A Crazy Call For America To Sanction The New Egypt

Hard to believe, but true. A Michael Wahid Hanna writes in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs that Egypt is "an unreliable partner" of the U.S.

His crazy call for sanctioning the New Egypt comes wrapped in Egyptophobia. As a "Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation" and "an adjunct at New York University School of Law," Hanna has plenty of room to hallucinate in that article titled "Time to Rethink Relations."

How? Primarily through "lowering the total of the annual amount (of U.S. military aid) from $1.3 billion to around $500 million." For what reason? "To alter Egypt's negative trajectory" through "expressing U.S. displeasure with the status quo."

But what "status quo" is that Michael Wahid Hanna referring to? The Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel concluded in 1979 and is still observed by the two sides. That is in spite of the howling hurricane of the so-called Arab Spring.

How would tampering by America, who is the guarantor of that peace between Israel and one-third of the Arab world which calls itself Egypt, affect that historic peace? Hanna skirts that crucial issue of cause and effect. He offers no gems of wisdom on that matter. That is not his concern. His concern is to drum up Egyptophobia at whatever cost. Hanna's demons cannot be silenced.

Suppose Washington, D.C. acts on Michael Wahid Hanna's muddled day dreams of sanctioning the New Egypt. Where would those fictitious savings garnered from U.S. military aid go?

Ah!! Our Michael has a plan for where those illegal cuts go. He howls his solution. "The United States should consider diverting future military assistance to more reliable allies" in the area. Like whom, Michael? "Such as Jordan."

And supposed Jordan, a valiant Arab sister State of Egypt, but with a fraction of the size of the Egyptian military, cannot absorb those savings? Then to who else, Mr. Hanna?

"To partners that need help far more urgently than Egypt, such as Iraq." Did you say "Iraq," Mr. Hanna? Where is that? Hasn't Iraq, outside of Kurdistan, spurned a security arrangement with America, in order to accommodate Iran?

OK!! Details trouble Wahid Hanna. So he shifts directions in the same breath. Which directions: "Or to States in the region that are transitioning to democracy more successfully, such as Tunisia."

Oh, my God, Michael!! You make me a bit dizzy by your zigs and zags all over the Arab area. Of course Egypt wishes Tunisia, her sister Arab State, well. But I must admit to my slow thinking. Where is the Tunisian successful transitioning to democracy? Hasn't a prolonged state of emergency been declared in Tunisia by President El-Sibsi (not to be confused with the name of El-Sisi of Egypt)?

Now we reach the root cause of what ails the brain of Michael Wahid Hanna about Egypt of June 30, 2013. The ouster of the diabolic Muslim Brotherhood from power. Not by the army supported by popular demand, as our Hanna, with a defective bull horn, is screaming his head off. But by popular demand supported by the army. The Egyptians, 35 million of them, were the prime movers. The army simply protected them!!

Please Michael. Those, like you and your friend, David Kirkpatrick, another Egyptphobe writing in the New York Times, are not "aficionados" of history. So it behooves you not to try to revise it.

Mr. Hanna: You begin your 7 page article in Foreign Affairs of November/December 2015 by a provocative paragraph. In it, you make a bogus claim stating: "There are no longer any compelling reasons for Washington to sustain especially close ties with Cairo."

Then you compound that mystery by unabashedly saying without any proof: "What was once a powerfully symbolic alliance with clear advantages for both sides has become a nakedly transactional relationship." Sir: Are there any alliances which are not transactional? Name just one, if you can.

In America, we teach in law and political science that alliances are predicated upon mutuality of interest. That alliances are generally based on parity of sovereignty. That alliances need to be perceived, and are in fact of mutual benefit to the two sides. That is unless they are based on duress. In this case, they are colonial contracts between an imperial power and its protectorate.

So where do you draw your learning about alliances, Mr. Hanna? And how do you substantiate your naked claim that the Cairo/Washington, D.C. present relationship "benefits the Egyptians more than the Americans?" Nuts!!

If that is the case, and it is imaginary, or at best a hypothetical case, why does the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, keep on having a stop in Egypt a near permanent feature of his shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East? Even to the point of attending recently in Sharm El-Sheikh, a mammoth Economic Conference organized by President El-Sisi!!

Let us now look for even a scintilla of logic to justify any of your claims, Michael, in that issue of Foreign Affairs.

You, seemingly inexpertly in the art of logical argumentation and presentation, lump disjointedly three different issues. A compounded and an inarticulate compendium of situations affecting the New Egypt with which you contemptuously deal. Here it comes:

"After a popular uprising followed by an authoritarian relapse in Cairo, and with the peace process moribund, and jihadism now a chronic condition, the U.S. - Egyptian relationship has become an anachronism that distorts American policy in the region."

Allow me to help out in disentangling the disparate elements of that overburdened paragraphic sentence.

• Your charge of authoritarianism is totally unfounded. El-Sisi became president through open and fair elections held in June 2014; his elevation came in accordance with a Constitution adopted in a popular referendum held that year; and the consensual Road Map has now been implemented by a free and open popular elections. 
• In those elections, the Islamist party of "Al-Noor" suffered defeat, and the secularists, as evidenced by "The Free Egyptians" party of the Coptic entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris, triumphed. So if you happen to be an Egyptian Copt, as your name leads me to suspect, you should be dancing in the aisle.
• Where do you find "the peace process moribund?" I hope that you know some Latin to realize that "moribund" comes from the Latin "moribundus," meaning "at the point of death." In fact Hamas and its terror-supported organizations such as "The Friends of Beit Al-Maqdis," has kept Egypt in their cross-hairs. Their declared reason: Cooperation with Israel through blocking the terrorists attempts to transfer the conflict with Israel from Gaza to Sinai. A well-known ISIS tactic.
• As for jihadism being "now a chronic condition," you are right, Mr. Hanna. But only on the surface. Making jihadism a chronic condition attaching only to Egypt is an insult to the innocent victims of jihadism in Paris, Brussels, California, Turkey, Mali, Russia, Syria and Iraq.
• And how is that situation causing "the U.S. - Egyptian relationship" become a factor that "distorts American policy in the region?" Your claim has an appropriate term in American contract law. It goes by the name of "nudum factum." Meaning bereft of facts justifying your claim. To elaborate: A bare contract or agreement that amounts to merely a naked promise. Sorry, Michael, your argument has no leg to stand upon.

Of course, Mr. Hanna, there is a distinct possibility that you, with your senior position at "The Century Foundation," are not keen on the facts of this Century. Otherwise  how are the following known facts "distorting American policy in the region?" The reverse is the only reality:

• Allowing American military aircraft to fly over Egyptian airspace;
• Egyptian provision to U.S. naval ships of fast track access to the Two Suez Canals;
• Provision by Cairo of diplomatic support for American regional policies, with regard to the Gulf region;
• Egyptian American resumed joint military exercises;
• Provision of eight F-16 U.S. aircraft to the Egyptian air force;
• Continued training of Egyptian elements of the armed forces in the U.S.;
• Military Egyptian involvement with Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and the U.S. in the present conflict in Yemen;
• The U.S. opening to Egypt of the alliance with other Arab States in combating ISIS; 
• The recognition, in fact the praise, of Egypt's massive contribution to the fight against ISIS on two priority fronts, Sinai and the Libyan border;
• The expected stationing of the two Egyptian aircraft carriers recently purchased by Egyptian funds from France at the Libyan border and opposite the troubled Gaza coastline near the northern terminus to the Suez Canals.

The list can go on and on. Including the involvement by Egypt of U.S. energy companies in the exploration of the newly discovered natural gas reserves in the Western Desert and the Delta.

Mr. Hanna: Please get it in your head that what we have today is a new Middle East where America, through the Obama doctrine on Middle East conflicts, wants the Arabs to take care of their defense needs.

You must be comatose when you allege in your article that "Egypt has an interest in pursuing counter terrorism for its own reasons." Anti-jihadism has eliminated your outdated fiction of each State should combat jihadism only for "its own reasons." Jihadism knows no boundaries. So should anti-jihadism.

And if anti-jihadism requires "a religious counter-attack," where would you find the rich ideological resources for that lethal weapon in places which are better than Al-Azhar of more than a thousand years?

Could you also please help me understand this foolish assertion of yours: "In short, the regional landscape has been transformed, and Egypt has been left behind. Egypt is no longer an influential regional player. Instead, it is a problem to be managed." Is it because Egypt is turning from chaos to the strong State? A problem to be managed?! I haven't heard that term since the publication of my book in 1971 on "decolonization."

How laughable!! The only problem to hopefully be managed is your Egyptophobia. Compounded by your approbation of the reign of Islamic hegemony in Egypt for one year (2012-2013) by the Muslim Brotherhood.

You seem to regard Egyptian sovereignty as either for sale, or as a legitimate target for unilateral U.S. sanctions.  Whatever you believe, you, Michael Wahid Hanna, are on the wrong side of history.

And were you to find a magic cure for your myopia, you would see that a focus on internal affairs following upheavals, is not equivalent to becoming a marginal player either regionally or globally. Both America, following its five losing wars, and Egypt, following four years of upheavals preceded by 32 years of stagnation, are doing the same. Each of them are rebuilding their infrastructure, creating jobs, improving their educational systems. All acts of fusion of internal energy. Because national salvation begins from within.

So keep on whistling in the wind, Michael!! You wouldn't even get the benefit of an echo chamber!!

Reason: From your writings and your responses to Egyptophobes in The New York Times, you have stayed the course of the equivalent of "Uncle Tom" in regard to the New Egypt. Under the guise of freedom of expression, you seem to have made of your anti-Egyptian phobias a lucrative industry. Your neo-colonialism revival is sure to fail.

Michael Wahid Hanna: You have a bullhorn and an audience. Instruments which you are using in support of your merchantilist approach to the New Egypt. But please note an undisputed fact regarding your success in spreading mythology about Egypt -a rising strong State. You are operating in a Post-Fact America.