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Newt Gingrich: Egyptian Realities vs. American Fantasies
Egypt is now suffering the consequences of the Obama policies in Egypt along with brethren from the Muslim Brotherhood. Time for king obummer to keep his trap shut and let them try to clean up the mess he intimidated them in to making (starting with taking our ally for 30 years Mubarack out). We need to help the army and let the people of Egypt chose their path and it clearly won't be the radical Islam the brotherhood (and apparently Obama) wanted to impose on them (and at some point us as well probably with the blessing of you know who).
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Gingrich Productions August 23, 2013 Newt Gingrich
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The gap between Egyptian realities and the opinions of American leaders of both parties is simply amazing.
The American leaders seem to live in a fantasy world in which America is all powerful, our definition of legitimacy is unchallengeable, and our right to take risks with the lives of other people is unquestioned.
Both Democratic and Republican leaders (and their allies in the news media) seem to have no sense of the realities facing the Egyptian military.
Put yourselves in the shoes of the senior officers of the Egyptian military.
Two years ago they watched the Obama Administration abandon President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak had been President of Egypt for 30 years and throughout that time had supported the United States — through two wars in Iraq, the decade of war in Afghanistan, and an amazing number of other contingencies. His reward for being a faithful ally was abandonment and imprisonment.
The Obama desertion of Mubarak almost certainly reminded the Egyptian military of President Jimmy Carter’s desertion of the Shah of Iran. In November of 1978 President Carter toasted the Shah as a great ally. A few months later, the Americans pressured him to give in to the “reformers.” The Shah was driven from his country and died overseas. His generals were imprisoned and many executed. Their families fled Iran. Today, 34 years later, the “reformers” have consolidated their dictatorship and are trying to build a nuclear weapon.
The United States invaded Iraq and left behind a high level of violence.
The United States helped drive Qaddafi from power and has left Libya in shambles.
The United States has wrung its hands and publicly dithered while Assad has worked with the Iranians and the Russians to consolidate his control over Syria.
American senators and American secretaries of state can fly to Cairo to offer advice and advocate idealistic but impractical reforms. When they are done lecturing Egyptians, they fly home to safety.
The senior officers of the Egyptian military know that they will still be there when the Americans leave. Indeed, many of them remember the Americans abandoning their allies in South Vietnam.
Most senior American officials do not understand this and assume their prestige is unquestionable.
Cutting off American aid will have no effect. (I favor cutting it off because it is no longer furthering American interests.) The Saudis and their Persian Gulf allies have already committed $10 in new aid for every dollar of American aid.
The senior officers of the Egyptian military know that their lives and their families’ lives depend on defeating the Muslim Brotherhood.
They know that Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak all followed hard line policies against the Muslim Brotherhood and it worked.
They know that the Algerian Army rejected an Islamist election victory in 1991 and fought an eleven year civil war to impose order on Algeria. More than 44,000 Algerians were killed in the campaign to defeat Islamists. Westerners were horrified. The Algerian Army won.
The hardest-line example of survival through repression was Hafez Assad of Syria who survived in power for 30 years (from 1970 to his death in 2000). Assad was relentlessly tough in fighting the Muslim Brotherhood. When they tried to assassinate him in 1980 he retaliated by executing over 600 prisoners. When the city of Hama sought to rebel he crushed it so thoroughly that it became a model of horrifying repression. Tom Friedman of the New York Times coined the term “Hama Rules”. In Hama that meant literally destroying entire neighborhoods to eliminate opposition. That brutal operation cost 20,000 Syrians their lives but Assad stayed in power.
The United States must rethink its entire policy in the Middle East.
We have to recognize that on a bipartisan basis for the last 12 years we have tried to create and impose an American fantasy in Middle Eastern realities.
Egypt is a good place to begin rethinking this policy.
http://www.gingrichproductions.com/2013/08/egyptian-realities-vs-am...
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Comment by amanda choate on August 25, 2013 at 11:46am
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So who will be the head of FCTP starting tommorrow? Inquiring minds want know.
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Wtf???
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Comment by Patricia M. McBride on August 24, 2013 at 8:05pm
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I am finished responding Amanda. Apparently we were in different places when all this went down, and someone who has been an ally for 30 years was threatened and pleaded with to resign. You are a clueless progressive who disagrees with anyone who isn't one. It really is not up to us to interfer in another country's government. We are best off if we involve ourselves only so far as it impacts our national interests, but we currently have a president who thinks himself capable of running the world when he totally ignores those things that are truly important like our economy and runs around trying to take over more things that are over reaching anything he was meant to do or is even capable of. In fact, he isn't capable to doing a good job at those things that fall in his venue. Who put us in charge of telling the Egyptian people what to do, and as you know (and I am sure I will get one of your nasty arguments since you don't agree with anyone on this web site........because you are another Obama type), the Egyptian army has looked out for the Egyptian people for some time and they do their bidding. After looking at the mess Obama has made of this country, the Egyptian people would have been well served to ignor anything this pompous ego ridden man had to say.
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The people of Egypt pushed Mubarek out. What were supposed to do, align ourselves with a dictator? Again? The military of Egypt, those are the people we have always been with, sided with the people against Mubarek. Morsi said during his campaign that he would not implement a theocracy. When he did, the people again decided it was time for him to go, and the military stepped in.
What should we have done, supported a theofacist because he was elected? No, we let history run its course without our involvement.
Newt argues for and against entanglements, but seems to support dictators so long as they do our bidding. Our long term interests involve siding with the people. That is what makes Syria a mess, most of its citizens support Abbas who is an absolute despot towards a minority of its citizens. Even if we enter that mess the solution would be to support a minority made of coalitions of groups who hate us as much as Assad. The rebels are made up in large part of members of Hamas. Do we want them having US weapons? To use against Israel?
I say we stay as far away from this as possible. Let the locals figure it out.
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Amanda, I get what he is saying. We pushed to get our friend and ally of 30 years Mubarack out of office and then sucked up to Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood, and extremist Islam which Mubarack had kept in check. Now the military must claw and scratch their way back out of it. You probably don't agree, but I am beginning to have second thoughts on Syria, and wonder if the brotherhood isn't the one using the chemical weapons to get Obama to help them unseat Assad. Obama has crawled into bed (and taken our country with him) with some pretty unsavory people who want to impose their 14th century barbaric beliefs on everyone, and he has taken them as advisors here in the country as well. I am beyond ashamed of his actions when he should have let them solve their own problems and watched from the sidelines. He has destroyed our relationship with Egypt and it will take years to rebuild the cooperative trust between our 2 countries. I don't think Gingrich favors any action at all. I don't either. I think we need to mind our darned business now that we have actively supported the mess they are now trying to clean up. Gingrich does not favor aid, and I think we should continue aid since we supported the radical group that took over and is now being outed.
Newt says in the article: "Cutting off American aid will have no effect. (I favor cutting it off because it is no longer furthering American interests.) The Saudis and their Persian Gulf allies have already committed $10 in new aid for every dollar of American aid."
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I have read it twice,is he for more or less US intervention?
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