Global Gulag: Hosni Mubarak and American Foreign Policy

SARTRE, Contributing Writer

The sands of time sweep once again over the Egyptian kingdom. Hosni Mubarak is just one more in a long line of autocrats. A Pharaoh he is not. A tin horn dictator, beholding to the regal Yankee, is a more apt description. It is difficult to embrace or have sympathy for a regime that traded rendition torture for a steady flow of military and foreign aid. Mubarak, like all favored despots, has no qualms of conscience when it comes to following orders, from a higher imposing force. Now he is paying the price of being a collaborator of the American Empire.

Doubt this assessment – Wikipedia cites the linkage. In a New Yorker interview with CIA veteran Michael Scheuer, an author of the rendition program under the Clinton administration, writer Jane Mayer noted, “In 1995, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt, making clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally — including access to a small fleet of aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea… ‘What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian,’ Scheuer said. ‘It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogated.’

The Muslim Brotherhood or pro Mubarak secret police camel jockeys create great theater in the public square of Cairo. But the true nature of the revolt is less important than the benefactors or those in peril from the staged revolution. Pulling the plug on the internet was not a surprise. Then a timely return to service, smacks of tactics out of a pys-ops playbook. With all the speculation, predictions and forecasts for the future of Egypt, it might be best to understand that the past represents a clearer vision for the land of the Nile, than the media gyrations of orthodox political analysts. The Egyptian sphinx, a benevolent guardian flanking the entrances to temples is weather worn. The colors pealed, the nose broken off and sand poised to bury the lion human. The only exodus Mubarak will lead is a retreat into exile. Like the Shah of Iran, so much for the fate of American puppets. None other than the syndicated columnist Richard Cohen, for the Washington Post sums up the conventional view.

Things are about to go from bad to worse in the Middle East. An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is nowhere in sight. Lebanon just became a Hezbollah state, which is to say that Iran has become an even more important regional power, and Egypt, once stable if tenuously so, has been pitched into chaos. This is the most dire prospect of them all. The dream of a democratic Egypt is sure to produce a nightmare.

My take on all this is relentlessly gloomy. I care about Israel. I care about Egypt, too, but its survival is hardly at stake.

Implied in this last statement is that Israel’s existence could be at risk from an Islamists regime. In the slang of the colloquial meaning, it is kosher to judge events in light of the benefit or harm to the Zionist state. No better example, seldom seen on television aired on the Fox News Network. Stunned NeoCons went ballistic. The ever courteous and insightful Michael Scheuer, dared state the unmentionable. Viewing the video infallibly demonstrates why America foreign policy is held hostage to a tyrannical government that fosters a victim culture, while practicing a pretender democracy. 

The last hundred years witnessed the repudiation of the core reasons why the American Revolution was a bona fide conflict. Lost in today’s arrogant and destructive foreign policy is a perverse devotion to an imperium empire. Anointed elites of the corporate/state routinely sacrifice authentic national self-interest. The harebrained rationale used by the State Department to shape foreign policy has a long history of anti-Americanism. During the 18th and much of the 19th century, the United States acted mostly in a consistent manner that allowed for internal development and economic independence. When “A Splendid Little War“, was manufactured against Spain, the die was cast that led to the Theodore Roosevelt imperial “Great White Fleet”. Woodrow Wilson condemned the nation to the whims of Internationalism with his hypocritical entry into World War I. What emerged after Teddy’s fifth cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt deceitful entry into World War II was a worldwide empire. Hosni Mubarak is destined to a less than a ceremonial boot from his countrymen. To whatever degree the spirit of legitimate revolution is in the air of the Middle East, our own citizens should hear the lesson and support any meaningful self-determination impulses. How can the U.S. government earn any sort of credibility or respect in the region, when the State Department operates as if they take their instructions from the Knesset?

Since the Camp David accords, Egypt accepted a vassal provincial submission to the American War Party imperious dictates. Have common Egyptians or Americans benefited from the “so called” stability which quarters and facilitates the expeditionary forces that occupy the region?

The unremitting threat and escalation of conflict designed to attack Iran did not bring any substantial stability for the unemployed Egyptian youth. Promoting the doctrine that democratization of the Middle East is a sacred mission is reminiscent of the pardon for sins granted by the Church for trespasses committed in the pursuit of conquest.

So what are our sensible interests with Egypt? Keeping the Suez Canal open for commerce is certainly the primary objective. Trading among nations is a positive endeavor when conducted in a fair and mutually beneficial manner. The actions of Dwight D. Eisenhower during the Suez Canal crisis are instructive. Professor Peter L. Hahn provides this appraisal.