Egypt Uprising

After a year of keeping the weblong inactive, now the Egyptian Revolution has inspired me to start writing. Today I was looking at New York Times. In the Room for Debate, I found these remarks interesting.


Egypt Is Not Iran
February 7, 2011
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Behind the Obama administration’s concern over legalism, many current and former officials worry that any withdrawal of support for Egyptian President Mubarak will reverberate through the region much as did President Carter’s abandonment of the Shah of Iran.

A legalistic U.S. approach is no way to promote democratic change.
The two situations are not analogous, however. Egypt has been an ally in name only. When Vice President Cheney called Mubarak a good friend and a U.S. ally, it is telling that his example of Mubarak’s friendship — Egyptian assistance during the liberation of Kuwait — is two decades old. He omitted that Mubarak held out for $14 billion in debt forgiveness before he chose sides.


As for the shah, Iran had been a loyal ally during the cold war when the stakes were higher. While the shah’s fall harmed American national security interests, what occurred next compounded the damage: Desperate to ingratiate himself with revolutionary students, President Carter was willing to sacrifice the shah’s life. He not only sought to force the shah to leave American soil for Panama, but he quietly encouraged Panamanian authorities to send the shah back to Iran before the deposed monarch could travel on to Egypt. Thankfully, they did not. The problem with Carter’s approach was not the shah’s fall, but White House dithering in its aftermath.

So long as Mubarak remains in power, the most radical elements will use his presence as an irritant against which to rally. If Obama and Secretary Clinton try to take a legalistic approach now, they will alienate the protesters. After all, Mubarak’s behavior was little grounded in Egyptian constitutionalism. Instead they should be proactive: They should support establishment of a technocratic transitional government, use their soapbox to help it make the necessary legal changes to ensure a smooth election according to a set time line, and then welcome Egypt’s new democratic order.

Cautionary Lessons from Iran and Lebanon
Updated February 7, 2011, 06:44 PMDavid Makovsky is the Ziegler Distinguished Fellow and the director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy project on the Middle East Peace Process. He is the co-author with Dennis Ross of “Myths, Illusions and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East” and the author of "Imagining a Border."

President Obama is walking a tightrope: On the one hand, he aims to support American democratic values in non-democratic states. On the other hand, he and his advisers must realize that democratic revolutions in the Middle East have all too often been subverted by groups that use liberal means to reach illiberal ends.

Contemporary history teaches us to be cautious when examining the intersection of Islamic parties and revolutions.

The Islamists have demonstrated that they are potent not because they are a majority, but because they are a determined and disciplined minority.
In 1979, people of all political inclinations took to the streets in massive demonstrations to oust the Shah from Tehran. Liberals, trade unionists, and Communists joined hands with Islamists. Yet, it was not long before the Islamist-dominated Iranian parliament impeached the new moderate Iranian president Bani Sadr and the Revolutionary Guards seized his office. In the years that followed, Islamists proceeded to discard civil liberties, including imprisoning the masses who protested the sham elections of June 2009.

In 2005, the world celebrated the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon. It is widely believed that Hezbollah was behind the political assassination of beloved former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, which triggered the uprising.

In May 2008, its militia coerced the Druze — a key pillar of the Cedar Revolution — to rescind their support for Saad Hariri. Finally, Hezbollah toppled the Lebanese government last month in opposition to the international tribunal investigating Rafik Hariri’s assassination.

Likewise, when people say that the U.S. need not worry about the Egypt ‘s Muslim Brotherhood because they are supported by less than 30 percent of the public, they miss the point. The Islamists have demonstrated that they are potent not because they are a majority, but because they are a determined and disciplined minority.

They do not play by democratic rules. Both in the case of Hezbollah and Hamas, they created their own Iran-backed independent militias that exploit the fragility of the state. The Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accused Hamas, which was in a power sharing government with Abbas, of a coup when it expelled the authority ’s security forces from Gaza in June 2007.

We cannot be certain whether the Muslim Brotherhood will follow these models. (Saying you are against violence as the Brotherhood says when they have the Egyptian security state on top of them does not count for much.) Given the complexity of the issue, the U.S. would do well to couple its support for democratic values with quiet support for Egyptian military efforts to reach out to assorted democratic forces in the opposition. Let those Egyptian forces negotiate a plan for constitutional change that nobody can charge is “made in the U.S.A .”




Stop Fixating on Mubarak
Updated February 7, 2011, 11:39 PM
Lydia Khalil is a board member of the Project on Middle East Democracy and a non-resident fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Last week, Robert Gibbs was asked to clarify what President Obama meant when he said "an orderly transition must begin now." "Now means yesterday," Gibbs replied. Fast forward a few days and the administration's special emissary to Egypt, Frank Wisner, says, "President Mubarak's role remains extremely critical in the days ahead."

The U.S. has a habit of reducing a complicated, dynamic situation to the actions and fate of one strongman.
The Obama administration's mixed messaging is not only reflective of the uncertainty of the situation as both Egypt and Washington grapple with what's next, but it is symptomatic of the United States' long standing foreign policy contradictions in the Middle East. It reflects the unsavory habit of the U.S. foreign policy establishment to focus on the short term rather than the long term and to reduce a complicated, dynamic situation to the actions and fate of one strongman.

By fixating on the terms of Mubarak's departure, the Obama administration is missing the forest for the trees. Though the U.S. has come out in support of political reform and a democratic transition, it is still framing the debate in terms of the fate of one person. Egypt's transition to democracy is about much more than whether Mubarak stays on until September or leaves right away. Regardless of whether the United States pushes for his ouster immediately or argues that a transition period is needed, it is not addressing the fundamental concerns of the Egyptian opposition and risks alienating its future partners.

The administration needs to understand what is behind the protesters call for Mubarak's ouster. The calls for Mubarak's immediate removal are fundamentally an emotive response to the suffering and stagnation that most Egyptians experienced under his regime. There is also fear that the longer Mubarak is allowed to stay, the greater the chances he will try to reverse the momentum against him.

The protesters don't want to replace Mubarak with another one of his cronies or return to military rule. At the same time, Egyptians don't want chaos and are wary of the consequences of rapid change. They want responsive governmental institutions, a decent education for their children, job opportunities, and the creation of an Egyptian society that restores dignity and allows for meaningful participation.

The Obama administration needs to concentrate on these fundamental demands, do what it can to bolster the secular opposition and assist in initiating institutional and constitutional reform. It must shift the conversation away from Mubarak's immediate future to what it plans to do to help Egypt become a stable and representative government responsive to the needs of its people.