In Fending Off Its Attackers, What Does Egypt Need to Master? The Art of Response!!

In national life, the most critical juncture is transitioning. From chaos to stability. From poverty to development. From dictatorship to democracy. From the Rule by One, to participation.

The New Egypt is now at this critical juncture. Transitioning from a have-not country to a have country. From the dependent State under Mubarak, to the strong State under El-Sisi. From borrowing and foreign aid, to being self-sufficient. From a country concerned with the affairs of other Arab States, to one concerned primarily with its own improvement.

That is why the great Egyptian educator, Loutfi El-Sayed, advocated one essential principle for Egyptian development. He cried out "Build Fences Around Egypt!!" That is the essence of "charity starts at home." But Egyptian leaders did not heed that call. Examples from the Nasser period:

• Did Egypt need to unite with Syria from 1958 to 1961: No. To Syria, Egypt exported a stern military intelligence governance. From Syria, Egypt got a deluge of nonsensical rhetoric about socialism and Arabism.
• Did Egypt need to be immersed in the Palestinian problem to the extend of losing its unity with the Sudan? No!! The plebiscite of 1954 in the Sudan resulted in 7 to 1. Seven for unity, from Damietta on the Mediterranean to Lake Albert at the source of the Nile. Water is power.
• An Egyptian/Sudanese union would have been the strongest backbone for the Nilotic population in dealing with the outside world. Instead, of bringing in the Sudanese leadership, beginning with Ismail El-Azhari, to co-rule the Nile Valley, North and South, Egypt sent Salah Salem to perform a tribal dance in southern Sudan.
• To southern Sudan, an intelligent leadership in Egypt should have sent Coptic leadership. From ages immemorial, the Coptic Church had been advocating a federation between the Egypt/the Sudan and Uganda and Ethiopia. But the wise voice of the Copts were inaudible to the ears of Egypt's strong man, Nasser.
• Did Egypt need to rush headlong into the Yemeni civil war of 1962, following the disastrous dissolution in 1961 of the artificial union between Egypt and Syria? No.  That was a tribal coup, leading to a mountain warfare for which the Egyptian army has never been trained. It caused rupture with Saudi Arabia, depleted Egypt's meager resources, forced Nasser's Egypt to use napalm against the tribes supporting the Imam (the present day Houthis).
• That involvement also whetted Israel's appetite to attack Egypt in 1967. Resulting in the greatest catastrophe in the history of the modern Arabs. Resulting in the second Israeli occupation of Sinai, on Nasser's watch, the occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Namely the rise of Greater Israel. Only Sinai was returned to Egypt, thanks to Sadat's vision of "let us first take care of Egypt."
• For that liberation, Sadat was assassinated. The first Egyptian head of State to exit life in that fashion since Mameluke days. And as Sadat was breathing his last on October 6, 1981, and paving the way to an inept Mubarak as President, the PLO issued a statement of treachery. "May the hand that pulled the trigger be blessed," the Arafat organization intoned.

The Arab system which produced the present League of Arab States in 1944 has a birth defect. It unites the Arab States peripherally. You can only see the outer field of vision. But enhances their division substantially.

Since its establishment, the League of Arab States (LAS) has convened 144 regular sessions. This is without mentioning the new mechanism of Arab summits. At that rate, and by simple math, LAS has met 2.5 times each year of its lazy existence. And not much to show for it.

Just consider the role of LAS in the present Syrian horrific genocidal conflict. With 11 million Syrians either in full flight or trapped inside as internally displaced. Who is acting on this mammoth Arab catastrophe? Not LAS. But Russia, the US, Iran and Assad the butcher of Syria. Suspending Syria's membership of LAS had zero impact on Assad.

So why keep what doesn't work? Unless the Arabs are eternally wedded to the concept of LAS as a talisman. An object held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune. Most of Arab North African States have more commercial, financial and trade agreements with Europe than with other members of LAS.

From all the above, there are objective lessons: The only useful mechanisms in LAS are its functional adjuncts -its sub-agencies working on trade, education, health...etc. The least useful in the LAS mechanisms are those dealing with political and sovereignty issues.

The Arab system should learn from the Organization of American States (OAS). Reason: The inter-American system does not allow for interference in internal affairs. The Arab system is diseased by that interventionary germ. Illuminating examples: splintered Hamas, and petro-dollar puffed-up Qatar supporting the terroristic rebellion of the so-called Muslim Brotherhood inside big Egypt. A hopeless endeavor which the New Egypt is robustly confronting.

Now back to the need for this New Egypt, re-emerging into "the strong State" to practise the Art of Response. Just focusing on one recent report by David Kirkpatrick, New York Times correspondent in Cairo, and a consistent attacker of the policies of post-Islamist Egypt: His article is dated September 22, 2015, and its parsing (analytical examination) should serve as a sample for the need to learn the Art of Response.

In my view, the David Kirkpatrick article is a model of what appears to be deliberate animus toward post-Islamist Egypt. It is headed: "Egypt Destroying Far More Homes Than Buffer-Zone Plan Called For."

I shall use it as a sample illustrating the art of response as a demolition tool. Here is a suggested technique honed through my practise as a defense attorney.

First: Find consistency of bias by his paper - The New York Times.  And show how that consistency is in violation of the obvious facts. Bias is basically an irrational smothering of the facts. The New York Times has nearly always attacked post-Islamist Egypt through its editorials and its reporters based in Cairo. It is a bias in favor of the mother of terrorist organizations called the Muslim Brotherhood. That paper still regards the Brotherhood as a legal and peaceful opposition.

Second: Impeach the source or sources of that article. This one is fairly easy. The sources are invariably the same. Kirkpatrick invariably seeks out the same poisonous wells. In the case of this article, these are: Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization in search of funds. Through attempting to interpret the facts about the New Egypt to fit its own theoretical notions of what constitutes the upholding of human rights. It is a private corporation in search of aggression through intervening in internal affairs via the human rights pearly gate. Ignoring that in countries in transition, like Egypt, the collective rights of the populace trump the rights of the individual.

Third: Parsing the offending text: This is the coup de grace -the stage of the death blow through correct factual analysis. While doing so, put a big mirror fronting the faces of the likes of Kirkpatrick. This is intended to uncover the idiocy of bias through reporting. Here we cite only 3 excerpts.

• (1) "The government has destroyed more than 3,255 homes and other civilian buildings... More than 3,200 families have been displaced... And security forces are still in the process of levelling the entire border town of Rafah, which has a population of 78,000."
• Counter-points: Terrorism in Sinai is an outright warfare. Egypt is acting on the western adage: "Everything is fair in love and war." Sovereign Egypt cannot wage that war with its hands tied behind its back. Its military commanders are in no need of consulting before acting. US pilotless drones over Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen do not pre-warn their victims. I, have seen the huge devastation in Falluja, Iraq, during two US demolition operations. Following the total defeat of Nazi Germany, the allies in 1945 levelled the city of Dresden for no obvious defensive reasons.
• (2) "The government has produced no public evidence that militants have ever received weapons or aid through the tunnels."
• Counter-points: This is the abyss of idiocy. No need to cite instances of "public evidence," which Kirkpatrick himself ignores in making his mythical case. Common sense is sufficient evidence, when asking: "From where did the Gazan and other terrorists gotten their weapons? But thanks, David, for at least admitting that the tunnels exist or existed." But for what purpose? Please also note that when a weapon is smuggled through the tunnels dug by Gazans, the weapon is not stamped "Tunnel-Procured."
• On the very date of that offending Kirkpatrick article, US Congress heard testimony on the role of those tunnels in terror warfare. In a hearing for 2 hours before the Senate Armed Services committee. The witness was General David Petraeus, former CIA Director (2011-2012) and former Commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. So please hear him declare to the approbation of all committee members. "The Egyptian Government has done an excellent job in destroying those tunnels through which weapons flowed."
• (3) After a militant attack on a checkpoint killed 28 soldiers, the Sisi government announced plans for a buffer zone in October. 
• Counter-points: At long last, Kirkpatrick sets forth the legitimate reason for Egypt's need to create that buffer zone. But what he concedes by one hand, he, without shame, takes away by the other. That is particularly where he describes those legitimate actions by Cairo as "scorched-earth tactics." He conveniently forgets that Sinai was earth-scorched only twice, in 1956 and in 1967. During two wars of aggression by Israel against Egypt.

A buffer zone in Sinai to keep ISIS affiliates in Gaza, including the murderous terrorists of the so-called "the Province of Sinai" cannot compare in magnitude with US actions in 1941/42 against American citizens of Japanese descent. Remember the concentration campus established by the Roosevelt administration in which thousands of citizens were herded. Ostensible justification: national security in the aftermath of the sneaky attack by imperial Japan against Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

This is although Kirkpatrick is not the only example which could be used to demonstrate the art of response in rebuttal.

For we have other examples taken from the present campaign for nomination by the Republican party for US President in 2016. One of these is Dr. Ben Carson. An Afro-American physician who made a most egregious declaration against Islam and Muslims during a debate in Las Vegas.

Carson said that he regarded Islam as incompatible with the principles of the U.S. Constitution. Then added that therefore no Muslim could ever be president of the U.S. Yet contrary to Carson's demagogic assertion, my research in 2016 for the American Bar Association proved that Islamic Law and the U.S. Constitution have 80% of their principles in common.

So when the Carson campaign called me recently for a contribution, I fully employed my art of response. In my refusal to make a financial contribution, I could not possibly dwell on the virtues of Islam. Not to, a confirmed bigot. Therefore, I simply reminded that caller that Carson, through his racism, was endangering US security. By providing jihadists with ammunition for their claim that Islam was disrespected, denigrated. Worse still, that Islam was under attack.

Because of their idiocy, shameless individuals, like Kirkpatrick and Carson, deserve to be objects of the Arab proverb: "Those without shame have no limits to what they do or say!!"