely in the face of two historical facts, not of the type of your depressing "vision of history."

Your first fallacy is that ISIS is "weakening secular nationalist borders."  It is the Arab Spring, wherever it has overcome the resultant civil wars, that is redrawing "the secular nationalist borders."  This is the start of nullification of the colonial borders forced upon the Arabs by the victors of the First World War.  The Arabs are now in the process of burying Mr. Sykes and M. Picot.  Two conspirators who nullified promises given to the Arabs in return for turning against Ottoman oppresive rule.  Post-Assad Syria may witness the rise of three states, replacing one unified Syria.

Your second fallacy is your unthinking statement about Arab nationalism.  For your claim: "For the past many decades the Middle East has been defined by nation-states and the Arab mind has been influenced by nationalism.  But these nation-States have been weakened (Egypt) or destroyed (Iraq and Syria).  Nationalism no longer mobilizes popular passion or provides convincing historical narrative."

Mr. Brooks: From where did you get that?  Surely, at least in the case of Egypt, you did not get it from the Egyptian street.  My proof on your distance from objective reality: The U.S. government and media still overlook the significance of 35 million Egyptians rising in a historical "Egyptian Intifadah," on June 30, 2013.  Calling on now deposed Islamist President Morsi, "IRHAL" (Begone!!).  In spite of these realities, the Brotherhood is still looked upon in many American quarters as a legitimate opposition whose removal constituted a coup by the Armed Forces.  A continuous affront to the free will of the overwhelming majority of the Egyptian people.

On these grounds alone, I doubt it, Mr. Brooks, that you are as familiar with Egyptian history as I am.  I am not in competition with you.  You have The New York Times as your vehicle.  I have the facts about the history of modern Egypt as mine.  And facts are more supreme and durable than media.  Especially when those media are either biased or uninformed.

As a teacher of Egyptian history, let me share with you a bit of that history:

• For the past 7000 years, Egyptian nationalism has been the glue that binds the nation;
• Never has Egypt witnessed civil war, nor, in spite of colonial British attempts, has it been split between North and South;
• The only army in the Arab homeland, whose recruits and officer corps owe allegiance only to the State, not to provinces, is the Egyptian army;
• In 1952, Colonel Nasser ousted King Farouk by staging an army coup.  Upon the King's departure from Alexandria, the front man of the coup, Muhammad Naguib saluted his monarch with a 21-gun salute.  Farouk's last words to General Naguib were: "Take care of Egypt's army."  That is nationalism at its best, Mr. Brooks.
• In spite of modest economic means, Egyptian women surrendered repeatedly since the 1870s, their golden ornaments to shore up state finances.  The first women revolt against the hijab, was in Egypt in the early 20th century; an assertion of Egyptian secularism;
• Egypt is the only Arab State which officially celebrates Christmas as a national holiday.  That is on January 7, which marks the Eastern Orthodox Christmas.  And the only mass political party in Egypt whose symbol is the Crescent with the Cross within it replacing the star -the Wafd party, established in 1919;
• In homage to the roots of the faith of its majority, Islam, the only Arab flag which is adorned by the falcon of Quarish, the Arabian tribe of which the Prophet Muhammad was a member of its main branch (the great Hashemites) is Egypt's flag.

And I hope that your argument, David Brooks, about the weakening of Arab nationalism, especially by a phantom called ISIS, had found its inanity (silliness) on August 6, 2015.  That is the date on which Egypt inaugurated Suez Canal II.  Built within less than one year by subscriptions from only Egyptian citizens.

With Suez Canal II yesterday, and now with the discovery of huge gas reserves off Egyptian territorial waters, Egyptian nationalism shall continue to express itself in the new song: "Tomorrow, Egypt Shall Be Sweeter."

Finally, and in regard to the assertions of The New York Times of August 18, 2015 which headlined "Egypt Expands State Power With a New Security Law," I have the following rebuttal:

State power in Egypt does not expand through the promulgation of security laws.  Laws are invariably an external result of internal developments.  That power expands through nationalist fervor.  Uncomplicated by the resort to the total denial of due process manifest in our American phenomenon of "Guantanamo."  Shameful, yet falsely trumpeted as a security measure.

Mr. Brooks: Guantanamo has "become (one of the) recruiting tools "for jihadism.  Quoting the words of none other than President Obama.  His efforts over the past 7 years to close that abysmal institution of horror and torture have failed.  Due to the obstructionism of the Republican-dominated Congress of the U.S.