America's Role In The Egypt Crisis
Posted on Monday, January 31, 2011 at 02:47PM
Sometime ago I read about a billboard in Grand Junction, Colorado with Jimmy Carter’s picture on it and a thought bubble containing the following words, “They can’t call me the worst President anymore!” Recent events in the Middle East and the reaction of the Obama Administration has brought to memory that horrible nightmare of 1978-79 when the Carter administration did nothing to help or support the government of our ally and friend, the Shah of Iran.
The man from Plains Georgia watched from his White House television the unfolding street demonstrations in Tehran without any move to help resolve the issue one way or the other. Official statements that came from the White House at that time were very much what we hear today, that the White House is on the side of freedom and democracy, and on the side of the suffering people of Iran. Really?
Anyone with any intelligence back then would have figured out that Islamists’ had been working for years toward moving the masses on the streets of Tehran.
And now? Thirty-two years later, America, Israel, and the world are paying a price for that ill-informed and ill-conceived response. We should have learned a valuable lesson from that experience, but instead, the Obama Administration is repeating the same verse in the same chapter of the same book.
For years, Islamic education and Islamic militancy has been growing in Egypt. Islamic press and Islamic curriculum that is anti-Western, anti-Israel, and anti-Christian is being taught in schools throughout Egypt. The Wahabis have imposed Islamic symbols in the least likely places to succeed, places that had already come to modernity. Most notably, to me personally, during my recent visit to Alexandria, Egypt, were the changes to a city that once rivaled any western Mediterranean resort. In two short decades it has been transformed into a militant Islamic society where men and women bathe on the beaches in full Islamic garb. I thought to myself at the time, something has drastically changed and this change could not be for the good.
And sure enough, changes were evident in the attitude of average Muslim citizens toward Christians and their churches. When they could not fight the secular government of Hosni Mubarak, they took out their anger on Christians. Sadly, the Mubarak regime, anxious for survival, did very little other than to speak words to quell that hatred whilst the American administration stood with folded arms saying the White House is on the side of democracy, and on the side of freedom-loving people.
Now that the riots in Egypt are in full view of the world, the Obama Administration is playing the same game as Jimmy Carter, which will in all probability end with the same result. Many people are saying that it is too early to tell, but I can tell you that it will not be long before the American Administration allows the Egyptian government to fall and the same scenario of Iran of 1979 will be repeated with meticulous precision. The Islamists have put up a “front puppet” who happens to be an egotistical technocrat, who spent most of his life outside of Egypt as a prop. I’m talking of course about Mohamed El Baradei, who is the nemesis of Americans and who dragged his feet regarding the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Just as the Iranians put up a prop in Abdulhassan Banisadr, the first President after the Shah, the Egyptians will put up Mohamed El Baradei, and once an election is called, the Islamists will win the day and all these “freedom-loving,” “democracy-seeking” secular moderates will be used as fodder for the Islamists’ fire. The takeover of the country and union with Hamas and enmity to Israel will take place in earnest.
The problem with freedom and democracy in the Muslim world is that it is a figment of the imagination that only exists in the minds of Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.
May God have mercy.
I’ve seen Michael on TV. He is very wise—has a lot of experience—makes a lot of sense.
Does anyone in their right mind think that Egypt will ever be a democratic republic?
Get ready for another violent radical Islamicist state over there—replacing and burying the 5000 year old civilization that was Egypt.