Stranger in La La land

America must realize that democratic elections do not always lead to a democracy.

By MICHAEL BAR-ZOHAR
US President Barack Obama in NY 370 (photo credit: REUTERS/Larry Downing)
US President Barack Obama in NY 370
(photo credit: REUTERS/Larry Downing)
On June 25, the New York Times announced that “the White House expressed relief on Sunday that the Muslim Brotherhood candidate will be Egypt’s next president.”
Relief? What is there to be relieved about?
But of course, isn’t it obvious? Because the good, democratic Muslim Brotherhood has defeated the bad army, the bad liberals, the bad civil rights activists and tutti quanti.
The venerated paper added: “In recent months, [President Barack Obama] has increasingly come down on the side of the Arab street, explicitly warning the military that they are only a caretaker government, not a military junta.”
Indeed, during recent months, the leaders of the Obama administration, especially the president and secretary of state, have spent hundreds of hours calling the leaders of the Egyptian military, bluntly pressuring them to carry out the transition or else.
Transition was the word.
The Obama administration was so obsessed, so enamored by the idea of transition that apparently, they didn’t care about whom the power was actually transferred to.
Implicitly, the administration made it clear that they were determined to kick the military, their staunch and devoted ally, out of power the same way they kicked out staunch and devoted former president Hosni Mubarak.
What makes matters even worse is that they did so with the naïve and ridiculous hope that if they showed support for the fanatic masses, they would become the darlings of the Islamist world.
When they booted Mubarak from power, one could still say they were blinded by what Tom Friedman naively called “elephants flying’ – the impressive emergence of the Google kids, the internet children, the human rights activists who led the protests in Tahrir square sixteen months ago.
Yet, as predicted, the Google kids were swept away by the hordes of fanatic Islamists – who won 65 percent of the seats in the new parliament. And when an Egyptian court ruled that the vote was unconstitutional – the Americans and the New York Times were the first to condemn the military for the court’s decision.
Add to this the fact that in the last week, Washington’s pressure on the military reached such extremes that noted Egyptian leaders – many of whom had nothing to do with the generals – protested against America’s blatant  interference in Egypt’s internal politics.
Yet, following Mohammad Morsi’s election, even the New York Times had to admit that the “crisis under way in Egypt has put President Obama in an awkward position: champion of America’s longtime foe, and critic of America’s longtime ally."
And of course there is already a choir of appeasers who shout that Morsi is American-educated, that he has promised to respect human rights, and that he is going to be a president of the entire Egyptian people. This delusional belief reminds me of former British prime minister Churchill saying that “when a crocodile opens its mouth an appeaser thinks it is smiling at him, while the beast just wants to bite his head off.”
The US administration with all its experts, pundits, and think tanks does not  yet realize that it is not Morsi who is the danger – but what he represents, the hordes of well-organized, strongly motivated fanatical Muslims who want to pull Egypt back into the dark ages.
Following Morsi’s election, I became overwhelmed by that familiar feeling of deja-vu. Here we are, back to the merry days of former US president Jimmy Carter and the terrible release of the Iranian dark forces of Ayatollah Khomeini –all in the name of democracy.
Democracy is a word that has a mysterious, magical power over the American people. Everything is allowed in the name of democracy.
From the American perspective, since Morsi was elected in democratic elections – Egypt has automatically become a ”free and democratic nation.”
Americans must understand that democracy is not only free elections.  Democracy is also institutions, traditions, checks and balances,  respect for human rights, and equal rights for women and minorities.
Yet, conveniently, Washington is struck with a sudden case of amnesia and forgets that Hamas was also elected in democratic elections.  And what did Hamas do after they were democratically elected?  They threw their PLO rivals from the rooftops of Gaza. Is that  democracy? Are events such as the burning of American flags in Tahrir square, the attack on the Israeli embassy, the resounding demand to cancel the peace treaty, the arrest of American peace activists, the campaign to embrace Iran and make it Egypt’s ally, also considered gracious acts of democracy?
Of course I don’t mention Obama bowing before the Saudi king, America’s support for Hamid Karzai and the emirates of the Gulf, jihadist Libya and authoritarian Morocco.
 And when I discuss my concerns about the transformation of Egypt into an Islamist state with thoughtful, concerned Americans, they become outraged and ask me how I could favor the undemocratic military over the freely-elected MB. They simply do not understand the fact that democratic elections do not always lead to a true democracy.
Where are Roosevelt’s “wise men”? Where are Kissinger and Johnson and Kennedy and Truman and Clinton (the husband, not the wife)? Why does the Obama administration suddenly make the world worry about Egypt, Libya,  Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran? This is the most inept US administration in terms of  foreign affairs since Carter.
But summer has come to America and Americans no longer care about Egypt or even Iran. They go to the beach and take their families to Disneyland. They flock to the movie theaters to see invading monsters from outer space and flying supermen who blow them to smithereens. They exchange the last gossip about Kim Kardashian and Jerry Sandusky. They raid the bookstores for the latest bestseller – about their sixteenth president Abraham Lincoln who, you guessed it, hunted vampires. Yes, vampires are hottest subject in America’s bookstores and the movie theaters today.


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