"The Americans have sold out on the Brotherhood," proclaims an Egyptian pundit, Osama Al-Ghozali Harb in the daily Al-Ahram, Egypt's official newspaper. On a different page of the same newspaper, another opinion-maker, Farouk Goweda states: "Washington has no right to weep in distress for the return of Russia to Egypt." As to the head of the Cairo Center for Human Rights, Bahi Eldin Hassan, he, in the Egyptian daily Al-Shorook, posits a final conclusion: "The U.S. will ally itself with whoever is the ruler in Egypt."
What is this all about? It is about the controversy raging in Egypt for sometime between two ideological factions. On the one hand, there are the secularists whose thesis is that that U.S. favors the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other hand, there are the Islamists whose political doctrine is that the US favors whoever rules in Egypt. Both theses have multiple roots, some of which are true, and some are false.
The basic fact is that neither the secularists nor the Islamists fully understand the making of US foreign policy. The U.S. has been overwhelmed by the sudden arrival of the Arab Spring in late 2010 and early 2011. Its anchors in Tunisia and in Egypt, President Ben Aly and Mubarak were ousted by the Arab square, and not by army coups. The sudden change of fortunes in both Tunis and Cairo, and later in Sana (Yemen), and in Tripoli (Libya) stunned the hierarchy of US decision-making. What made those changes more problematic for Washington, D.C. is that they are largely leaderless and fluid.
Those troubling characteristics were well expressed by one of the moguls of U.S. foreign policy. Richard Haass, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations stated in his recently published book, Foreign Policy Begins At Home, the following: "Ousting authoritarian regimes was one thing; replacing them with something demonstratebly and enduringly better, quite another. Talk of an Arab Spring came to be replaced with the more neutral phrase 'Arab upheavals." (p.13) Haass, who, among other important US policy posts, was Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. Department of State, knows his stuff.
The fog surrounding the present direction of U.S. foreign policy, including hugging in Egypt either the Brotherhood or the Secularists is expected to last until 2016. By that time, the Obama tenure at the White House shall be over. His presidency in general, has "pivoted" the U.S. foreign policy focus away from the Middle East in favor of East Asia. American democracy has been hobbled by the gridlock between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. The Republicans were able to shut down the federal government in Washington, D.C. for 16 days earlier this Fall. The civil war in Syria is expected to morph into a Sunni-Shii war over whose future America will have no role; and Afghanistan is expected to slip back into Taliban's chaos.
In the midst of all these expectations, the U.S. national interest dictates a largely hands-off policy towards the secularist-Islamist split in Egypt. America is largely becoming guarded by a U.S.-centric foreign policy. Obama has repeatedly declared, with the present sluggish economic recovery in mind, that nation-building should be nation-building in the U.S. Richard Haass sums up Obama's case on the cover of his book above-cited. His words resonate with the majority of the U.S. public: "The Case for Putting America's House in Order."
Noting the shallow analysis in the Egyptian press, especially with regard to an US-Muslim Brotherhood connection, one finds the two Egyptian adversarial camps resorting either to imagery or imagination. Al-Ahram cites what Mr. Harb calls "the perfect US synchronization of its policies with the Brotherhood's Islamist rule under Morsi." Here he cites Secretary Kerry's visit to Cairo on February 28 of this year during which he asserts that Kerry tried to convince the secularists not to boycott the elections. From that alleged episode, the writer claims that ousting Morsi has angered the U.S.
It is true that Washington, D.C. bared its teeth at the ouster of Morsi. And it is true that Ambassador Patterson, formerly based in Cairo, had contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood both before and during the Morsi regime. And it is well-known that the US, in response to the Morsi ouster, imposed limited and largely symbolic sanctions against Egypt's military. A quarter of a billion dollars of military aid were withheld; advanced military equipment was denied; joint military exercises were suspended.
But to read in the these measures grimaces of affection from the U.S. to the Brotherhood is to misread the U.S. political mind. It also obscures the changing nature of US foreign policy toward Egypt which had been given by Obama a vague category. He called Egypt a "non-ally," whatever this means.
There are essential facts which frame U.S. foreign policy-making. Primary among these is that Congress is a co-maker of that foreign policy. The senate votes on funding and treaty-making. Its "advice and consent" is required with regard to Presidential recommendations of U.S. officials appointments described by Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution as "Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls." The Senate, when opposed to any Presidential nomination by the Executive branch, has put "consent" above "advice." Right now, Lindsey Graham, a southern senator, is blocking two important Obama nominees. There is also the power of impeachment of the President which is shared by both houses of Congress.
At present, the Democrats are ascendant in the Senate; the Republicans in the House -a perfect recipe for frequent gridlocks. It has never been a secret that most Republicans in Congress still regard Obama an anomaly. As a black man, Obama has become a target for frequent challenges including "was he born in the US?"; "Is he a closet Muslim?" -a reflection of islamaphobia.
We have also seen how brutalizing Congressional hearings of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was. The Benghazi attack on the U.S. Consulate in 2012, which resulted in the death of the American Ambassador together with other American personnel, was used by Obama haters as an occasion for humiliating the woman who might run for President in 2016.
From the above, which is a cursory presentation of the complexity of U.S. foreign policy-making, one can discern the superficiality of defining the U.S. outlook on the Muslim Brotherhood as either amorous or hostile. National U.S. interest is the ultimate defining factor, if at times confused, in the relationship between Washington, D.C. and Cairo.
Of course there is in the U.S., in regard to any national issue including international relations, a cacophony of voices. This feature alone can account for at least some measure of confusion in Cairo as regards where the U.S. stands from various Egyptian actors including the Brotherhood.
After everything is said and done, Washington did not characterize the ouster of Morsi as "a coup." That would have been a true indication of "America loves the Brotherhood." And Secretary Kerry's brief visit to Cairo earlier this month, including calling on Field Marshal El-Sisi on the very day of opening the Morsi trial on November 4, generated a remark by Kerry that Egypt was marching toward democracy. An indicator which caused the shrill voices of the Brotherhood to be raised invoking God's wrath on America.
This was a strategic remark by the Secretary of State whose country is still grappling with a clearer differentiation between "a revolution," and "a coup." That is not surprising. Each term has lots of consequences, but vague definitions. A Professor at New York University Law School, Burt Neuborne, who specializes in civil liberties, called democracy in the U.S. "so dysfunctional that no rational person would choose it." (The New York Times, Sunday Review, November 10, 2013, page 2).
Hopefully the remarks by Professor Neuborne in The New York Times may slow down the barrage of attacks on the status of the post-Morsi transitional government by Mr. David Kirkpatrick, correspondent of the same newspaper in Cairo. Kirkpatrick invariably puts his opinions ahead of his reports.
Egypt's opinion-makers are also divided on the interpretation of the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood connection. Those who see that connection as a permanent tilt in favor of the Brotherhood have also their detractors. In Al-Ahram, Farouk Gowedah claims that the U.S. has manifested animus toward Egypt as a result of the June 30 Revolution which ousted Morsi. Another opinion-maker cited-above, Osama Ghazali Harb, rebuts, also in Al-Ahram, the theory of enmity, though he describes the Muslim Brotherhood as "America's historical friends." This is while Fahmi Howedi of Al-Shorooq, rejects such claims by saying: "U.S. support of the Brotherhood is a lie propagated by the enemies (secularists) of the Brotherhood."
The cacophony of voices emanating from Washington has at least a degree of objective analysis of U.S. national interest. Unfortunately the Cairo cacophony of voices, with claims of U.S. love or U.S. hate for the Brotherhood, does not take objectivity into account. In international relations, there is neither love nor hate. There is only national interest. It is the heart of the spirit of all times, known by the Germans in one word: "ZEITGEIST."
One of my specialties is interpretation. It is my primary tool whereby intangible concepts are given tangible expression. Thus it is incumbent upon me to add another complicating factor in the controversy surrounding the U.S.-Brotherhood connection. There exists a gulf of a conceptual nature between the U.S. outlook on democracy and what that outlook signals to both the Brotherhood and its opponents.
The term "democracy" has never received a consensual definition across the globe. America looks upon the ballot box as a legitimator. But all Arab Spring uprisings regard the same box as a possible manipulator. To Arab Spring countries, balloting is the beginning of the process; to the U.S. political mind, it is the definitive end of the process of democratization. America looks upon opposition in a given country as a pre-ordained feature of free expression; the Arab uprisings look upon opposition largely as counter-revolutionary.
America has not broadly experienced internal opposition with a gun, except in limited cases like that of the Black Panthers; anarchists such as Timothy McVey of Colorado; and the Neo-Nazi gun-toting desperadoes. But the bulk of Egyptians see in the Brotherhood, a propagator of pan-Islamism, not and advocate of Egyptian nationalism.
The gulf between America and Egypt in regard to dealing with the Brotherhood is made more enduring because of the dearth of effective interpretation of Arabic into comprehensible American/English terms.
Under no circumstances should ideology be permitted to pose for analysis. There has never been, nor shall ever be, love between America and the Muslim Brotherhood. America is constitutionally wedded to separation between church and State. The Brotherhood sees the mosque and the Presidential Palace as interchangeable. Their motto includes the phrase: "The Quran is our Constitution" -a permanent denial of man-made legislation, which is counter to the essence of islamic jurisprudence. For one long dreary year, the Brotherhood, through Morsi, tried to put that deadender ideology into effect. But by July 3, the public in Egypt put an end to that strange Brotherhood venture.
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