Before I begin, I wish to offer a word of prayer and concern for someone that I know is in the midst of the strife in Egypt. Mohamad Elbardicy was an intern that worked for me (partially) at Facilities at George Mason University. I ask that we all reflect and think about the real human of the situation in Egypt as well as several others in the world inclusive of Syria.
Offering this note, I want to put forward two posts that I recently made in response to a post by my good friend Brian Farenell on Facebook:
“El Baradei's being charged will get international attention and pressure. While I hate to admit agreeing with Chris Christie, being a voice yelling in the air isn't going to get you anywhere. The Egyptian liberals needed to tie their ship to one side or the other, and the Muslim Brotherhood was not the one to hitch on to. Sadly the military is turning from their normal moderating influence to one of autocratic rule. This indictment is a significant step that's going to get a lot of attention in the West, especially given El Baradai's notoriety and work in the IAEA."
“…, you propose that a third way was a practical option for the liberals in Egypt. Having spent some serious time in the Middle East, I can tell you that unless you have some strength of might, there is little chance that you can effect political outcomes. Simply put the liberals don't and didn't have a way to make a difference in the political situation of their own accord, so they needed to choose one side to latch onto. I too wish they were able to create a third center of gravity, but this is a very bi-polar situation.
As for the military, I did a post on this a few weeks ago on my blog. As I stated, so long as the military hewed to a course supporting the rule if law and just society, we needed to uphold our commitments. I stand by my comments, but the ElBaradei arrest and, now, the Mubarek release bespeak that the Military is not living up to its side of the bargain. It may now be time to re-evaluate our aide. So long as they act with impunity to the lessons we have taught them and the relationships we have built, we need to be serious about delaying if not cutting aide.
This all said, there is still the rub that there are scant possibilities we are going to see an Egypt that emerges as a liberal democracy in the near/long term. And beyond that there is probably little we can do to change that fact. If nothing else the great American neo-con experiment in Iraq proves that we can't wish our way to democracy in the Middle East.”
I post these to my blog as a footnote to my previous post. As I articulated before, I felt and still feel those that were critical of America’s continuance of foreign aide to Egypt during the Morsi era were misplaced in their criticism. Here I am putting forth that we now need to make a re-evaluation. I am not saying that we ought to cut off aide now, but I am saying we need to seriously consider options as it relates to that aide. As I articulate above, the point of our aide and relationship has been to enable the military to be an agent to push forward Egyptian rule of law and democratic institutions. To the extent that they are not following that objective, we need to think about our support of the military. In doing this however, it needs to be surgical, as we need to recognize the larger geopolitical implications, especially with our other allies in the region. As has been implied in several venues, it may be that it is better that the US hitch its support to an oppressive autocratic regime rather than one that seeks the destruction of the US itself (two really bad choices, but sadly ones we may have to choose between). This isn’t going to be clean, and we need to think through this carefully, lest we create a larger problem than already exists or will exist in the future (e.g. we don’t want to create a Mussolini). That said, choosing sides, much like I comment about the Egyptian liberals needing to do, is part of the challenge of this situation.
So in conclusion, we all need to soul search on this. Lets not jump to quick answers, and instead enable time and space to help us make better decisions and policies going forward.
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