From Jihad Watch:
A Whiff of Grapeshot
The only relevant question in politics is "compared to what?" The regime in Egypt today is corrupt, authoritarian, and culpably negligent in protecting religious minorities such as the Copts--as this site has documented over and over again. Just this past Christmas season, slack security permitted a massacre of Christians in Alexandria, and Copts were filling the streets to protest the regime. Now, when the country seems poised on the brink of a revolution, they are nowhere to be found. I've pored over every news report I can find, and have seen no sign that local Christians are involved in this uprising against Mubarak. This tells me all I need to know about the calls for "democracy" and "reform" in Egypt. They know that Mubarak's fall would mean to them what Hussein's fall meant to Iraqi Christians: the end.
The most active rebels seem to be those streaming out of Friday prayers. The rebellion is getting praised by the intolerant (e.g. orthodox Muslim) Sheik al Qaradawi, who objects to the "immodest" dress of women at Egyptian universities. The most popular opposition group in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928 to replace the fallen Caliphate as a Comintern, uniting Muslim supremacist efforts around the world. It sponsors or helped to found all the stealth jihad organizations in the West, such as CAIR and ISNA. None of this bodes well for the future of religious minorities or women in Egypt. It's clear that whatever regime might briefly come to power under a colorless diplomat like Mohamed ElBaradei would prove purely transitional, giving radicals the time to clear away whatever remnants of secular Egyptian nationalist sentiment remain in the army and security forces, in preparation for a full-on Islamic state. We have seen this before in the Islamic world--when the Shah fell in Iran, and when our troops dissolved the Ba'athist state in Iraq.
What is more, we have seen it happen in the West, when the creaky despotism of Tsar Nicholas II gave way to Kerensky's frail provisional government--to the cheers of liberals in the West, including that infamous ass, Woodrow Wilson. We now have a president who is at least as big a fool as Wilson, but perhaps much worse. While Wilson hated monarchy and fantasized about extending American secular democracy all around the world (if need be by force) he at least was not in sympathy of any kind with the Bolsheviks. Based on what I've read in Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer's The Post-American Presidency, I'm really not so sure where President Obama stands, in his heart of hearts. He attended Islamic schools in Indonesia, and the (optional) classes for Muslim students. He grew up steeped in an anti-Western, anti-capitalist milieu.
But Obama's past needn't matter. Jimmy Carter, when he abandoned the Shah of Iran in the name of "democracy," didn't need to be a Shi'ite. It was quite sufficient for him to share the delusion that democracy is necessarily coterminous with freedom--when in fact, for unpopular minorities (like Christians in the Middle East) the two can prove utterly incompatible. (That fact is why our own Constitution includes a bill of rights.) So count on members of both political parties, covering the ideological range from the hard left to the neoconservative "right," to support the collapse of Mubarak's regime. We might even condition U.S. aid on his making concessions to the opposition. (Notice that we never tie strings to U.S. aid to issues like blasphemy laws in Pakistan, or persecution of Copts.) That should prove enough to cripple Mubarak's attempts to stay in power--which could only succeed through the ruthless willingness to show the mob a "whiff of grapeshot."
I know it sounds terrible to say this, but if they are in league with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian mob deserves it. The Iranians who sought to install the Ayatollah Khomeini deserved it, too. A little blood shed to keep the Shah in power would have saved hundreds of thousands later. Think, for a moment, of how the rise of an Islamist regime would affect Egypt's "cold peace" with Israel. How many more rockets will stream into Hamas' hands--and how many Arab civilians are likely to die in the incursions Israel will be forced to launch in her self-defense? Nor should we rule out the possibility that Egypt will become once again (as it was for 30 years) the "front-line" state in conventional military confrontations with Israel. It may be hard to imagine--but remember that Iran and Turkey were once solid allies of Israel. Are we seeing the first steps now to another Six Day War? Such a war might very well end with the discharge of Israeli nuclear weapons, with consequences (and casualties) that are literally incalculable.
What Muslims want, around the world, is to impose political Islam. Democratic regimes will give them what they want--at the price of enormous injustice to minorities in their midst, to non-Muslim neighbors, and to the safety of Americans. For us to be prattling on about the virtues of self-government in this context is suicidal, like Russian aristocrats hosting Bolsheviks in their salons. If I could have Mubarak's ear, I would whisper just two words of wisdom: Tienanmen Square.
Posted by Roland Shirk on January 28, 2011 8:23 PM
A Whiff of Grapeshot
The only relevant question in politics is "compared to what?" The regime in Egypt today is corrupt, authoritarian, and culpably negligent in protecting religious minorities such as the Copts--as this site has documented over and over again. Just this past Christmas season, slack security permitted a massacre of Christians in Alexandria, and Copts were filling the streets to protest the regime. Now, when the country seems poised on the brink of a revolution, they are nowhere to be found. I've pored over every news report I can find, and have seen no sign that local Christians are involved in this uprising against Mubarak. This tells me all I need to know about the calls for "democracy" and "reform" in Egypt. They know that Mubarak's fall would mean to them what Hussein's fall meant to Iraqi Christians: the end.
The most active rebels seem to be those streaming out of Friday prayers. The rebellion is getting praised by the intolerant (e.g. orthodox Muslim) Sheik al Qaradawi, who objects to the "immodest" dress of women at Egyptian universities. The most popular opposition group in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928 to replace the fallen Caliphate as a Comintern, uniting Muslim supremacist efforts around the world. It sponsors or helped to found all the stealth jihad organizations in the West, such as CAIR and ISNA. None of this bodes well for the future of religious minorities or women in Egypt. It's clear that whatever regime might briefly come to power under a colorless diplomat like Mohamed ElBaradei would prove purely transitional, giving radicals the time to clear away whatever remnants of secular Egyptian nationalist sentiment remain in the army and security forces, in preparation for a full-on Islamic state. We have seen this before in the Islamic world--when the Shah fell in Iran, and when our troops dissolved the Ba'athist state in Iraq.
What is more, we have seen it happen in the West, when the creaky despotism of Tsar Nicholas II gave way to Kerensky's frail provisional government--to the cheers of liberals in the West, including that infamous ass, Woodrow Wilson. We now have a president who is at least as big a fool as Wilson, but perhaps much worse. While Wilson hated monarchy and fantasized about extending American secular democracy all around the world (if need be by force) he at least was not in sympathy of any kind with the Bolsheviks. Based on what I've read in Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer's The Post-American Presidency, I'm really not so sure where President Obama stands, in his heart of hearts. He attended Islamic schools in Indonesia, and the (optional) classes for Muslim students. He grew up steeped in an anti-Western, anti-capitalist milieu.
But Obama's past needn't matter. Jimmy Carter, when he abandoned the Shah of Iran in the name of "democracy," didn't need to be a Shi'ite. It was quite sufficient for him to share the delusion that democracy is necessarily coterminous with freedom--when in fact, for unpopular minorities (like Christians in the Middle East) the two can prove utterly incompatible. (That fact is why our own Constitution includes a bill of rights.) So count on members of both political parties, covering the ideological range from the hard left to the neoconservative "right," to support the collapse of Mubarak's regime. We might even condition U.S. aid on his making concessions to the opposition. (Notice that we never tie strings to U.S. aid to issues like blasphemy laws in Pakistan, or persecution of Copts.) That should prove enough to cripple Mubarak's attempts to stay in power--which could only succeed through the ruthless willingness to show the mob a "whiff of grapeshot."
I know it sounds terrible to say this, but if they are in league with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian mob deserves it. The Iranians who sought to install the Ayatollah Khomeini deserved it, too. A little blood shed to keep the Shah in power would have saved hundreds of thousands later. Think, for a moment, of how the rise of an Islamist regime would affect Egypt's "cold peace" with Israel. How many more rockets will stream into Hamas' hands--and how many Arab civilians are likely to die in the incursions Israel will be forced to launch in her self-defense? Nor should we rule out the possibility that Egypt will become once again (as it was for 30 years) the "front-line" state in conventional military confrontations with Israel. It may be hard to imagine--but remember that Iran and Turkey were once solid allies of Israel. Are we seeing the first steps now to another Six Day War? Such a war might very well end with the discharge of Israeli nuclear weapons, with consequences (and casualties) that are literally incalculable.
What Muslims want, around the world, is to impose political Islam. Democratic regimes will give them what they want--at the price of enormous injustice to minorities in their midst, to non-Muslim neighbors, and to the safety of Americans. For us to be prattling on about the virtues of self-government in this context is suicidal, like Russian aristocrats hosting Bolsheviks in their salons. If I could have Mubarak's ear, I would whisper just two words of wisdom: Tienanmen Square.
Posted by Roland Shirk on January 28, 2011 8:23 PM
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