To American Critics of Egypt's Handling of Its War on Terror, I Would Retort: Where Were You When John Yu Falsely Claimed "The Geneva Conventions Are Obsolete?"

Or is it a double standard?!  Is America's war on terror to be set apart from Egypt's ware on terror?  Does terrorizing Americans call for a robust response, but terrorizing Egyptians in Egypt calls for velvet handling?  Is trying to explode an aircraft on its way to Detroit terrorism, but the downing of an Egyptian military helicopter in Sinai a form of dissent?

Is water boarding of suspected Taliban operatives in Afghanistan an accepted form of interrogation, as former U.S. Vice President Cheney opined, but detention of collaborators with the banned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt a violation of basic human rights?

Whatever the answers to the above list of questions might be, sovereign Egypt does not answer to Amnesty International or to the talking heads on Al-Jazeera of Qatar.  It answers only to its public which is clamoring today for resolutely confronting the so-called jihadists.  Today secular Egypt is in an active armed confrontation with those who wish it ill including through the return to Brotherhood's hegemony.  The battle might be long.  But its outcome might determine the future shape of the new Middle East.

What did John Yu advocate?  Upending the norms of international law developed as of 1942, this former legal counsel essentially advised both the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House of the Bush/Cheney era that warring against terrorism called for ignoring the Geneva Conventions of 1949.  His take was that terrorists were not legal combatants; that, with terrorism, the world has entered the era of war without end; that new rules of engagement had to be developed; that due process, whether substantive or procedural, was inapplicable; that "enhanced interrogation" (i.e. torture) was not illegal in dealing with terror suspects; that military commissions were appropriate replacements for a criminal court adjudication; and that sovereign borders should not impede finding and "bringing to justice" any terror suspects.

The John Yu's approach was an open invitation for the use of draconian measures which in his opinion were the new tools needed for the security of the U.S.  Thus Counselor Yu may be regarded as one of the main propagandists for what might be described as an American imperial security system.  In 2009, the new Obama administration signaled the end of that system which, in effect, caused the membership of terror organizations to soar.  But that administration did not dismantle it.  It largely recast it in a new garb, new terminology, and new rationales.

In the midst of those transformative events, the voice of civil society organizations was muted.  But with the Arab Spring, unleashed as of 2010 in Tunisia, and sweeping into Egypt in 2011, Arab masses rediscovered the power of the street.  And soon the presidents of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, were respectively, either on the run, or in jail, or massacred.  With these Arab voices clamoring for dignity, democracy and development, NGOs and other civil society organizations, most of which were being funded from abroad including from the U.S., discovered a new role for them in Tahrir and its equivalents across the Middle East.

That new role was wrongly anchored.  Their index for the progress of democracy in a country like Egypt was measuring democratization by a western yardstick even after the Muslim Brotherhood had demonstrated its penchant for violence for the sake of naked power.  And with the Brotherhood's resort to terrorism to avenge the popular uprising which unseated Morsi in July 2013, these civil society groups, in their attacks on Egypt's actions against that "jihadist" mayhem, seemed to forget the John Yu rules.

This is not to applaud the John Yu rules.  This is to remind that Egypt, as it fights for its secular existence as it confronts terrorism on its soil, must at least be measured by the standards afforded to the U.S. in its war on terror inside and outside the U.S. during the reign of the administration of Bush II.

This is not only a media matter.  It is a situation of vast geo-strategic importance.  U.S. uninvited intervention in Egypt's internal affairs, especially during this phase of Egypt versus Jihadi Terrorism, is probably destined to dismal failure.

The U.S., though refraining so far from calling Egypt's Second Revolution of June 30, 2013 "a military coup," has basically looked upon Egypt's difficult transition to democracy, with ambiguous and doubtful reserve.  The Christian Science Monitor Weekly of February 26, 2014 reflected this state of affairs in a lengthy commentary headlined "Democracy's Dangerous Decline in Egypt and Turkey."  

The substance of the entire article is summed up in the following paragraph:

The U.S. can no longer afford to remain mute in the face of assaults on democratic norms in countries as vital to regional and global security as Egypt and Turkey.  While certain strategic interests -such as military partnership with Egypt and its peace treaty with Israel -may encourage Washington to emphasize stability over democracy, this is a mistake."

Then the two authors go on to emphasize their thesis in these words: "A failure to speak out against the erosion of liberty in Egypt and Turkey, which seem to be following in Russia's authoritarian footsteps, not only damages America's ideals and image, but it harms long-term strategic U.S. interests."

Through writings like those paragraphs quoted above, I see an imperialist approach to domestic happenings which have no impact on "long-term strategic U.S. interests."  This is not to mention its reflection of the double standard syndrome which has plagued the preaching of those who talk about "assaults on democratic norms" and "America's ideals and image."

Such expressions of concern might be taken seriously by the new Egypt providing that account is also taken of the embarrassing facts surrounding John Yu's rules, or National Security Agency surveillance of telephone calls, Guantanamo, or surveillance by the police in New York and New Jersey of mosques.  On the latter, a U.S. District Court Judge in Newark dismissed, on February 20, 2014 a civil rights lawsuit brought in 2012 by eight Muslims.  The Muslim plaintiffs said the New York Police Department's surveillance was unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs in the Newark, New Jersey case claimed that that program focused on religion, national origins and race.  The federal judge disagreed.  In his ruling dismissing the case, he said: "The motive for the program was not solely to discriminate against Muslims, but to find Muslim terrorists hiding among the ordinary law-abiding Muslims."  In response, the Center for Constitutional Rights which represented the plaintiffs declared:

"By upholding the New York Police Department's Muslim Surveillance practices, the court's decision give legal sanction to the targeted discrimination of Muslims."

Therefore, I say to the American critics of Egypt's handling of its war on terror: look at your own backyard.  Clear it from its overgrowth before you cast your critical gaze seven thousand miles east toward Egypt.

What is wrong with us, Americans, minding our own business and lending credibility to our ideas?  Let Egypt solve its problem with its national security, even by borrowing a page from America's handling of its own security.  Egypt is not an American protectorate!!

The Egyptian street, to which this blog has been dedicated since its inception in April , 2011 is clamoring for a decent living.  In accepting the resignation of the Beblawi cabinet on February 24, President Mansour described "the burden of the nation's problems" as "immense, both in terms of economic deterioration and marginalization of a number of different segments of society."

Pretending that Egypt's first need is democratization and total freedom of expression is a false pretense.  It ignores the realities on the ground, and the hierarchy of values brought to prominence by the Arab Spring.  The pragmatic sequence seems to be stability leading to development leading to democratic structures which stress, among other things, freedom of expression.

A forthcoming book by Paul Brinkley entitled War Front to Store Front brings this point home.

Speaking of Iraq and Afghanistan, Brinkley who had worked for the Pentagon to build companies came to an unavoidable conclusion: The single most important task in both countries was to create a self-sustaining economy to which the U.S. paid little attention.  As reported by Fareed Zakaria in Time magazine of February 17, Brinkley told him:

"Our focus in Iraq and Afghanistan was to get the politics right -have elections -and somehow economics will flow naturally.  But that's not actually how it works.  We need to get the economics right first, create a self-sustaining market economy, and then the politics will get much better...In the West, trade and markets led to individual liberty and political freedom, not the other way around."

That important sequence seems to have been understood by jihadi terrorism in Egypt when in February they attacked South Korean tourists in Taba, Sinai.  Tourism is a huge asset for Egypt's economic recovery.  Egypt, in striking back at those criminals, has to place its economic recovery ahead of the uninvited advice of the so-called civil society organizations and Washington, D.C. talking heads!!