Category Archives: Foreign Policy

It Takes a Man… Or A Merkel

Democracy, Europe, Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel, libertarianism, Media, Middle East

Be it in Africa or Arabia, liberals labor under the romantic delusion that the effects of millennia of development-resistant, fatalistic, superstitious, and cruel cultures can be cured by Facebook, an infusion of foreign aid, or by the removal of the Mubaraks and Mugabes of the respective regions. I hope they are right about Egypt. My non-interventionist, libertarian inclinations jibe with a certain detachment about the events on both the Egyptian and Iranian street. (See “Let’s Fret About Our Own Tyrants.”) I’m nothing if not consistent. As I said (“Frankly, My Dear Egyptians, I Don’t Give a Damn”), “I wish the Egyptians better luck with their next ‘son of 60 dogs’ — that’s an Egyptian expression for political master.”

So far, I’m buoyed by the peacefulness of the protest; Egyptians clearly wish to get on with the business of building their lives. Maintaining the peace with Israel would be an organic extension of the admirable restraint exhibited by the demonstrating Egyptians. Besides, what’s wrong with peace? However, American media have not paused long enough from slobbering to express what German Chancellor Angela Merkel has enunciated (“Merkel: Egypt must keep peace with Israel”):

[Merkerl] welcomed Egyptian President Mubarak’s departure in the face of pro-democracy protests as “a historic change” and a “day of great joy.”
But, Merkel said, “We also expect the future Egyptians governments will uphold peace in the Middle East and respect the treaties concluded with Israel, and that Israel’s safety will be guaranteed.”
Israel’s greatest concern has been that its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt might not survive under a new government, especially if Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood – the largest and most organized opposition group – gains influence. The Brotherhood has opposed the treaty.

Trust a German woman to keep her wits about her. Merkle also has a good record of refusing to heed the hedonist B. Hussein Obama (an agitator from Chicago), who urged her to print and inflate her country’s currency to Weimar-Republic levels.

Assassinations Under US Auspices?

Constitution, Criminal Injustice, Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iraq, Journalism, Justice, Law, Media, Middle East

I hope the failed assassination attempt on Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s vice president, recently appointed to quell the unrest in that country, is not a harbinger of things to come. I am thinking of the vulgar cellphone images that circulated the Internet, in which a stoic Saddam Hussein, noose about his neck, is heckled by a hooded Shiite executioner. Even more repugnant than the hasty hanging carried out under US auspices were the US-sponsored legal proceedings that preceded it. (All the obligatory denunciations of Hussein obtain here, naturally. Bad man. Bad man. Bad man.) That Tribunal, which was branded “made-in-America,” had more in common with the French Revolutionary Assembly (See “No Due Process For A Despot”).

Similarly, such a barbaric specter in Egypt (conjuring the French, and not the American, Revolution), will have been greatly inspired, like in Iraq, by American media screeches.

I worry because the US is not necessarily averse to hasty hangings, considering that the strongmen we betray may turn around and tell all: You know; the stuff about how they helped the U.S. with its rendition and torture programs.

Frankly, My Dear Egyptians, I Don’t Give a Damn

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, Israel, Middle East, Nationhood, Regulation

The following is an excerpt from my new WND.COM column, “Frankly, My Dear Egyptians, I Don’t Give a Damn” (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=259413):

“Members of the American chattering class have been tripping over one another to show off their solidarity with the popular uprising in Egypt.

After being hammered left and right for his hands-off approach to Egyptians’ demand for democracy, Barack Obama complied, and waxed fat about those universal rights that belong to the Egyptian people.

You know, the same rights sundered stateside by U.S. representatives – who’ve designated for the Great American Unwashed special ‘free speech zones’ where they may lawfully assemble, and who’ve proposed emergency Internet-killing and net-neutrality laws, individual health-care mandates, and on and on. For the edification of Egyptians Against Freedoms Flouted in America, it has been estimated that our federal government may use the criminal process to enforce over 300,000 federal regulations. Hey, you could be an outlaw and you don’t know it!

… What remains of the rights to property and self-ownership in the soft tyranny that is the USA is regulated and taxed to the hilt. …

… More often than not, Americans who yearn for the freedoms their forebears bequeathed to them are labeled demented and dangerous. I’ve yet to hear liberty-deprived peoples the world over stand up for the tea-party patriots. When they do – I’ll gladly galvanize on their behalf. …”

The complete column is “Frankly, My Dear Egyptians, I Don’t Give a Damn,” now on WND.COM.

The Arab Street: Militant or Moderate?

Democracy, Foreign Policy, Islam, Israel, Middle East

The Arab Street has always been more militant than its leaders—that is if moderation is conflated, in the Arab world, with less religiosity and a less belligerent position toward Israel and the US. To some, this might be an arguable point. But as someone who lived in Israel when the heroic Anwar Sadat addressed the Israeli Knesset (and paid for it with his life), it seems a fair point to make: Sadat (a hero to many ex-Israelis like myself) was—and Mubarak is—more moderate than the pan-Arabists who preceded them (Google “Pan-Arabism before Nasser”).

The chants that rise above the fists punching the air in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria are often about—and against—Mubarak’s patience with “the Jewish State,” which, naturally, “controls the USA.”

I have no idea who’ll follow Mubarak, but if Lebanon is any indication, then the Islamist faction will be influential given its “persuasive” tactics.

This does not mean that the uprising in Egypt is not democratic and, as such, a legitimate expression of the will of the majority. It is also true, however, that Arab dynastic rulers have, for the most, been more moderate than the seething masses they’ve rules with an iron fist.