In Libya's Civil War: How to Judge a Declaration as Confused and/or Idiotic?

Qaddafi is gone forever from Libya, Egypt's neighbor to the West.  But the ghosts of destruction through civil war between the Islamists and the Secularists keep on multiplying.  Libya has become a dangerous place for its people and the region, and the world lying to the north, across the Mediterranean.  Militias fighting militias; Qaddafi's nuclear arsenal is gone, but the huge amounts of conventional weapons remain; deadly weapons keep on crossing the Egyptian borders to the east, the Tunisian borders to the west, and to Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) and beyond to the south, through Chad and Niger.  A real security mess!!

But Egypt, though with a million-man army, both in active service and reserves, feels the jitters.  The Sisi government, with pledges to 93 million Egyptians (a full 25% of all Arabs) of security and stability, cannot close its eyes to its long borders with a militias-run Libya.  The Islamists of Libya are an integral part of the flying Islamist carpet of the Muslim Brotherhood, now banned in Egypt, but keeps on floating from Hamas, east of Suez, to Tripoli, Libya.  A vaunted pan-Islamism, which now calls itself a caliphate in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and a caliphate in northern Nigeria (Boko Haram: "Western education is a sin") in western Africa.

This gathering Islamist storm is already rattling the windows of power in security-conscious Cairo.  Storm windows need to be quickly installed, as Cairo uses its soft power to contain blood-shed in Gaza, and uses its iron fist to annihilate the terrorist "Friends of Jerusalem," a Hamas franchise.

The El-Sisi's one-two punch cannot be of lasting effect without at least some gesticulation in the direction of presently law-less Libya.  This is the heart of the lesson of US air strikes against ISIS in Iraq, US air surveillance together with special forces operations in Syria (the Iraq-Syria borders are gone), and the pilotless drones over Yemen to contain the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsular (AQAP) of Al-Awlaki fame (or lack thereof).

Though seemingly regional, this is a global struggle for the defeat of those who claim that God (Allah) has permitted them to claim the entire world, beginning with the Arab/Muslim regions) for Sunni Islam.  The Islamists have anointed themselves as jihadis (soldiers of God), even though the word of God is vastly at odds with those moronic jihadists.  These terrorists, now waging a World War III against civilization, tell the befuddled youth from the U.S., Europe, Asia and Africa: "Come join us and be rewarded by paradise in the hereafter."  But the Quran confronts their thesis of "cooperation for murder," by these words: "You help one another in righteousness and piety, but do not help one another in sin and rancor." (Chapter V, Verse 2).

This confrontation between the secularists (who won in Egypt) and the Islamists (who seem to be winning in Libya, Iraq and Syria) is existential.  It is a zero-sum game, and after the dust of battle settles, only one of the two global factions shall remain standing.  And it shall not be the Islamists, what with their fragmentation, territorial non-contiguity, savagery, and alienation of the vast Muslim masses in 57 States!!

However, on the side of the Islamists, stands idiotic western media, vacillating western leadership, hood-winked non-governmental organizations, and an America which is still looking at the jihadis as reformable, potentially democratic and a counterpoise in the Arab Spring to what the U.S. perceives as a lurch towards military governance. And when America gets really stunned by the Islamists barbarism, such as in the case of the beheading of the American photojournalist James Foley, America gets dressed up as a cop holding a search warrant, knocking on the door of the jihadis, entering their lair (where animals lie down) and solemnly declare: "You have the right to be silent!!"

Come on, America: this is war which is more ferocious than that in Iraq where, in 2003, you suspended the iconic Geneva Conventions of 1949.  It is amazing that you enjoy nearly silently, Egyptian initiatives for peace for the Gazans and the Israelis, yet condemn Cairo for what you miscontstrue as Egyptian intervention in Libya.  What a mockery!!  Washington hits ISIS from the air under the justifiable claim of ISIS being an existential threat to the homeland 10,000 miles to the west.  But looks upon a presumed Egyptian act of self defense a dangerous intervention by Cairo in the Libyan affair.

This is not only double standard.  It is beyond being confused.  It is a sheer self-defeating fantasy:

• The Islamist intervention in Egyptian domestic affairs is on, since the popular unseating of the Islamist reign of terror in Egypt under Morsi from June 2012 to July 2013;
• American media and non-governmental organizations, including Haman Rights Watch, still obtusely describe the elected presidency of El-Sisi as a coup; 
• Simultaneously, the spokeswoman of the U.S. State Department, Mary Harf, in effect declares on August 19, 2014 that President El-Sisi was leading the process for democratization in Egypt, but this would take a long time.  Thanks, Ms. Harf, your assessment of democratization in Egypt has not been invited, unless you wish to eat your words about Egypt a couple of weeks earlier.  At that time you charged Cairo of using U.S. aid to suppress peaceful demonstrations.  In a riposte, the Cairo Foreign Ministry did not mince its words.  It said that your statements reflect total incompetence and ignorance of the facts on the ground in Egypt;
• Compounding these contradictions, are the declarations of "The Friends of Jerusalem" (Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis) that it shall keep on liquidating Egyptian security forces in Sinai because they were the enemies of God through their fealty to El-Sisi -an enemy of God (as per Ansar);
• Now come the American charge that Cairo has placed its airports at the disposal of the air force of United Arab Emirates to attack the Islamists in and around Tripoli.  

Aside from being a non-substantiated charge, let us suppose that it is true: how would it differ in its ultimate effect from U.S. similar and more direct actions elsewhere in Arab lands?  And who gave the U.S. the right to complain that it was not consulted in advance of such actions?  Does the U.S. consult Egypt before it undertakes its justifiable actions against ISIS and similar terrorist organizations?  Is Washington, in its justifiable desire to defeat ISIS, consulting with Cairo on American rumored contracts with Al-Assad and Iran under the theory of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend?"  Not so!!

• Then as "icing on the cake," enters The New York Times of August 26, with the provocative headline on its cover page: "Arab Nations Strike in Libya, Surprising U.S."  The paper's demagogic reporter David Kirkpatrick, supported by his usual coterie ensconced at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (What kind of international peace do they advocate?) pipes in:  In an interview with the New York Public Radio on August 26, that correspondent, in a self-convincing voice, says: "Egyptians lied to the U.S.  This is a cold war between political Islam versus stability.  The military government in Egypt never forgets U.S. backing of Morsi when he came to power."  Thanks, David!!  Apparently you see Cairo always from a faulty lens of an Egypt descending into dictatorship!!
• Now how does Mr. Kirkpatrick reach these conclusions?  And more to the point, how does "one senior American official" perform an acrobatic outstretch in describing the presumed actions by the Emirates and Egypt in the following confused and/or idiotic words:  "We don't see this as a constructive at all."  

Well, the Carnegie people went even beyond these interventionary hallucinatory statements.  A Michele Dunne, a senior associate at the Carnegie, raves from the bottom of a well of fiction when she solemnly declares: Such actions have "proved to be a gigantic impediment to international efforts to resolve any of these crises."  Michele: time for you to take a break from your overworked brain at Starbucks;

• In what seem to be an anticipation by Cairo of these official and non-official American blitz against Cairo's self-defensive measures, President El-Sisi had a completely different version.  Addressing one of his periodic meetings with Egyptian media, he referred to the allegations by the Muslim Brotherhood in regard to Egyptian armed forces involvement in attacks on the Islamist militias in Libya.  The Egyptian President declared that there was no involvement by Egypt "outside of its borders."
• El-Sisi was on point in addressing the issue from an Egyptian sovereignty perspective.  All other foreign declarations were fumings with no tangle effect on the existential battle between the Islamists and the secularists in Arab lands.  It is a combat between those who declare their adversaries "apostates (Takfiris)," a fancy term by the Islamists, and those who declare that "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) (Tawhidis), a term that says faith is a matter of choice and conscience.  The sword has no place.

It is high time for America to stop acting confused.  The Hamlet persona of "To Be or Not To Be" is not befitting a great power!!  The struggle against terrorism, especially when it raises deceptively the banner of faith (Islam), is globally indivisible.  You are either on the side of humanity and international humanitarian law, or on the side of darkness, amply represented by the flag of ISIS -a flag which amply deserved a recent act of maximum disdain performed in Sweden by two young Egyptian women!!