WHITE HOUSE HYPOCRISY ON EGYPT

The White House loves to talk up "Democracy" but they don't really like to see it implemented (here or) in other countries.  It's too messy. They much rather have their good ole boy dictators who take money and orders from the US Imperium and smile while they are going to the bank. This has been the story in US foreign affairs for all of the post WWII years, and  in other imperial nations for thousands of years since the Roman Empire.

In 2006 the Palestinians were nudged by the west to have a "free and fair" election to decide who would lead that aborning nation in its quest for legitimacy.  The results surprised all when Hamas won handily.  Hamas was the more recalcitrant, less controllable, and the stiff opponent of Israeli rule.  Its election was unpalatable to the Israelis, and their chief sponsor, the USA. The result was that the Israelis illegally held back tax receipts from the provinces, starving the Hamas government for funds,  while the White House did not "recognize" the Hamas government and pulled every string in its "marionette set for the world" to upend the legitimate results of a free and fair election.  In the end, a civil war broke out between Hamas and Fatah, and after many deaths, and destruction, a stalemate was reached in which Fatah (the more malleable and controllable group) supported by the US, eventually took control over the West Bank or those small parts of it that the Israelis let them control, and the Hamas remained in control of Gaza.  The result has been economic decay, political instability, several armed conflicts, and thousands of Palestinian deaths.

History has repeated itself in Egypt, a US client state par excellence, with $1.3 billion in military aid for the last thirty years.  The White House, the CIA and the Pentagon have close ties with the Egyptian military (and secret service) many of whom were trained right here in the USA.  It is well known that the CIA has that nation so "wired" that nothing happens in Egypt that the US does not know about (or had control over).  We are the puppeteers in Egypt and they are the stringed marionettes.  Well, that was so until the chief puppet and dictator Hosni Mubarak met a startling and surprising fate when he was overthrown in a fire-storm revolution.   We lost a key ally.  That made us unhappy.  As soon as all the hand wringing was over and we realized we had to let of Mubarak go, we began playing the "democracy" tape again and again to the Egyptians to encourage them to have "fair and free" elections.  In time the US style fair and free election took place and lo and behold....a member of the formerly outlawed Moslem Brotherhood and head of the Freedom and Justice Party  led by Mohammed Morsi won the Presidency, taking a whopping 52% of the vote.  Morsi was the first democratically elected President of Egypt.  But he had many enemies.  The Saudi Arabians were unhappy with a real democracy on their western border. Perhaps their citizenry would begin to get the idea that they could spend that Saudi oil money much better and equitably than the Abdullah family could.  The US lost a powerful client whom they could control right in the heart of the Middle East. Morsi was his  own man and would not fill that bill.  The Egyptian military and their secret service were long time opponents of the Moslem Brotherhood, many of whom they had jailed and tortured.  Then too the Mubarak old guard were still around and still in positions of power.  The sotto voce word went out from Washington..."this guy must go".

Right after Morsi's election, the disgruntled military tribunal of generals which ruled Egypt after the overthrow of Mubarak, shut down the Parliament and locked out the legitimately elected ministers.   From that point on it was a fierce battle of wills between Morsi, the legitimately elected president, and an array of enemies including the Mubarak old guard, the Egyptian secret service and the military, as well as foreign enemies such as the CIA, the IMF ( which refused a much needed loan), the USA, which threw stumbling blocks in this president's way, and not the least, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who with the green light from Washington sent money and activists to stir up riots and unrest against Morsi.  The Egyptian President was an idealist, was not going to be bought, was not able to be swayed by offers of money or power, and had immersed himself in the ideals and theory of democracy while taking a Ph D degree at USC in California.  So the fact that Morsi held out for a whole year, and Egypt had one whole year of democratic rule is truly remarkable.

We love to talk democracy here in the world's self proclaimed top "democratic" nation, but we don't like it to crop up in our client states.  It makes them so hard to control.  These tin pot upstart  leaders begin going off on their own, doing things that are actually beneficial for their nation as a whole, sometimes actually attempting to make laws or decisions that are counter to the wishes and imperatives of the USA.  That ain't no way to run a world!

But in seriousness in the end we must face the facts. Our foreign policies of interventionism and control encourage despotism.  Dictators exert power through brutality and repression. They keep the lid on the human need for free expression for a while, but soon, as we have seen around the world in the Arab Spring, people rise up and overthrow these pliable and greedy men we seem so determined to set up as despots over and over again. So here we go again in Egypt, which appears set for another round of phony leadership tied by strings to Washington.  Why must we attempt to poke our nose into every little nation around the world....let's embrace their differences and their individuality and let's live together in respect and peace.

Get the picture?


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