The Right on Egypt - From Sane to Crazy

Feb 1st, 2011

The events unfolding throughout Egypt are provoking an interesting variety of responses from the right. First, there is this very sober and thoughtful essay in The National Review by Duncan Currie:

"The history of democratic Christendom," (Reuel Marc) Gerecht wrote in The Weekly Standard, suggests that "you don't get to arrive at Thomas Jefferson unless you first pass through Martin Luther."

"In other words, during the infant stages of Arab democracy, we should not anticipate a dominant performance by the secular liberals popular among Washington think-tankers. The political success of devout Muslims will trigger all manner of alarm in Western capitals. (Witness the reaction to Iraq’s first free elections, which empowered a slew of religious parties.) Yet Gerecht argues that, over the long haul, drawing Islamic fundamentalists into the cross-pollinating world of democratic competition is essential to defusing the ideological appeal of jihadism.

What about the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which Gerecht has described as “the fount of all Sunni fundamentalists”? The Brotherhood represents Egypt’s “most organized non-state political force,” observes Noah Millman. In the 2005 national elections, its candidates (running as “independents”) secured approximately one-fifth of all parliamentary seats, despite violent government harassment at the polls. Under a truly free, democratic political order, wouldn’t Brotherhood influence balloon? And wouldn’t that be a disaster?

“I fully expect the Muslim Brotherhood to do well in any election,” Gerecht tells me. “They have a fairly substantial following.” He has no illusions about the group’s Islamist agenda, or about its virulent anti-Americanism, or about its hatred of Israel. In his view, calling for U.S. “engagement” with the Brotherhood is like calling for engagement with Ayatollah Khamenei. But Gerecht insists that allowing Brotherhood members to participate in a democratic process is the sine qua non of Egyptian political maturation. The country will never achieve real progress, he says, without first creating the political space necessary for a momentous debate over God and man. Indeed, Egypt’s secular liberals must defeat the Islamists in the public square, rather than through military repression. They must win the battle of ideas." EMPHASIS ADDED

Agreed. What's more, we cannot purport to be bearers of democracy's flame and also revert to the disastrous situational ethics that have merely emboldened our ideological foes for decades. Of course, there are other voices.

One example is this nearly psychotic reaction from the inexplicably popular Pamela Geller:

"Anyone who sees this as a good thing secretly dreams of the annihilation of Israel. Big media is not giving you the story. Instead they have the Muslim Brotherhood's US group on, CAIR, calling in from Egypt (and mis-identifying Ahmed Rehab of CAIR as a "democracy activist"). And that was FOX. It's that bad.

Obama's hard left operatives, like frequent White House visitor CODE PINK, are in Egypt now. Coincidence? Methinks not. I don't believe Obama "lost Egypt"; I believe he kicked it to the curb."

Aaron Klein, widely read "birther" and Islamophobe, tells us that the events in Egypt are simply part of the grand conspiracy of wily fascist Islamists rather than the inevitable result of decades of torture and repression.

"Islamists, in particular the anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood, seem poised to take power throughout the Middle East as a result of riots that have already toppled one Arab regime and are threatening others, in what some are calling only the latest wave of an Islamic "tsunami" sweeping the globe.

In Egypt, members of President Hosni Mubarak's family reportedly have fled the country as a flood of violent, fatal street protests threatens the stability of this most populous Arab nation, a longtime U.S. ally and the only Muslim nation with a long-lasting peace agreement with Israel.

The White House has been championing the protests, calling for a transition to democratic rule in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood formed the main opposition to Mubarak."

Klein goes on to impugn the very underpinnings of democracy when they fail to achieve his ends:

"In Lebanon, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia seems to be hijacking the country's government using legal means."

Lastly, we have the consistently dubious Frank Gaffney appearing in the friendly confines of The Murdoch Device: