US-Egypt: ‘Why?': A Reflection On The Reasons For The Very Different Reactions To Egypt's Revolution Among North Americans
18 February 2011
By Eric Walberg
Western media always welcomes the overthrow of a
dictator -- great headline news -- but this instance
was greeted with less than euphoria by Western --
especially American -- leaders, who tried to
soft-peddle it much as did official Egyptian media
till the leader fled the palace.
Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak was a
generously paid ally for the US in its Middle East
policy of protecting
Israel, and the hesitancy of the Western --
especially US -- governments in supporting fully what
should have been a poster-child of much-touted US
ideals was both frustrating and highly instructive.
Canadian government support for Mubarak was even more
staunch until vice-president Omar Suleiman's 20 second
resignation speech 11 February, clearly written with a
metaphorical gun to one or both of their heads. This
craven loyalty to an autocrat reviled by his people
was the US-Israeli preferred solution. Much better to
cool the passionate revolutionaries, allow the system,
so beneficial to Israel, to adjust and survive.
But perhaps more important, much better to continue
Egypt's state-of-emergency laws that allow the regime
to keep Israel critics and devout Muslims under raps,
and just as important, allow the US to "render"
undesirable Muslims there to be tortured. Imagine if
the records of these renditions over the past decade
by the US (and
Canada)
to Egypt were to come to light, falling into the hands
of the revolutionaries, much like Britain's secret
treaties in WWI fell into the
Bolsheviks' hands?
"They're not going to put the toothpaste back in the
tube," quipped
Canadian
Prime Minister Stephen Harper glumly. He could
well be articulating -- in his own tasteless way --
the sentiments of the Egyptian military establishment,
which had no use for a Mubarak dynasty and sided with
the rebels, though at a considerable cost. Those now
in power, nominally headed by Minister of Defence and
Commander in Chief of the
Armed Forces Mohammed Tantawi, must push
determined demonstrators out of Tahrir Square, get
people back to work, shut down further strikes, and
keep their US military advisers (not to mention the US
president himself) assured that the centrepiece of
Egyptian foreign policy remains in place. Truly a
messy task.
It is hard to believe now that just a few weeks ago,
Mubarak was invincible, his visage gracing at least
one page in every newspaper every day, meeting with
some Western leader, posing with Israeli notables,
confident that he was in control of his desert
ship-of-state. After the initial euphoria, and as
evidence of his misrule and the perilous state that he
left Egypt in pours out of newly liberated media,
people are overwhelmed, irritable and depressed.
People have undergone a wrenching shift in their
thinking in the past three weeks.
Iranian leaders note the eerie coincidence with their
own revolution of 11 February 1979 overthrowing the
shah (1941-79). A national holiday, more than half the
population of
Iran was out on the streets celebrating along
with
Egyptians when Mubarak finally resigned last
Friday evening. US commentators prefer to compare the
revolution to the overthrow of
Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos
(1965-87) and
Indonesian president Suharto (1968-98). They
even suggest it could lead to another
Iranian
revolution.
Despite the many differences, Iran and
Indonesia are the closest parallels: an
anti-colonial revolt against a repressive
pseudo-Muslim autocrat whose corruption and nepotism
undid him. Those revolts triumphed when the army and
police gave up supporting the US-backed leader, much
as Egypt's security apparatus did. The long repressed
Muslim Brotherhood is the Sunni equivalent of
the Iranian clerics. Even if the US can steer Egypt
into the secular Indonesian model, it will still have
to come to terms with the fact that Indonesia does not
recognise Israel, that any future Egyptian government
will almost surely renegotiate the 1979 peace
agreement with Israel.
It seems that Egypt's suffering and oppression are
something alien to Western experience. But this is far
from the truth. As the fervour spread like wildfire
during the first few weeks, I recalled how the leftist
community in Toronto is just as self-righteous and
eager for change, how neoliberalism has left Canadian
society with yawning income disparities not much
different than those of Egypt. The most obvious
difference being that the general standard of living
in Canada is higher and the middle class (still) more
numerous. But the very idea of such a spectacular
event as happened here to address issues of social
justice is impossible to imagine there or in the US.
It struck me that the most stark and instructive
parallel is not with Indonesia or Iran, but between
pre-revolution Egypt and the current US, which, like
Egypt, has reached the end of the same gruelling
30-year neoliberal road that Egypt did under Mubarak's
reign, jettisoning any pretense of a just society. The
coincidences abound: both the US and Egypt began their
ill-fated journeys in that very 1981, with the
ascendancy of US president Ronald Reagan and the
assassination of Egyptian president Anwar El-Sadat,
though El-Sadat had actually pre-empted
Reaganomics with his infitah,
dismantling of much of Egypt's socialism.
Each US presidency since then has either embraced or
been pressured by the exigencies of capitalism and
electoral democracy to enact greater and great tax
cuts for the wealthy and corporations, meanwhile
cutting social services and increasing spending on
so-called defence. Each "new" government has regularly
flouted the consensus of the electorate on all major
issues, from the environment, social services, jobs,
to weapons production, invasions, drug laws and the
Cubas and Irans which in defiance dare to flout the
empire.
Income
disparity is arguably the strongest impulse to
revolt. As measured by the
Gini
coefficient (0 is perfect equality) Egypt
stands in a far better light at .34 than the US .45
(Canada is .32).
So why did Egyptians succeed spectacularly where
Americans -- in even greater need of a revolution --
fail spectacularly?
Egyptians seem to be much more politically astute than
their American counterparts, more willing to admit
that their leaders take bribes, lie, follow policies
dictated by business or lobbies and which counter
public opinion.
But the key to understanding why a revolution like
Egypt's is impossible in the US is the fact that,
unlike Egypt's army (composed mostly of conscripts),
the US has a mercenary (excuse me, professional) army,
which would have little compunction to fire on any
group threatening the sanctity of the political
establishment.
Conscription is a vital brick in building a
democratic society, an safeguard allowing the society
to be dismantled if it turns into a jail or a brothel,
a brick which has been lost to the US and its
satellites. A brick that Egyptian protesters used to
telling effect.
Senator John Kerry said that the Egyptian
people "have made clear they will settle for nothing
less than greater democracy and more economic
opportunities". So what are Egypt's prospects of
creating a thriving democracy? They would be wise to
listen to Kerry and to observe the US system, though
not to copy it but on the contrary to learn from its
sorry state.
Why would Americans expect a president to be fair and
hear them when he must raise a billion dollars from
corporations to outspend his equally compromised rival
in elections? New York Times analyst
Bob
Herbert looked enviously at Egyptians' longing
for democracy, comparing the US political system to a
"perversion of democracy", bemoaning that at the very
moment Egyptians are discovering it, "Americans are in
the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of
letting a real democracy slip away."
And yet Americans blissfully pledge their allegiance,
weep on 4 July and during presidential inaugurations,
despite the unassailable evidence of the injustices
both domestically and abroad of the system they live
under. Egyptians, though just as nationalistic, were
able to see through the facade of their
pseudo-democracy and rise up to overthrow the guilty
parties. They are the heroes of all true democrats in
the world. The few people particularly in
North
America who see through their own quite
transparent political facade can only look on
wistfully.
What became the anthem of the revolution — "Why?" by
Mohamed Munir — was written, presciently, a month
before the 25 January spark that burned away (let's
hope) much of the chaff accumulated during 30 years of
neoliberal "reforms". He cries out to his homeland
like a spurned lover who vows to take his country back
from the usurpers:
If love of you was my choice
My heart would long ago have changed you for another
But I vow I will continue to change your life for the
better
Till you are content with me.
How different from the equivalent American song —
Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" — self-pitying
and hopeless in this, the world's sole superpower:
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
‘Till you spend half your life just covering up.
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