OBAMA'S SMASHING SUCCESS VOICED IN ARAB SUMMIT

There was extremely good news coming out of Egypt this week as back-handed as it is. Sisi, the sixth President of Egypt, convened the 26th Arab League summit on Saturday. He called for the formation of a joint Arab military force to attack Houthi military forces in Yemen. Think about that request in this way, it was not a call to attack Israel. It was a Sunni call to attack the Shiite rebels in Yemen, thus attack the regime in Iran. Of course, Mahmoud Abbas the President of the Palestinian Authority attended and tried to rally support against Israel, which the Arab representatives treated as “old hat”. What is important is that Al Arabiya News quoted President Sisi as saying, “that there is an urgent need to filter the religious rhetoric of extremism, emphasizing the need to support the elected, legitimate Libyan government”. Yes, the collective Arab states support Liberia that is still in transition from dictatorship and civil war to democracy. Egypt and Libyan people shed their Religious forms of government and the Arab world focus in now on the “urgent need to filter the religious rhetoric of extremism”.

Muslim nations are fighting Muslim extremist. Our President, Barrack Hussein Obama, has called for Arab nations in the world to do what they are doing, Muslims must eliminate terrorist from their ranks. It is a simple policy and is so straight forward that military and diplomatic leaders around the world, including our own Congress, cannot understand it. I heard James Jeffery an ex-United States ambassador to Iraq and Presidential adviser to Presidents Bush and Obama screaming in terms of diplomacy in the Middle East, that we are in a ‘Goddamn freefall’. I note that he also said, ‘And the recipes we have tried to use to stem the violence and to stem the destabilization of the nation-states in the region by one or another Islamic religious movement, — be it Iranians, ISIS, al Qaeda — have not been successful.” I repeat, “The Arab world focuses in now on the “urgent need to filter the religious rhetoric of extremism.” I call that success. I call the “no boots on the ground policy of our President” a screaming success! He has single-handedly changed the world. McCain and Graham hate it apparently because we are not bombing someone. The Pentagon hates it because they are not at the head of the line for budget considerations. Dick and Lynn Cheney hate it because Halliburton and Lockheed-Martin are not raking in massive amounts of money. The Republicans hate it because Obama is a Democrat. Then there is Louie Gohmert of East Texas.

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EGYPTIAN MILITARY AID, McCAIN, AND DOMESTIC POTITICS

There is something happening in politics that at first seemed strange to me. People like +John McCain and +Lindsey Graham have taken a stand against military aid to Egypt. Normally, these Senators are in favor of the military—no matter where you find it—are suddenly calling for the United States to withdrawn all U.S. military aid from Egypt. This morning I was listening to +Chuck Todd, the Daily Rundown on MSNBC who gave a short summary of the situation in Egypt as he sees it.  I realized that what he was doing was distorting the story to fit his political agenda, which is to hate Obama.  What the GOP establishment is doing is to distort the chaotic Egyptian situation in a way that makes it appear that how the President is handling the situation is not right. Obama administration is doing the right thing. The Egyptian military is supporting the great majority of the people in Egypt. They want Democracy: 1) they elected a president; 2) the new president handed the government over to a radical group, the Muslim Brotherhood; 3) the people protested en mass; 4) the Muslim Brotherhood responded with terrorist activity to restore the rogue president to power; 5) the military intervened to restore order and answer the call for another election.

If you have disorder and people are killed, media types find the most gruesome scenes to photograph and the most heart rendering stories to tell. This draws sympathy for the best of causes as well as the most evil of causes; just as if a backpack full of explosives blown up in a crowed place draws this kind of media activity. The Muslim Brotherhood knows this as the big benefit of a terrorist act. They even included destroying Christian Churches, which has an emotional impact on people in our evangelical south. Clearly, President Obama not only knows this but also understands this. His decision is to help the military restore democracy and elect a new president in Egypt, a sectarian president and not a Mohamed Morsi who would turn his office over to clerics. He wants Egyptian air space open to U.S. planes and the Suez Canal open to U.S. Ships. He wants to honor the spirit of the Arab Spring for what it is, which is to move from radical religious caliphates to democracy across the entire Middle East. To do this, military aid to Egypt is essential. What do McCain and Graham want?

The answer to that question is what I learned this morning. The Republican law makers are against restoring democracy in Egypt for one reason and one reason only, that is Obama is for it. I never, in my wildest dream, would have guessed Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and many lesser right wing politicians such as Kelly Ayotte, and a whole host of media types such as Chuck Todd and Ayman Moyaldin would be willing to distort the facts for domestic political purposes. I am willing to give people like Chuck Todd a little slack for not being intelligent enough to understand the complex situation. I can understand how +Rachel Maddow and +Chris Hayes would allow their liberalism and empathy to blind them because of the suffering. I can understand but cannot forgive Graham for selling out to radical right wing Obama haters so t voters in the Plantation South will reelect him in his upcoming elections. However, I can neither understand or forgive +McCain for what he is doing—as an aside, he did gradate near the bottom of his class and the only reason he was in the Naval Academy if the first place is that he was the son of an Admiral.    

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MARC GINSBERG UNDERSTANDS EGYPT

The lack understanding of what is happening in Egypt is really bothering me. However, this morning, +Steve Kornacki’s show UP on MSNBC cheered me up. A fellow named +Marc Ginsberg got it right. As ex-U.S. ambassador to Morocco, he clearly understands the religious implications of the riots in Egypt.  In contrast, +Steve Clemons, a reporter and guest on the show, like so may others has no understanding of the issues. Clemons is the editor-at large of the Atlantic; he should know better. He typifies the kind of journalist who I despise for their incompetence.

The Egyptian people are fighting for their democracy against religious radials: the Muslim Brotherhood. The U.S. reporters like Clemons have the American people believing exactly what the terrorist want the world to believe; that they are poor, put upon victims, of a dastardly military; that they are the victims. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Are reporters are blind to the significance of the rioters burning Christian churches and using mosques as armed camps?  Do they not understand that Morsi was elected by fraud; he is a radical religious nut. The Muslim Brotherhood minority stole the election and the Egyptian people don’t like it—as Ginsberg pointed out, by far the great majority of the Egyptian people do not like it, which is a fact you would never read in the press.  

The Muslim Brotherhood is becoming more and more delineated; thus, that group is becoming a smaller and smaller group of identifiable radicals. They are being isolated from the majority of peace loving Muslims in that country; the people we identify with the Arab Spring movement. They can only gain power by being radical, by burning and looting, by provoking the military into attacking them and killing some of them. The more cameras and reporters they attract the more effective their acts of terror becomes, the more notoriety, the more effective their acts of terror are. In other words, they use the grizzly scenes to gain notoriety to gain sympathy they do not deserve.

I like to think that “the approach” the Muslim Brotherhood is exactly the approach being used by the Tea Party in this country. Of course, we have not resorted to violence although such statements as “lock and load and second amendment solutions” have hinted at violence.  We are stable enough not to have to rely on the military to establish order. A vague minority of the broad coalition of conservatives coalesced into the small tightly knit Tea party; a radical group quite willing to resort to radical measure to gain power; shut down the government, the sequester, and over turn civil rights, for example of acts of terror. The catchy name “Young Guns” was how they identified themselves and attracted young energetic news reporters to their efforts in an otherwise dull world of law making—young ambitious reporters who are will to trash the nation of notoriety.

The Young Guns followed the radical “taker and maker” philosophy of Ayn Rand, which in the political environment of the Untied States is radical as the caliphate verse democracy is in the Arab world. They have worked their way into positions of power just as Morsi did; by telling the people one thing and doing another. Like the Muslim Brotherhood, they “made news” and are still making news because certain reporters are willing to give them headlines and take pictures of them disrupting everything from the U.S. Senate down to town hall meetings. Thankfully, this is America; there was no blood and guts spilled in the small town USA—maybe because the only place in America where you cannot have a gun, is where the politicians are; on the floors of congress. 

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EGYPT NOT THE TIME OR PLACE FOR GANDHI

Left wing media is looking at the Egyptian protest through the wishful eyes of peaceful protesters—the Mahatma Gandhi model.  Using that scenario, the Muslim Brotherhood, who are radical religious driven people, will win. I hear the right wing and left wing media united in speaking in support of the Muslim Brotherhood by standing in opposition to the Egyptian governments, which is attacking the “re-install Morsi” protesters with teeth bared. They are saying that the government should “peacefully” oppose the protesters.  By popular interest, almost by macabre demand, the media saturates TV and the internet with gruesome photos and heart braking video clips of grieving loved ones in the streets of Cairo depicting the suffering of “victims” of the government gone bad.

I would remind my fellow liberals that the victims are from the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an organization formed to overthrow any government not controlled by them, elected by the people or not; something, we call democracy. The election in Egypt failed to elect a religious dictator and in the minds of radical Muslims, they want to correct what they see as a grievous error. They want to establish a caliphate; that is a government with Islamic clerics in charge, who just happen to be the leaders of the Brotherhood. We all know what that means; we have seen Sharia Law in actions and have even the milder from of Biblical Law in Republican controlled legislators in terms of women’s rights, abortion, voter freedoms, etc.

Is what the Egyptian government doing wrong? Of course it is. Would I like to see it done peacefully? Of course, I would. However, with every bloody body of a protestor, I see World support turning against democracy. I see the news media supporting something they normally hate: they are collectively supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical religious terrorist organization. I cannot believe that +Rachel Maddow, +Chris Hayes, even +Joe Scarborough support a system of government that has a “chop, chop square” in every major city, which is what we in the West call the site of public executions; where crowds gather to see people punished. The place where thieves have their hands cut off and where authorities punish infidelity by cutting heads cut off.  We see scattered stoning incidents and we all know about honor killing of young girls who shamed the family by having the audacity to be “raped”.

In the United States, liberals have a deep sense of the correctness of the Gandhi approach to life, especially those of us on the left. We saw peaceful protests work in the civil rights movement but we also saw it fail in the occupy Wall Street movement. We most recently saw it fail in the form of “Moral Mondays” in North Carolina; Gov. +McCrory signed in to law all the Draconian legislation the rogue legislature passed. Peaceful protest in Egypt would surly fail and the consequences for the entire Middle East would be dire. I, for one, am sick and tired of mythical religions driving chaos in the “name of goodness”.  I know in my heart that Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Joe Scarborough do not want to support religious law of any kind, but that is what they are doing. FOX News “clerics” do it out of hate for Obama; perhaps, others do it out of ignorance.

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OBAMA'S UNDERSTANDING OF EGYPT.

This thing going on in Egypt has me concerned mainly because the United States media gets it so wrong. All I can do is shake my head in wonderment when I hear such politically diverse people as +Joe Scarborough and +Chris Hayes saying the same thing about Egypt; both of them are wrong.

The good people in Egypt fought hard to change from a caliphate to a democracy. For those who do not know caliphates are governments run by Islamic church, which means self appointed clerics set in a back room somewhere and decide what is right and what is wrong including starting wars to protect their turf. The people of Egypt elected Mohamed Morsi as the fifth President but the first democratically elected President of Egypt. Morsi campaigned on a platform of running Egypt as a democracy, which everyone in the world, including the America Press, understood means the “majority of the people” not “God” rules. However, Morsi was a known member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group controlled by radical religious clerics—at the time, the world community labeled them as a terrorist group. Still the innate goodness of man, I can think of no other reason, caused people to believe Morsi when he said that he would lead not as a caliphate but by secular laws; laws made by man and not “Allah” of “God”, which refers back to the group of clerics in some back room as mentioned earlier. He did not honor his campaign promise and turned Egypt back to a caliphate. As a result, the people took to the streets in protest. In response, the military removed Morsi from the presidency and were in the process of reestablishing a democracy.

Our President and Secretary of State, unlike the media, understand what is happening but so does the Muslim Brotherhood; our government wants democracy for Egypt and they want a religious dictatorship. This religion group, like the religious radicals they are, took to the streets demanding that the military reestablished Morsi as President. What they really want is to reclaim the government as a radical Muslim government. They claimed the military stole their votes thus is ruining democracy. The stupid American media sided with the Muslim Brotherhood, but they did so for different reasons.  Chris Hayes and all his liberal compatriots are upset because the military is killing people trying to restore democracy and rightwing Joe Scarborough is upset because he sees the Egyptian military as destroyers of democracy. The GOP hates Obama and will do and say anything to make him look bad, therefore, they claim Egypt is his fault, what ever that means in this context. The irony is that all three positions; which are the positions strongly reflected in the America media, which puts themselves on the side of the radical Muslim Brotherhood that wants to restore caliphate; above all else, they wants to destroy the bud of democracy as it exists in Egypt. Isn’t it about time the American people understand what the “Arab Spring” is all about—put in k-12 English, it is about getting rid of caliphates and replacing them with democracies (I will not apologize for lecturing the press).

The only way a democracy can become a dictatorship is by voting for a dictator. The only way the people will elect a dictator is if he or she does not tell the truth in campaigning.  Both things happened in Egypt. If you think that bait and switch politics can only be some exotic foreign place and cannot happen in the Untied States, you had better look at North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, etc. These states have been turned into permanent Republican majority where a backroom full of people rule—Republican dictatorships—only differences are that the people in those back rooms are CEO’s and their “God” is money. Our Congress, like the Egyptian Morsi, is a figurehead
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RELIGIOUS WAR IN EGYPT

This thing going on in Egypt is difficult for people to understand. From what I hear on TV and read in newspapers and magazines, it seems the only people who really understand what is going on are in the White House.  The people of Egypt fought hard to have a election—a democratic process. They won and an election was held. The politician who won was Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslin Brotherhood. Before the election, he had promised to install a peaceful secular government—one that would shed the mantle of hate for Christians, i.e. cooperate with the west.

He lied. The people elected him but he broke his promise and maintained his affiliation with religious terrorist groups. President Obama supported his election for the same reason the people supported his election and in addition because his electoral promised to turn from Caliphate to democracy.  This change in government format represented a major victory for democracy, which far outweighed the results of any specific election.

People in the United States should be familiar with politician betrayal similar to that of Morsi. We have Gov. Scott Walker and Gov. Pat McCrory, for example, that lied to the people to be elected, then used the power of their office to destroy the “fair” process that elected them with voter suppression. In addition, this Republican governor thing is happening against a background of radical right wing evangelical Christians trying to take over government function with such things as Office of Christian Initiative in the Bush white House, take over of public schools, take over of school boards, woman’s health issues, gay rights issues, and re-segregation. The names associated with these activates are high in public recognition: Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Ralph Reid, Pat Roberson and failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum.  Electing Santorum to be President of the United States would have been equivalent to electing Mohammed Morsi in Egypt—had that happened, like the people in Egypt, I would have been in the streets throwing rocks.

Senator’s McCain and Lindsey Graham are on their way to Egypt with the blessings of Obama to try to broker a peace between the Military, Morsi, and the people. It is an attempt to “save the democratic election”. This is another indication of Obama’s greatness; he is willing to let someone else take center stage. He is using their ego, they would be heroes if they solved the diplomatic problem, but of course, he is not risking much because the chance of that happening is very small. Morsi is a religious nut just like those we have in the United States. The fight is between the people and the Morsi supporters, who are religiously driven. I would be like trying to tell Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Ralph Reid, Pat Roberson and Rick Santorum that “God” has no place in government, the old separation of church and State argument Thomas Jefferson so eloquently managed McCain and Graham are not Thomas Jeffersons. The press is treating their trip as if they are “charging into battle on fire breathing white steeds”. When the fail, the media should not ignore the egg on their face.

There is only one solution to the Egyptian problem. The people have to suffer food shortages, long gas lines, soaring unemployment and massive public protests to fuel the defeat of Morsi supporters, and elect a sectarian leader to replace the military government that is now in place. They, not us, have to do it. Sadly, blood will have to be spilled in yet another religious war.

As I blogged before, freedom for a country in the Middle East, just like any other sovereign nation, has to be real freedom and not just a branch of the Republican controlled business empire of the United States. The countries of the world are weary of the United States treating them as lesser subunits under the umbrella of hegemony. In the Middle East, it has been oil, in Central America, it was bananas, in South America, it was minerals, and in Mexico and the Far East, it was cheap labor. Unfortunately, that is the image McCain and Graham have of the world. Isn’t it about time we follow President Obama’s lead and try human dignity and human rights?  

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CHALLENGE TO SAM STEIN'S UNDERSTANDING OF EGYPT

Sam Stein, a person who has a responsible position in journalism (Political Editor and White House Correspondent -- Huffington Post), proved this morning on Morning Joe (MSNBC) that he does not understand the situation in Egypt. He said that the Muslim brotherhood is rightfully demanding that the world respect the elections that put their candidate, +Mohamed Morsi in power. His campaign promise, the platform on which he was elected, was to keep religion out of government or at least mute its power. He assumed office and then did the exact opposite. The people took to the streets to object. I was surprised at your lack of understanding, because of your past political positions; you should be sensitive to the feeling of the common people. They want democracy and not a theocracy. That, Sam Stein, is the message. That is democracy. That is what Obama is striving for in Egypt. Say what you will about Egypt, but they know they were duped and now they want to correct their mistake.

The same thing happened in Wisconsin with the +Governor Scott Walker recall election. Outside influence in the form of the +Koch Brother’s money re-bought the election for Walker but the sentiment is there—the people feel cheated just as the people of Egypt feel cheated.  There are those in congress who object to the +Obama approach. They want a servile subservient Egypt just as they had under +Mubarak. That is not democracy but is hegemony. That is not a free world, but would be an empire. 

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EGYPT AND THE MEDIA; A BARROOM BRAWL

We can believe in democracy with all our heart and soul but at the same time, we know democracy can go wrong. Simply stated, there is only one-way democracy can go wrong and that is to elect a dictator. In fact, the only way a dictator can achieve power in a democracy to have the people elect him or her. This is what happened in Egypt, yet, it seems impossible for the American media to grasp this point. The Egyptian people elected a religious dictator when they thought they were electing a reformer, meaning they thought they were electing someone who would steer them away from Sharia Law and into secular law.  Had Morsi ruled as he had promised to rule, the people would not be in the streets. The majority of the people want to be ruled by secular law, which would have been the case had Morsi not lied and the second he had power (was elected) started to use that power to reinstall Sharia Law. We in the United States know about politicians who lie; we have minority elected governors Scott Walker, Pat McCrory, John Kasich, and Rick Snyder to prove that point.

As most people might suspect, what happened in Egypt, happened because of religious beliefs. They are fighting to shift from a Caliphate to a Democracy. The difficult for Christians to realize what is going on is to discount the seemingly unshakable belief that a God, or in this case an Allah, is somehow all-powerful. Whatever God or Allah represents, voters cannot displace in an election; you cannot vote a supreme being into or out of power. People refuse to make the earthy realization that a supreme being is really a person or group of persons in a backroom. Since birth, the people have had this notion of an “all knowing, all seeing, and all powerful deity” pounded into their minds.  It should not come as a surprise that the people pounding this notion into their heads are the people in the back room, the ones who benefit the most.

The people of he Middle East looked to the United States and Europe, saw what demcracy has done for “all the people” but especially the women, and liked what the saw—in our case a shift from a king to the people. What our media does, especially people like +Rush Limbaugh and +Chris Hayes who claim to be polar opposites but are of the same mold; they confront the government or as they like to proudly proclaim, “They have the raw courage to look power in the eye”. By believing their own BS, they do great harm for a few media rating points.

The old adage is true, “It is easy to rule people if you rule them the way they want to be ruled”. Apparently, the majority of Egyptian peoples want to be rule by secular law. The irony of all of this is that while all of this is going on in Egypt, in the Untied States we have people like Pat Robertson, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum and many, many more fundamentalists fighting to install Biblical Law, which is the same as Sharia Law, as the law of the land in the United States. Then we have media types wildly swing fists in a worldwide barroom brawl without knowing who or what they are fighting. Que lastima!

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EGYPT A VICTORY FOR DEMOCRACY

Egypt is in turmoil again. They democratically elected a bad government. That government wrote a constitution that prevented the people from overturning the new government. The people took to the street and forced the “bad” government to resign. Predictably, the Obama haters took to the “headlines” and blamed our president. They writers of headlines miss the point; it is a victory for secular government in Egypt.

Obama backed democracy before the Egyptian election; he swallowed hard but accepted the Muslim Brotherhood president because it was the will of the Egyptian people. However, the Egyptian people made a mistake and they realized it as soon as the new president started to rule. The newly elected Egyptian President, Mahmoud Morsi, had promised a non-religious government but on day one, he reneged on his promise.

Part of Morsi’s education was in the University of Southern California where he received a PhD degree (1982) and served as an assistant professor. Nonetheless, his party in Egypt was named the Freedom and Justice Party, which was the first indication he had learned political deception from his Republican colleagues in the United States—they always use high fluting over patriotic sounding names for political organization for campaign purposes. A more truthful disclosure would have been to emphasize his membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, which would have revealed his tendency to rule as a puppet in a caliphate—God in the form of religious clerics tell him what to do. Something he publicly avoided not to follow. That was the second thing indicating he had learned from the American politics: he learned campaign deceit. Scott Walker, Gov. of Wisconsin never said during the campaign that he was going to destroy public service unions until the day after the people elected him. George W. Bush never said during the campaign that he would destroy social security, Pat McCrory of North Carolina said he was not going go along with abortion legislation if elected. These are just two small lies out of hundreds and hundreds of examples. The people took to the streets of Wisconsin and North Carolina in protest but it did no good.  The people took to the streets of Egypt and it did some good. I stood with the people of Wisconsin, the people of North Carolina and with the people of Egypt.

Obama will stand with democracy, which is good “almost everywhere” you find it.  The Egyptian people want a secular government, a government of all the people and not just a government of the men (men only) of one small religious sect. In one way, it is a strange phenomenon that we see happening. Egyptian people are fighting for secular government, a government of the laws of man, while in the bastion of everything that is good, the United States, a number of leaders, especially the redneck Riviera but also in a number of other red states are fighting the reverse course. They are fighting to replace a secular government with a biblical government; the religious leaders, elected and non-elected, like Perry, Brownback, Huckabee, and Santorum will dictate what people can or can not do.

We must stand with Obama for democracy in Egypt but also at home. What we are seeing in Egypt is a victory for democracy and a defeat for Sharia or Biblical Law. 

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LETTER TO CHRIS MATTHEWS , CHRIS HAYES & RACHEL MADDOW

Chris Matthews on MSBC is usually an understanding guy especially when it comes to politics, but tonight he fell on his face. He raved on for a long time during his usual follow up at the end of broadcast about not having a vote about going to war. He said such innate things as we are in the business of killing Muslims without voting on the issue: Libya, Egypt, and Syria.

Chris, you are right! We should have a congressional vote on each war. The only exception would be when the president acts to prevent an imminent and sudden attack. I do not want Mitt Romney with his finger on the trigger. Mitt Romney’s closest advisors, the guys waiting in the wings if he were elected, were the same people who started the Iraq fiasco and turned it into funnel for money into their pockets and the pockets of their friends. Romney’s only foreign experiences are that he knows about the Cayman Islands and Switzerland; therefore, he would have relied on his advisors 100% for the rest of the world.

However, Chris, you are dead wrong if you think we can wait—in fact, the whole world wait—on the deadhead United States congress to do anything. We have to rely on Obama. One of the best Presidents we have ever had. Perhaps, we were lucky; perhaps the America people saw his values when they elected his the second time. But, we cannot have Obama forever as much as I wish we could.

Obama has done wonders but we are still hurting for jobs in this country. The House of Representatives have tied his hands—not one bill. We need legislation to control drones strikes but the Senate sets ideal; not exactly true, they do complain about the President using drones. We are in dire need of huge infrastructure investments; the House will do nothing. We need consumer protection but the do nothing.  We need to rebuild our public schools and establish health care but all we get is antiabortion legislation or repeal of Affordable Heath Care legislation, 39 times. . . pure nonsense. Chris Matthew, do you really want these issues decided by Michelle Bachman, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, and Marcia Blackburn. Can they even get their minds around such serious things as war and peace? Do you want Ted Cruz and Rand Paul to decide our future? You act as if Obama is responsible for the Congress, when you know, there is nothing more he can do that he is not already doing—running the foreign policy. He cannot control this Congress; only the American people can.  I am worried about what will happen when we no longer have a Democratic president and if you, Chris Hayes, and Rachel Maddow have your way, you will tear Obama’s heart out and hand it to the Republicans, when you hand the a presidency to a Republican.  

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EGYPT IS STILL IN THE OVEN

Thomas L. Freidman of the World is Flat fame was on a talk show decrying the disorder of the Arab Spring, especially in Egypt. Although he was born in Minnesota, he was educated in Egypt and in England, which suggests he should have a deeper feel, if not sympathy, or at least have more of an understanding of Egyptian suffering than most of us.  However, his politics is buried deep in his genome and affects his reasoning, which was reveal in his comments about the situation in Egypt. He does not see a budding Republic in Egypt; he only sees the messy chaos of an evolving democratic state. He wants to see an ordered government in place with the people he agrees with on top. As an American conservative, he wants to be at the top and wants Obama to be there cracking heads in any why he can to arrive at a predetermined outcome. Because he is not doing that he, Friedman, is upset.

I believe that Obama and Friedman want the same end, which is for the Egyptians to form a democracy and be friendly to the United States. The deference is, and I can only speculate what each wants from their politics; what Freidman wants is hegemony, a subservient nation that will only do business with the United States and will support us in everything we want. In addition as an American, he wants immediate satisfaction, he wants it now. Obama wants a friendly Egypt; one that will be free to choose but will chose us because we have the best form of government on which to model their government and because we are the best nation in the world with which to do business.

My message to Thomas L. Freidman is that if the “world is flat”, and I believe he is correct in that assessment, then the world will know we are all these good things but have to be all these good things because we have to earn Egypt’s respect. I have recently blogged about the difference between fear and respect in reference to a punk with an assault rifle and a 150 round clip (Apr. 4, Fear, Respect, and Assault Weapons).  I see no difference between that punk and the America Friedman wants. Not convinced about my label of conservative for Freidman? Consider Bomb, Bomb McCain-Conservative, George W. Bush-conservatives, Paul Wolfowitz-conservative, Dick Cheney-conservative, Richard Perele-conservative, Donald Rumsfeld-conservative, Douglas Feith-conservative—shall I go on or is your stomach starting to churn.

Obama’s patience is a blessing, Egypt is still in the oven; when it is done, the world will know it. 

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OBAMA TRICKERY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Zionists are giddy over the Obama’s visit. They where made to believe that they orchestrated the entire affair including the rousing applause from the carefully screened Israeli audience. They saw it as a way to tell the world, especially the Palestinians; they have the United States in their pocket. However, what is really happening is that the Obama administration is setting them up for a lesson in tough love.  A parent dealing with a rogue child with an addiction for example has to convince that child they really love him or her. The Zionists are like that child with a land and power addiction that is ruining there lives. Israel cannot keep taking land from the Palestinians with impunity. Their excuse for doing so is that God gave them that land thousands of years ago is empty rhetoric on two counts. First, the Palestinians occupied the land before the Jewish minority claimed it. Secondly, what God wants is precisely the same as the person who invokes the image; in other words, it is hooky-pocus, as everyone knows it.

Obama as a leader has to keep all the balls in the air and he sees a two state solution but only if he doesn’t drop a ball. Only a brilliant politician could hope to accomplish this. What he is saying is, “I love Israel, but I want to establish borders between Israel and Palestine”; read this to mean no more Israeli confiscation of Palestinian lands; no more settlements. He might even include reclaiming for Palestine past confiscated lands with buildings and all. He wants Palestine to have international status. Isn’t it wonderful that Israel apologized to Turkey for its armed transgression against a Turkish ship that was trying to help the people of Gaza. Even more important, Egypt now has an agreement with the Palestinians that opens their common boarder. Did it go unnoticed that Obama talked to a Palestinian leader on this trip—someone who the Israelis consider a terrorist. Of great importance, he also recognized AIPAC while talking to Zionist, which sends the message that he recognizes American Jews and Israeli Jews. I think the amazing thing is that Obama, a community organizer, is talking to groups of both Palestinian youth and Israeli youths.  These young people are the future of the two countries and not the stuffy old politicians—the power of future not the current power.

Remember President Jimmy Carter. He wrote a book that clears his staff and his Presidential Library of all Jewish people, Peace Not Apartheid, published by Simon and Shuster in 2006. It was a New York Times best seller. I went to Atlanta, visited the bookstore in 2012 that center, which told me that book is not on the shelves because it sells as quickly as they get copies. For this means, Obama is not out front trying to forge new negotiating territory; he is going with established world opinion. Carter was calling for exactly what Obama wants, which is a two-state solution with fixed borders. No one will every see a similar Jewish exodus from the Obama administration that Carter saw in his organization. There are several reasons why that will never happen. Mark my word, Obama is a very intelligent parent (politician) who will protect Israel but who is about to exercise tough love on Israel. There are Zionists and there are Jews; there are citizens of America, citizens of Israel, and there will be citizens of Palestine when there is a country of Palestine, and there are citizens of the world but all of them have one thing in common, they all want peace. Stephen Pinker eloquently explained that trend in our humanization in his book, The Better Nature of our Angles. That is powerful support for Obama.   

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F-16's IN THE COMPLICATED MIDDLE EAST

The news that the United States is sending F-16s to Egypt. The news was like kicking a hornet’s nest on both the right and left of the political spectrum. I as a peacenik do not like it. The arguments presented on Middle East information sources were mixed. Some commentators called the F16's junk, out dated, etc. Others are more technical and point out that they are only equipped with visual weapons control capabilities. The meaning in both cases was that they want more but better arms.

The Israeli comments voiced on the American side of the pond can from our congressmen, Apparently, Republican James Inhofe and Paul Ryan introduced legislation to prevent the shipment of the planes. Their basic reason is two fold. First, Egypt is a Muslim country and Israel is not. They want the balance to be in favor of Israel. The second is that Obama is the president and anything he does they will criticize.

For me, I object because they are weapons of war. As a result, we are putting our country in the middle of an arms escalation; one side has more weapons than the other does; therefore, we must try to create some kind of balance in the struggle toward death and destruction. This of course is cold war nonsense. Trying to understand all the ramifications of that balance and all the ethnic and political sensitivities is a challenge beyond me but I hope not beyond the understanding of our President and the State Department.

In a feeble attempt to understand, I asked my self why we as Nation would want to do this. My conclusion is that in the judgment of the Obama administration, it is more valuable to support a friend, especially a friend involved in the Arab Spring: the birth of Democracy in the Middle East. In addition, it does not completely level but helps to level the playing field in the area.  It is no longer all Israel, even though Israel is still stronger by far than all 20 Arab nations in the area. Couple this with the new relationship Egypt has with the Palestinians, especially Gaza, and it represents a significant change in our policy in the area. I trust Obama to do the right thing. My only hope is that he can do the right things fast enough and sure enough to prevent the Republicans at the behest of the Likud Party from over turning his accomplishments. Fulfilling the “Zionist dream”, a mythical imaging of them having everything they could ever dream of having, requires sweeping aside political boundaries and allowing them dominance over huge swaths of neighboring territories to which God gave them the rights. It can never happen and it should never happen.  All we can do is try to help them learn to live contentedly with the Palestinians and United States made the shipment of F-16 fighter jets with that in mind.

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OBAMA'S WISDOM IN EGYPT

I give kudos to Obama for not interfering in Egyptian politics in this critical time of strife. The people of Egypt are fighting for democracy and not a caliphate (religious dictator), a political dictator, or a military dictator; they want a fair representation in the government—just like in the United States.  Unfortunately, the ubiquitous power bug bit President Mohamed Morsi.  At the same time, the Generals and religious leaders are all standing ready in the political wings suffering from the same bite. 

Although not yet fully organized into a political force there are people in this country who are saying we should support, Morsi; “he may be a bastard but he is our bastard”. The era of realpolitik is over. No, Morsi is not our puppet to be manipulated by the most powerful country in the world. He is the leader of the people and if they do not want him, we should have the wisdom not to interfere—the point of this blog post is to point out that Obama has that wisdom. The people oppose to his Middle East policies are more anti Obama and anti Muslim than pro Morsi; meaning they want Obama to use strong arm techniques to prevent a caliphate from forming—that would usurp the power of the people. Obama is confident the people will not accept a caliphate because both he and the Egyptian people know that Morsi is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi promised when elected not to form a religious government and when he moved in that direction the people took to the streets. Obama is confidant the people of Egypt will win if not in 2013 in the future just as the American people won in the 18^th century—it was not instantaneous for us nor should we expect it to be so in Egypt.

UNLIKELY ROAD TO PEACE IN MIDDLE EAST

The pot is boiling in the Middle East. In Egypt, the big problem is a conflict for power between the church and state. The Muslims want a caliphate, which means church leaders choose the leader. They sell this idea to the masses by teaching them for centuries that Allah is the leader and no one can vote him out of power.  The only difference between biblical law and sharia law is a name: God verses Allah. Those competing with Allah for power are the people. After centuries of religious leaders telling the people Allah is all-powerful, how can people cast a vote for a mere mortal; to them it makes no sense. I have no idea how they chose who will be the religious leader in a Muslim society but in the Vatican, only cardinals, not the people, vote for the pope so I suppose the same happens with Muslims. To argue otherwise with any of these people would be like arguing with a nicotine addict about smoking.

Go one more step in this chain of logic. They are killing one another over this. This is a religious war within the confines of a sovereign state, which makes it a civil war; other nations should have no business being involved but the religious aspect negates this. Other Muslim nations are involved; in fact, the Middle East is in turmoil over this one point.  Think of it this way, atheist are the most unpopular group in America so I assume the same would be true in Egypt as well, but what if everyone in the Middle East were to give up their belief in Allah, would we have war in Egypt. We can have secular law without religion but we cannot have a caliphate. The conclusion seems to be that if we put the most hated group in charge and we will have peace. It’s a crazy world we live in. 

EGYPT AS AN ICON IN SHIFT TO DEMOCRACY

Egypt is more than just Egypt; it is an icon in a much bigger fight. President Morsi has been under siege for 5 days: riots and the like. The point of this blog is that it took us 7 years of shooting and killing war to even gain the right to form our democracy not to mention actually forming it—which we are still doing.  We switched from a monarchy to democracy. It wasn’t easy. Ours was the first democracy in history. Egyptians may not use the battle cry “Remember Valley Forge”,  in front of the presidential palace but that is what Americans should remember when criticizing them for violence.

Morsi leads in publicity in the fight to shift from a caliphate to a democracy. It may not be the first such shift in history but the size of Egypt makes it is an important one. In spite of the fact that the people elected him democratically, even he has not learned what real democracy means. He wants to control Egypt as a dictator, which is no different from Assad wanting to hang on to power in Syria. Both want to do the impossible that is use the “religious right” to hold on to power at the same time prevent a caliphate (religious leaders picked by Allah) from forming. The young and educated people see the fallacy of religious leadership with the extremes of Sharia law; they want democracy with secular law and they know that radicalized religious radicals and not some mythical spiritual Allah is doing the picking. This shift in the basic form of government in the Middle East may even more difficult then our own shift from a king to president. In the United States, how many times have you heard references to an “empirical presidency” (Nixon) or “faith based initiative” (George W. Bush) as coded language for monarchy or biblical law? Both stand as direct threats to our democracy. After 236 years, we still have to be vigilant or even stand in front of our “presidential palace”.

WHAT IS THE REAL MEANING OF FREEDOM?

The real meaning of freedom sometimes eludes us especially when dealing with international relations. This came to the fore in the aftermath of Obama’s handling of events associated with the so-called “Arab Spring”. The right wing elements went ballistic over Egypt and Libya. These countries had messy revolutions to free themselves of tyranny. To understand what the right-wingers saw as being wrong with how Obama handled the situation we have to step back a little in history, back to Iran. When they had their revolution to free themselves of tyranny, Great Britain and the Untied States installed the Shah of Iran. With the help of the government of the United States upheld by several U.S. Presidents, he formed and maintained a messy puppet government. In other words, we replace freedom with the tyranny of oil company control. We dressed up these egregious acts with nice words like hegemony or expression such as “they joined the free world”. Because of the hate we generated with this kind of behavior, we still suffer the after effects from their loss of respect for us as a nation. There is a better way!

Finely, we have a President that understands what freedom really means. Egypt and Libya are democracies and are free to form association and alliances with any country in the world they want too. If our businesses treat them fairly, help them to protect themselves from both internal and external aggression, and respect them as sovereign nations they in turn will respect us. We do not need a huge military so that they grovel in fear of doing us wrong. A world of democracies built on mutual respect and not fear is the kind of world I want to live in. A talking head made the statement that if the recent presidential elections were up to the world Obama would win by a landslide; this simple truth is the reason why that is so.

UNDERSTANDING GOP RESPONSE TO OBAMA

What does liberty really mean? The question came to mind when I heard Mitt Romney’s inane comments about Obama’s thoughtful response to the Embassy attack in Benghazi, Libya. It is complex and circuitous but it seems that Egypt and Libya are free and our government had something to do with making them free.  Liberty or freedom means that these countries have the right to decide what their policy will be, who they will do business with, and what countries they will make their allies. What is wrong with that? What is wrong with it is that they are free to do as they want and not as the United States tells them to do.  This seems to be a conservative tendency; if I can control you, you can be my friend.  I have news for Romney; if you, Jim DeMint, and Bill Krystal want to decry the fact that President Obama knew Libya is a free nation and acted accordingly, you and the people you would like to be your followers should be prepared to tell the truth about why you think what he did was to apologize to anyone for anything.