May 22, 2012
FSM HOT TOPICS
The Escher President Series, No. 5: Fertile Egypt
by BILL SIEGEL February 17, 2011
The Escher President Series (see here, here, here and here) describes the experience of many of those who do not support or trust President Barack Obama. Escher’s lithographs are famous for the interchange of two opposing narratives. The contrast is made clear by having what at first appears to be a black background against which a story, perhaps white birds flying in one direction, is projected. As the eye follows the birds (called for these purposes the “white view” having nothing to do with race), it eventually tires and the reverse image, black birds flying in the opposite direction against now a white background, bursts forth. This “black view” is then followed again until saturation is reached and the white view reappears. And so on; the Escher process continues.
The White House responses to the expanding protests in Egypt afford us another storyline for our Escher President. At first, the eye locks onto an image of Obama as a man doing his best with an impossible situation; the best that could be expected of anyone. The overwhelming characterization from the media was of support for a president who was legitimately caught off guard. True, Obama was given infinitely more time than the famous eight minutes ever-castigated President George W. Bush had on 9/11, reading to schoolchildren when being informed of the news of the Twin Towers attacks. Nonetheless, all agree it is important, especially in matters of foreign affairs, to get it right.
It is also important to unite behind our President in such cases. The maze to be delicately navigated balances the need to maintain civility on behalf of the protesters as well as the Mubarak regime while moving the ball forward in supporting the desires of the “Egyptian people” for greater democracy. It is preferable to support our president as he walks that tightrope rather than rile him off balance into a dangerous fall.
The white view, then, observes Obama’s actions in terms of his inexperience and incompetence. While he initially stayed reserved, allowing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others to make clear that we desire stability (and while Vice-President Joe Biden went off on his own to declare Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak not a dictator), Obama eventually came out demanding that Mubarak step down and a transition begin “Now!” And while his tone of voice may have said to some that he is serious, to many it was more of his grandiose “Daddy’s angry” persona more effective with Sasha and Melia than with a foreign president who, entrenched for thirty years, has in many cases gone out on a limb for U.S. interests (even if connected to significant aid afforded by the U.S.) Yet, the white view explains, Obama is fresh to the case and he is learning as he goes. At least he kept his responses minimal. Certainly, his intentions must be noble and shared by most of us.
“Now,” however, is particularly troublesome as democracy does not occur because a callow president of another land declares it. Democracy is more than mere elections. It requires a significant number of institutions, a legal system with a history of making difficult decisions, the force dedicated to enforcing those decisions and order in general, and a population that accepts both the rule of the majority and the need to protect the rights of the minorities. This must be learned.
Mostly, learning takes time. It takes generations of trial and error, experimentation, abandoning principles only to allow a return to them often enough that confidence can be built to get the populace through the next conflict. Even the act of orderly protest and free expression must be learned over time; proper behavioral boundaries are pushed, tested, exceeded, and punished until the culture eventually refines what is acceptable for it. Hillary Clinton can say that freedom of expression, association, and assembly must be granted but learning and integrating those freedoms is a long term process. The minute a democracy forgets it is a work in progress is the minute it invites tyranny back into its borders. “Now” is not only too expectant; it is never “Now.”
The white view says Obama, perhaps too arrogantly, was merely pushing for the process to begin immediately. In the minds of protesters, however, there is little distinction. When one has lost the fear of standing up to a tyrant to assert his rights, all rights become immediately desirable.
The storyline then focuses on Obama’s public rebuke of Mubarak. Crowd pressure is a step in a negotiation. Obama, a community organizer, is fully aware of this and the concomitant power of increasingly larger crowds. He sent out, however, confusing signals; at times posturing himself as the outside party there to mediate and help out; at others, siding with the protesters and amplifying the “victim” side of the “Egyptian people” by closing in on Mubarak.
The white view again chalks this up to various unfortunate pressures. Obama was beginning to recoup recently lost domestic favorability and didn’t need a foreign policy issue to throw him of track. He likely had conflicting advice from PR advisors, strategists, party insiders and so forth pressuring him to appear strong even at the expense of coherence. His own DNA identifies with the crowd (as he and the media imagine its makeup to be) and his instincts propel him to employ his wonderful oratory skills to call out for freedom. If not now, when?
Yet, any experienced negotiator knows up front he must often protect the dignity of the opposing side to maximize one’s own outcome. And this is particularly relevant in dealing with Arab culture. As important as Mubarak’s decision to stay on or step down is, the determination of who gets to make that decision deserves almost equal relevance. If the goal is to force Mubarak to not stand for election and to depart, he must be afforded the appearance of reaching and announcing that decision on his own. He must also be afforded the appearance of getting something in exchange.
Mubarak is old and sick. While he sought to extend his dynasty with his son, that was inevitably not to occur and Mubarak had the son leave Egypt days before the protests. Yet, due in large part to Obama’s interference which helped escalate the crowd intensity, Mubarak’s offer to not stand for re-election was too little too late. A week prior, it would have been considered a major victory for the protesters.
Consequently, as Mubarak was made to appear unsupported, the protesters smelled weakness and increased their pressure. Their purposes, which at first were varied and ill-formed, congealed with the aid of worldwide media into the simple goal of Mubarak’s stepping down. Given perhaps their first taste of the mere right to protest and speak against the regime, many in the streets predictably became intoxicated with their new freedom. Learning the appropriate boundaries of this freedom is part of the long process democracy requires. Mubarak, on the other hand, was stripped of his most valuable tool for the time- the ability to gracefully offer to step down. Instead, he was cut down to size.
The white view again attributes this to Obama’s lack of experience and a personal history of frequently getting what he wants simply through his public rhetorical performances. Perhaps he is more of an amateur than suspected. Perhaps he is so insulated by Michelle and Valerie Jarrett that he has lost touch. After all, until the tea parties, he only knew crowds (and large ones at that) to swoon over him in near total compliance. Despite his endless chants about “coming together,” Obama is not practiced at elevating his opponent in order to create a better outcome for himself.
To others, Obama is just not that into it, at least as foreign policy is concerned. He’s more concerned with healthcare, wealth redistribution, and serving the needs of the “oppressed” at home. Other countries? He’s a multilateralist, ultimately in favor of some form of unified world government as the only efficient way to tackle modern world problems. Every country is exceptional (at least until his advisors had him up the American exceptionalism in his State of the Union speech). It’s simply frustration he feels when others, like Mubarak, make things so messy.
As with all Escher President storylines, the white view begins to fade as the tension between the presumed good intentions and actual actions of Obama becomes difficult to resolve. What is he doing with our longtime stalwart ally?
One question marks the pivot point between the white and black views. During the Iranian Green Movement protests in 2008 when the Iranian people rallied to protest presidential elections there, Obama stayed loudly silent. No offer of assistance to the protesters was made. No rallying cry was fostered. No public attack on the Iranian regime was made. Various overly general comments were made simply to seal discussion on the matter. He was criticized afterwards for his silence to which he responded that he did not think it was appropriate to “meddle.”
And what about “regime change?” With Iran, Obama had followed the call of those like New York Times’ Tom Friedman who famously argued for changing regime behavior rather than the regime itself despite all common sense evidence that there was no chance the mullahs would ever change course. In Egypt, however, Obama had no difficulty jumping immediately into regime change (or regime figurehead change) as the only road to pursue.
Was his response in Egypt a reversal of that which he used in Iran—rush to speak, speaking forcibly even if trying to minimize his presence, creating rapport with the protesters, attacking Mubarak, making demands- per se meddling? Did someone say, “Mr. President, you dropped in the polls for not supporting the Iranian demonstrations? Should we change course here?” Or did it truly demonstrate a greater, meta-principle consistent in both situations and elsewhere throughout Obama’s foreign policy—betray our long time allies and those we have supported and bow to our enemies in furtherance of greater goals?
Presto- the black view pops up. Obama’s treatment of our allies has bothered many and created deep suspicions as to his true motives. As soon as the presidency became his, he was compelled to publicly insult the U.K. by returning a famous Churchill bust given to the U.S. as a gift. He embarrassed Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not simply by turning down meeting with him to enjoy dinner with his children, snubbing him here and chastising him there. He destructively carried out much of the lead-up to negotiations in public (as with Cairo), creating needless humiliation that only retarded progress. He has frequently pulled the rug out from under Israel’s positions, such as when he made the cessation of settlement building, even in irrelevant areas, a condition of peace discussions with the Palestinians when the Palestinians themselves had not sought such conditions. He has chilled many other alliances and, as Wikileaks recently exposed, gave the Russians secret information concerning nuclear weapons of the British that the British had requested remain in confidence. . He had previously gifted the Russians by abandoning a prior U.S. commitment to Eastern Europe to build a nuclear shield. For a man who was ostensibly elected to “improve” our relationships with the international community, he has demonstrated that the U.S. is not a friend who can be trusted at all.
Are his intentions so good? The black view progresses.
Could he be so inexperienced that he fails to see that the Muslim Brotherhood, certainly no ally of the U.S., is sitting in the wings ready to fill any vacuum created by Mubarak’s departure? Is it really simply a false spin Mubarak created that he, Mubarak, needs to be supported because, otherwise, Egypt will fall into the hands of the Islamist Brotherhood?
The white view had said “yes” in order to hold onto to the eye’s attention. It said the Brotherhood constitutes only a small presence in Egypt, is itself fractionated, constitutes but one of many factions in Egypt, and doesn’t have the voice it once had. The white view (with liberal media assistance) painted a romanticized picture of a unified “Egyptian people” who are like Westerners, want Western freedoms, are so diverse in certain ways that diversity is irrelevant, are educated but unemployed and therefore seek the same stability that educated Westerners seek, and so forth. They are “oppressed” and therefore need an “oppressor.” When Israel or the U.S. does not work, Mubarak the tyrannical near enemy fits the bill. There may be, says the white view, some small number of Brotherhood members who do not share Western desires but they, too, deserve freedom and a voice. After all, isn’t that what democracy is all about? They could not be the threat some make them out to be as they have proclaimed they are against violence. And even Director of Intelligence James Clapper testifies that they are largely “secular.” Not to worry.
But, the black view has begun to assert and articulate itself. The Brotherhood is anything but innocuous. Their numbers may be low but the group is technically banned and it is understandable how many would not want to advertise any affiliation with it. More important than Brotherhood numbers is the number of people who support the aims of the Brotherhood. A 2007 University of Maryland poll suggests that roughly 50% of Egyptians strongly agree (and 74% at least somewhat agree) with the strict application Shariah Law binding all Islamic lands. Some 65% want to unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or caliphate. Other reports show that over 80% of Egyptians support stoning for adultery and death for those who leave Islam. These are the Brotherhood aims. And if polls surface these responses when there is secular rule, imagine who falls into line should the Brotherhood actually obtain real political power and control over the army.
Any well advised president would know this. Especially Obama as he has a historical familiarity with Islam. Yet, all that Obama will say is that the Brotherhood is one of many factions in Egypt and that it does not constitute a majority. Could his intentions actually be questioned? The black view pushes further forward.
While the white view spotlighted that the Brotherhood lacked a real foothold, the question arises “compared to what?” The regime led by Mubarak is, essentially, the army. The army, out of which the last three presidents, Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak, all grew, holds the critical power in the country. The only other organized entity of consequence is the Brotherhood. Media-spun notions of multiple anti-Mubarak protests groups in the crowd are correct but none carries any sizeable number or any political experience with projecting power. None is the least bit organized. The Brotherhood does and is, however, and for years. Worse still, it is the army that is fractionated and not of singular makeup, especially as its conscripted force becomes younger and more frustrated in a harsh economic environment.
And the Brotherhood has one major tool: the mosques. Reports were made that the protests had assembled but did not reach a critical level until encouraged during Friday prayers through the network of mosques. While Egypt is secular in much of its public behavior and reputation, Islam is intimately infused in every cell. The power lodged in the voices from the mosques has been greatly underestimated.
And anyone who has examined what comes out of the mosques is fully aware of the violence and hatred constantly preached. In short, beneath the media spun fantasies, Egypt, the ancient fertile land, is fertile for Islamist leadership.
Does Obama truly not recognize the power of the Brotherhood? He had them specifically invited to attend his Cairo speech following his election. He certainly knows what happened in Gaza when “free elections” in the absence of structured democratic culture resulted in a Hamas victory. Some suggest Hamas won solely as an alternative to a corrupt Palestinian Authority. Yet that corruption is, itself, the sign that sufficient institutions were not in place to underwrite full democratic principles. Obama is also fully aware of elections in Lebanon and Iran and trends in Turkey and witnesses from a privileged position the difficulties in managing such freedoms in Iraq.
Obama identifies the protester’s cries for “freedom.” Does he really not know the different meanings of the word “freedom?” For Americans, as well as for Obama’s fan base, “freedom” refers to the ability of the individual to assert his rights, to be able to speak, associate, assemble and so on almost fully as he would like. “Freedom” to the Brotherhood is altogether different. It essentially refers to the Islamic land’s freedom from the tyranny imposed by those who are not true believers. It opens the individual up not to the individual’s own wishes but to that which Islam proscribes. It is the freedom to submit to Islam. It is a freedom for the complete community of Muslims, not for individuals. Obama must know this! The use of “freedom to Western audiences is a critical double speak tool of the Brotherhood (along with twists on words such as “peace” and “violence”).
Political opponents argue over the significance of Obama’s association with former “activists” Bill Ayers (to some, “domestic terrorist”) and Palestinian Rashid Khalidi and others. Ayers was oddly in Gaza consulting with Hamas members just before the 2009 flotilla incident where Israeli soldiers were provoked to board a supposed humanitarian aid vessel that threatened to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza. The ship had large stashes of weapons and the passengers engaged the soldiers in combat resulting in various deaths and injuries. Was Ayers connected?
Obama has others close by as well. ISNA head Ingrid Mattson gave a prayer at his inauguration. He seated MPAC fundraiser Arif Alikhan in the Department for Homeland Security who had previously stopped a Los Angeles Police Department surveillance of mosques against the plans of the police. ISNA is directly mentioned in the Brotherhood’s “list of our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” MPAC’s predecessor is founded by Brotherhood associated persons (specifically close friends of the Bortherhood’s founder Hassan al-Banna). And Obama’s chief advisor on Islamic Affairs, Dalia Mogahed supports martyrdom in jihad and defends Shariah (see Robert Spencer’s article here).
And despite Clapper’s ludicrous testimony geared to remove all distrust of the Brotherhood’s true objectives the Brotherhood has no qualms about making clear its own intentions. By its own words the Brotherhood’s “work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” Forget whether or not violence is utilized, the true measure of our threat lies in these goals, not the tactics used to reach those goals. And that is what the Brotherhood is doing in America.
The black view deepens into a narrative in which radical Islamists and far left activists cooperate for goals that serve their mutual interests. The black view references many studies, in particular Andy McCarthy’s The Grand Jihad. Could Obama be this entrenched? Birth certificates aside, his personal history includes a Muslim father and stepfather, an Indonesian school that apparently listed him as Muslim, an admitted fondness for the call to prayer and so on. He can not pretend to be as ignorant about Islam as most of America, until recently, has been. Whatever the real truth in his personal history, Islam is not foreign to him as it is to the many Americans he leads- or misleads.
Nor is the radical left. As a community organizer who grew up under the mentoring of proud communists, Obama mastered Saul Alinsky’s approach for stimulating radical revolution. Those now enraptured in the black view begin to question whether Glenn Beck and others have been correct, all the while fighting the impulse to keep silent as others around them will hear none of it.
And now the black view explodes. Obama had said days before his election that we were about to embark on a “fundamental transformation” in America. As with his use of other vagaries, this meant whatever the listener wished it to mean. During the 2008 campaign, one woman understood that Obama would let her not have to pay her mortgage. Others heard and imagined full confiscation and redistribution of wealth and so on.
Like Zelig, Obama becomes (or, better, pretends to be) the president about whom he last read. After his election, having read about FDR, he embarked on his Newer Deal spending crusade. Following a stint at JFK, asking us all to do for our country, and the ruse of a Clinton turn to the center, he has recently dressed up as Reagan. But the black view clarifies that while Reagan was fundamentally tied to American principles, Obama appears tied in principle to Islamic fundamentals.
Radical leftists have great vision for tearing down what they do not support but little experience or vision for managing an alternative.
And when great success is so quickly obtained from activism, there is a great temptation to overplay the hand and continue to rely more on being against than creating anew. Islamists, on the other hand, may be light on the power to effectively overthrow the existing regime but are well organized for and clearly envision what is to replace; it is articulated well enough in the Koran and critical literature of Islam.
And is this not the very combination that seems to appear in Egypt? Reports have the protest generated not by a massive uprising of the “Egyptian people” but by a small group consisting of a Googlite, a few opposition community organizers, and the Brotherhood. Certain protesters were very comfortable with confronting their despot ruler. The Brotherhood, on the other hand, craftily appeared in the black view to lay back, keep out of focus, pretending to be secular and otherwise harmless. Occasionally a camera caught an Islamist-like diatribe against Israel, Jews, or the U.S. but for the most part, according to the black view, the Brotherhood is smart enough to lay low and feed the image Westerners desire to see and keep—that they are ultimately harmless.
Will Obama ever come out and detail his position on the Brotherhood? If he declares them an enemy, what does he do about his many connections with them and his reluctance to go after them in America? And what if he declares them not an enemy, particularly if his criteria is simply whether they “renounce violence” or not? Violence may be a tactic but what makes the Brotherhood an enemy are its clearly stated anti-American goals. If Obama takes this tact, the black view makes clear, he opens himself up to major attack from those who understand radical expressions of Islam. Obama, a master himself in the Islamic practice of taqiya or dissimulation (in modern speak- simple lying), knows all too well the dangers of having one’s charade exposed. Is he truly anti-American at his core?
At this point, the black view feels out of control. How could we have possibly wound up with this man as our president? His intentions can not be pure. Here is a man who chastises Mubarak for his tyrannical rule, his failure to listen to his people, his failure to subject himself to the same laws as the people and so on. Yet Obama himself disregards the 70% of the American people who want him to stop spending. He closes his ears to calls to cease Cap and Trade and instead builds an army of “czars” to bypass Congress through the use of executive power. He fails to listen to the District Court judge who declares Obamacare unconstitutional and withholds an injunction on the logic that his ruling is the “functional equivalent” of an injunction especially when it is against federal officers who have a duty to follow it. He is held in contempt by another judge for failing to withdraw his ban on offshore drilling. The transparent one is refusing to turn over documents to the new House Committee as requested, etc…
In the black view, he appears as: Hosni Mu-bama!
And then, Obama presses for the Brotherhood to be included in the negotiations for a government transition in Egypt. Once again, the black view frightens the observer in the extreme. Forget Manchurian Candidate—could this be the Meccan Candidate; the Islamist pawn of the Left who kisses the ring of the Saudi king (who allegedly hauled Obama over the desert coals for riding roughshod over the honor of his fellow Arab friend Mubarak)? Impossible and embarrassingly absurd! The observer rubs his eyes and blinks to make sure he is seeing properly. He tells himself only crazy people hallucinate such nonsense and, once again, the pivot point is reached.
As fear becomes too pressing, the Escher process takes over to make this difficult and frightening reality disappear. The white view begins once again to surface ever so faintly at first: “After all, he is a new and young president, so smart, trying hard, there are so many difficulties to confront, all make mistakes, no win situation, he has turned toward the center following the midterm elections, he seems to be a lot more like Reagan these days, we need to trust him just a little bit more, so many millions of voters could not be THAT wrong…” Presto. In the white view, “He’s back!”
The Escher process continues.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Bill Siegel lives in New York and is the author of the forthcoming book, The Control Factor ©
Join FSM and stay informed. Get your daily Security Update delivered each day to your e-mail.
Ky. primary has Barack Obama doing battle with a phantom; Let the mockage begin!
May 22, 2012 07:50 PM
Vote-counting for the Kentucky primary is underway, and Obama is leading among preferred Democratic presidential candidates. But ah, ah, ah … not so fast there, Barack. Looks like not everything’s comin’ up roses in the Bluegrass State. ONE FOR UNDECIDED: Bath County, Kentucky Democrats take "Undecided" over President Obama by 725-715 votes— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) [...]
May 22, 2012 04:29 PM
The South Carolina AFL-CIO president is on video beating an effigy of Governor Nikki Haley with a bat. War on women, indeed, and it comes from the Left as always. To Leftist thugs and union goons, she was asking for it, you see. That "uppity" woman won't keep her mouth shut and all. Scratch a Leftist and you will find not only a misogynist, but a racist.
Media still covering for no Biden access for press, blame Romney
May 22, 2012 03:39 PM
Media bias alert! RT @zekejmiller: Worth noting, given Romney flap last week, press not given rope-line access to Biden event here in NH— Sarah Huisenga (@SarahH_CBSNJ) May 22, 2012 Um. After the “Romney flap?” You mean the “flap” that the media breathlessly and endlessly reported all while ignoring the fact that reporters were shooed off [...]
May 22, 2012 03:08 PM
I'll see your Cory Booker and raise you a Joe Biden.— David Freddoso (@freddoso) May 22, 2012 Rut roh! Shall we add him to “hostage watch?“ Biden: When Bain companies failed, it cost taxpayers money in unemployment insurance, pension costs.— Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) May 22, 2012 Uh. When they are “too big to fail” and [...]
Dan Savage: Marriage is make-believe just like BDSM
May 22, 2012 02:46 PM
That oh-so-deep thought on marriage was a followup to Savage’s 140 character thoughts on BDSM: Some BDSMers take BDSM very, very seriously, of course, and strive to make it as real as possible. But it's still make-believe.— Dan Savage (@fakedansavage) May 22, 2012 And I respect BDSMers who take it seriously. They're fucking hot. xo— [...]
FSM Archives
blog comments powered by Disqus