The last thing the U.S. policy
elite wants is real democracy in Egypt. That country has been a linchpin of
American foreign policy for more than 30 years precisely because its government
has been able to defy the will of the Egyptian people. If that should change
now, America’s rulers and their Israeli partners will be in panic mode, if they
aren’t already.
We may discount the insipid
kind-of-pro-democracy statements coming from President Barack Obama and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They wanted the street protesters to go
away, and if lip service to human rights would help bring that about, then they
would engage in it. But they were careful not to encourage the throngs in
Cairo’s Tahrir (Liberation) Square because they don’t trust common people with
big decisions. Obama and Clinton played a cunning game, but rather ineptly.
Earlier this month their special envoy, Frank Wisner, publicly said his old
friend Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak “must stay in office to steer” the way
toward a “national consensus around the preconditions” for reform. Clinton
tried to distance herself from Wisner’s too-blunt words before essentially
saying the same thing later.
But events moved too fast, and
now Mubarak is history.
The American policymakers must
be frustrated. They need a firm hand in Egypt, but Mubarak stayed too long and
they were powerless to maneuver Vice President Omar Suleiman into power.
Suleiman was to be their new man. He had been a good servant through the years:
When the CIA needed to have someone tortured, he was the go-to guy. The people
would not have accepted him as the successor to Mubarak.
Why did the U.S. government
side with authoritarianism in Egypt? To update what Franklin Roosevelt is reported
to have said about Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1939: Mubarak and
Suleiman may have been sons of bitches, but they were our sons of bitches. For
decades they were faithful agents of the American empire, at a cost of well
over a $1 billion a year from American taxpayers. In the eyes of the power
elite, it was money well spent.
Support for Egyptian dictators
was part of a bigger plan. Since World War II, when America succeeded Great
Britain as the chief imperial power in the region, the U.S. government has
opposed Arab nationalism and independence, and supported any ruler — secular or
religious — who would toe the U.S. line. When it was necessary to cultivate the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt because it hated secular nationalism and Marxism, that
was the policy the Americans pursued. (In 1953 Dwight Eisenhower hosted a
Muslim Brotherhood envoy at the White House, despite its reputation for
violence.) At other times, it supported autocratic rulers who suppressed that
organization (which renounced violence more than 50 years ago). It all depended
on who America’s official enemy was and who was willing to carry water for the
U.S. government — a cynical game, but that’s what superpowers do to gain their
objectives.
And what were America’s
objectives? Control of the vast oil reserves, which are seen as essential to
U.S. global hegemony, and (mostly for domestic political reasons) unconditional
support of Israel, including its expansion onto Palestinian land and
intimidation of its neighbors. Any Arab leader willing to advance those goals —
no matter how brutal or defiant of the people — could be a well paid friend of
the United States. Otherwise, watch out.
The problem for America’s
policy elite is that Arabs like neither foreign interference nor the brutal
treatment of the Palestinians. That’s why they had to be denied a say in their
own governance. Look up what happened when the “wrong” parties won elections in
Algeria and Gaza. If the winner in a free Egyptian election is a party that
sides with the long-suffering Palestinians, don’t expect the U.S. government to
stand by.
And yet what could it do?
Egyptians have experienced people power. They know what it’s like to abolish a
government. Incredibly, Mubarak is gone, and resistance to other dictators is
spreading. For America’s rulers, the chickens are on their way home. How could
they not have known this day would come?
* Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation
(www.fff.org) and editor of The Freeman magazine.
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Yes indeed.
Over 100 years of crypto-fascist foreign policy from Hawaii to Iraq (if you don’t know it all, try “Overthrow” by Stephen Kinzner). The dominant philosophy was “What’s good for the people of the world is not good for the United States. We like dictators”
It is not hard to draw a line from the overthrow of the popularly elected democratic government of Iran and installation of the Shah through the Khomeini revolution to 9/11.
The current situation is much harder to finesse; we and Israel may well end up getting our just deserts.