Protest outside presidential palace July 1. AP photo by Hassan Ammar
This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
If there’s any doubt that we live in an Orwellian National Security State universe, you haven’t been keeping up with the news. 1984 could just as well be 2013 – The Sequel.
As Edward Snowden remains in the Moscow airport for outing the kind of surveillance that boggles even the 1984 mind, the New York Times reports on the behind-the-scenes negotiations that led to President Morsi’s ouster a few days ago. To say that America was in the coup d’état mix understates its influence. According to the Times, United States officials had the final say.
Reading the Times article one wonders if Susan Rice or Barack Obama – or our soon-to-be anointed ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power – have read another still relevant novel,The Ugly American. If they haven’t they should. They’re providing material for yet another round of anti-Americanism.
In the final hours – right there on the phone – Rice and the American Ambassador to Egypt, Anne Peterson, are proposing to Morsi that he accept life as a Presidential figurehead rather than be thrown out on the street. Morsi refuses and the reporters for the Times are stuck. Was Morsi an indigenous Egyptian hero for refusing American dictates or simply a power grabbing Islamic idiot?
How America is referred to by Morsi, his aides, the military and everyone on every side of the political equation is telling. The American government is Mother – as in Mother America.
Here’s how the Times reports the last offer and conversation between the Americans and Morsi’s aides:
[Morsi’s] top foreign policy advisor, Essam el-Haddad, then left the room to call the United States ambassador, Anne Peterson, to say that Mr. Morsi refused. When he returned, he had spoken to Susan Rice, the national security advisor, and that the military takeover was about to begin, senior aides said.
Now the Guardian reports that the announcement of Mohammed ElBaradei as the new Prime Minister has been put on hold due to American pressure. Of course, American officials deny this in no uncertain terms:
”The United States categorically rejects the false claims propagated by some in Egypt that we are working with specific political parties or movements to dictate how Egypt’s transition should proceed. We remain committed to the Egyptian people and their aspirations for democracy, economy opportunity, and dignity. But the future path of Egypt can only be determined by the Egyptian people.”
It goes without saying that the future of Egypt can only be determined by Egyptians – with America on the phone calling the shots. And it also goes without saying that progressive forces in Egypt who sided with the coup – that wasn’t really a coup in their contribution to our Orwellian dialogue – also wants America on the phone calling the shots. For both sides the only question is whether the United States is going to act in their Egyptian interest.
Why are progressive forces also depending on America? At least from my reading and encounters, progressive forces are afraid of their fellow citizens and what they might decide for Egypt’s future. They’re afraid of Islam, at least the way it is currently mobilized in the Arab world. They don’t trust the non-American outside forces that seek to influence Egypt’s future.
A conundrum of epic proportions, to be sure.
I could be wrong but it seems that Egyptians of all political stripes are betting on their preferred America because they are afraid of each other and their neighbors.
Is there something wrong with this (American) picture?
There’s everything wrong with covert power, because it uses its power to sustain itself, rationalizes it like Plato and Straussians due to superior knowledge – the ability see out of the cave, not just the shadows on the cave wall, and leads inevitably to abuse. It is totally un-American, in that the secret decision-making of the British Empire was one of the evils justifying independence, open records one of the requirements of the Constitution, checks and balances more important than expediency at the core of our institutions. The idea that Egypt, or Iran, or Guatemala, or Viet Nam, or wherever else we’ve engaged in covert coups – acts of war reserved by the constitution to Congress – should have their governments selected in secrecy by powers in Washington not even subject to checks and balances in the US, is absurd. Our republic is behaving like an empire run in secrecy by covert operations that have lying to the public, even under oath, as part of their founding charters, to secure “plausible deniability” to our figureheads. Empire is the enemy of the republic, anathema to the founding principles. Our ideals of western democracy are becoming ironic sheep’s clothing on the ruthless pursuit and application of power.
”I could be wrong but it seems that Egyptians of all political stripes are betting on their preferred America because they are afraid of each other and their neighbors.”’>>
lol….I dont think so. I think for lack of one directon and love of throwing really big protests and calling it success—- they dont know what they are getting is America.
This revolt was made up of all kinds—the poor for economic reasons, the middle class for what they saw as Morsi’s incompetence in running the country, the liberals for fear of a too radical Islam dictatorship, and then the remnants of the previous regime who wanted the status quo back..
And the US took advantage of all of this splintered lack of direction.
You can hear the US saying…….”those Egyptans boy!, they really do know how to turn out for protests! …why dont we help them have another one and see what we can get?’
“could be wrong but it seems that Egyptians of all political stripes are betting on their preferred America because they are afraid of each other and their neighbors.”
Not really a good assumption; from the TV interviews of people in both pro and anti Morsi squares gatherings for the past 3 days, almost everybody from both sides is blaming America for Egypt’s woes.
Looks like the US made a lot of wrong calls on this one; first it backed the Brothers to enter and win the elections and to get Morsi into the presidency, then it sold them out. The anti-Morsi crowd is hating the US for having given them a year of misery and repression under the Brothers. Looks like neither group wants anything to do with the US. Tunisia and Turkey are next in line.
Where did we put our soul? We have lost any “moral standing” that we were clinging to. Our compass is spinning out of control.
Thank you Marc.
It’s hard to gauge the extent of US influence. According to some reports, for instance, it was the Nour Party and Jamaa Islamia that vetoed El-Baradei as prime minister. As the US didn’t want him either, that was enough to tilt the balance against him. We can’t know whether one of those factors would have sufficed on its own.
It seems that the US power holders prefer the generals to have as much control as possible. They know that the generals have a direct material interest in towing the US line. So they can rely on them, while they no doubt feel they can’t rely on inexperienced politicians. In formal terms El-Baradei and the “liberal” forces he represents may be closer to supposed “Western values” than either the generals or the Islamists. The problem is that the Egyptian liberals, unlike the US power holders, really are liberals! They believe in liberal ideals like equality before the law. The US power holders do not. For example, Egyptian liberals want to put military officers on trial for massacring civilians. Such ideas horrify US power holders, who favor legal immunity for powerful individuals (in the name of realism, compromise, and “looking to the future”).