Searching For a New Adversary, The U.S. Seems to Declare Cold War on the New Egypt

Why doesn't Secretary Kerry take care of the U.S. business and let the New Egypt mind its own business?  Where are the fault lines in official U.S. foreign policy toward post-constitutional referendum Egypt?  And whose interest would waging this Cold war on the most populous Arab country serve?

This is not rhetoric!!  This is a reality which can be defined by a succinct presentation of the primary elements of this futile interventionism in the internal affairs of Egypt.

Element One: Attacking the legitimacy of the Egyptian vote earlier this month approving the post-Morsi Constitution of 2014.  The U.S. claims that that referendum was "unfair" as it was "one-sided."
Rebuttal: The Muslim Brotherhood had taken itself out of the political process by declaring a boycott of that referendum and by waging a campaign intended to disrupt it.

Element Two: Approval of the Constitution of the post-Islamist regime was declared by the Supreme Elections Committee to be 98.1% of the vote.  Yet Secretary Kerry expresses "the concerns of international monitors."
Rebuttal:  The plebiscite was conducted under the scrutiny of the Egyptian judiciary.  Egypt's judges are likely to be more trustworthy than "international monitors" because they are an integral part of the structure of every polling station, speak Arabic, and are sworn to neutrality.  Those monitors may be credible if they publicize specific concerns, document them, and assert fraud in the vote through credible findings.

Element Three: Secretary Kerry bemoans what he described as Egypt's "polarized political environment."
Rebuttal: True, but: How can that environment be but "polarized" when you have the Muslim Brotherhood in open rebellion against the second Egyptian Revolution of June 30, 2013?  Elections in countries in transition to democracy produce polarization which by its mere existence does not deprive the electoral process of its legitimacy.  The production of winners and losers does not lead to a conclusion of electoral malfeasance.


Element Four: Official U.S. utterances claim "the absence of an inclusive drafting process or public debate before the vote."
Rebuttal: During the formation of the Egyptian transitional government, the interim president, Adly Mansour, the Prime Minister, Dr. Hazem Al-Beblawi, Field Marshal El-Sisi, and Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmi pleaded with the Brotherhood to join the political process produced by the Egyptian masses of June 30.  They utterly refused.  It was a repeat performance of the Brotherhood's recusal from participation in the drafting of the Constitution.  No government on earth can force an opposition group to enter the political arena.  The adamancy of the Brotherhood to stay out of the political game was due to their mistaken belief that the majority of Egyptians would heed their obstructionist call for sabotaging the Constitutional referendum.  They failed miserably.

Element Five: The U.S. claims that "the near unanimity of the vote was plausible because the government thoroughly suppressed any opposition to the new charter."
Rebuttal:  The urban guerrilla warfare pursued by the Brotherhood through its prolonged sit-ins lasting for six weeks (July 3 to August 14, 2013), its waging of terrorism including attempting to assassinate Egypt's Minister of Interior, and its solidarity with Hamas in warring on Sinai, left no option for the established order to declare it as a terrorist organization.  The suppression of terrorism on Egyptian soil is a sovereign right of survival of the State.  The State's life support system depends on sectarian harmony, the State's secularity, and the re-establishment of law and order.

Element Six: The U.S., since July 3, 2013, has placed Egypt under economic sanctions because of the removal of Morsi as "the first democratically elected president" of Egypt.
Rebuttal: It is short-sighted for the U.S. to politicize some of the terms of the Egyptian-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979 whose protocols provide for $1.3 billion as assistance to Egypt.  Picking selectively at that Treaty is destructive as it sends a message that Egyptian sovereignty was a matter for bargaining at a time when Cairo has begun to assert its independence from U.S. foreign policy objectives in the Middle East.

Being of dual nationalities (Egyptian and U.S.), and beholden only and freely to the common interest of both countries, the main question which arises in my mind is: What does the U.S. gain by this intrusion?  Nothing, except that:

• It shall not change the facts on the Egyptian ground;
• It shall evoke in secular Egypt revulsion at Washington and a stronger desire to look east for alliances and friends -a good move for Egyptian reborn nationalism, but with possible negative consequences for cooperation in matters of peace in the Middle East;
• It shall embolden the Muslim Brotherhood to keep on defying secular Egypt, thus using such self-inflicted victimization as a means for internationalizing its hopeless cause;
• It shall cause the Coptic community to wonder why whether the U.S. is standing by minority rights or by the fiction of looking upon the Brotherhood as bona fide opposition;
• It shall fragment, and perhaps destroy  any future chances for Cairo's cooperation in the broader war on terror in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq;
• It shall weaken the cooperative relationships between the U.S. and the Egyptian military; and
• It would move Egypt toward more neutrality in the spreading Sunni-Shii conflict east of Suez.

Returning to my pet subject of definitions, my wonderment bifurcates into two issues:

• The role of the so-called human rights organizations in Egypt, and
• The legitimacy of General El-Sisi's possible quest for running for president.

On the issue of human rights organizations, I am critical of their wooden, non-changing, and inflexible reliance on the definition of democracy as measured by non-Egyptian standards.  As regards the U.S., the democratic model is so infested with the power of special interests.  There exists a tragic tilt toward what President Wilson warned against - Congressional Government.

In its present transitional phase, and in view of the lack of any universally-agreed definition of the term "democracy," I find it comforting that 40% of the Egyptian electorate has voted for a post-Islamic Constitution.  That is double the figure of 20% who, including me, voted for Morsi in the mistaken belief that he and the Brotherhood are antidote to the return to military rule.

Danielle Pletka's article of January 14 entitled "The End of Egypt's Democratic Experiment" is based on sheer conjecture.  Pletka's writing does not provide evidence of a breach by a supposedly military rule in Egypt.  That is even before El-Sisi throws his military cap in the ring of presidential elections.

If Field Marshal El-Sisi does run for president, what might be the basis for the legitimacy of that move?

1. Under the Constitution of 2014, every qualified Egyptian citizen has the privilege of running for the highest post in the land;
2. The final choice of the winner belongs to the Egyptian electorate of 53 millions.  It does not belong to army tanks besieging the presidential palace and the means of mass communication;
3. A choice of El-Sisi as president does not qualify his rule as "military," only because he had a military career;
4. When Morsi came to be president of Egypt (June 2012-July 2013), his opponent was General Shafik who was also a member of the defunct Mubarak government.  At that time, even the Brotherhood did not raise any objection to the supposed danger of the return to military rule had Shafik not missed that post by only 1%;
5. Both the Islamist Constitution of 2012 and the Secular Constitution of 2014 provide for the right of members of the armed forces to vote and participate in national elections;
6. At the present period of the Brotherhood's rebellion posing the threat of civil war, Egypt needs a strong hand at the helm. Witness the multiple explosions in Cairo on the eve of the 3rd anniversary of the January 25 Revolution; and
7. El-Sisi gained his popularity not because he was only a military person, but because the armed forces of Egypt have protected the sovereign right of the people to bring down autocratic governments (Mubarak's in February 2011, and Morsi's in July 2013).

In conclusion, Secretary Kerry should first and foremost care for the myriad of problems forcing the U.S. in the world.  Let the Egyptians mind their own transition to whatever follows after the coming presidential elections.  Today, Al-Qaeda is in Sinai, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Gaza, to cite a few locations.  Under these exceptional circumstances, there is a clearly perceived need for ceasing political fire in the new cold war against the New Egypt.  Though Egypt is regarded by Obama as "a non-ally," it is nonetheless a sovereign entity which is trying to reclaim its full independence from outside powers.

In regard to the New Egypt, the U.S. should not be behind the curve of history.  Secretary Kerry, together with U.S. and other human rights organizations, should not listen but to the voice of the Egyptian majority.  Good communication begins with good listening.  Or to quote from the Chinese, whose economy has now forged ahead of the U.S. economy to become No. 1 in the world, their adage is "One learns not from the mouth, but from the ears!!"

What a puzzling anomaly for a country like the U.S. whose Constitution separates between Church and State to appear or to act as supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood which proclaims no such separation?  In the process, the Brotherhood is at present looking for a civil war conflagration in Egypt using the deceptive veil of a persecuted opposition.