Progress in Egypt?

Sounds like Nicholas D. Kristoff's favorite sign-holder in Tahrir Square might finally be able to give his arms a break. The man, who has been holding an anti-Mubarak sign reading "Leave already, my arms are getting tired!" may finally get some relief if this afternoon's report that the Egyptian army is stepping in to put Mubarak on a one-way magic carpet ride out of office are correct. Wouldn't that be nice?

Just when it looked like America was getting a bit bored with the situation in Egypt and things might have been taking a turn back towards the subtly autocratic, the protesters gave it one last effort and the Egyptian general staff -- long seen as the kingmaker in this crisis and likely on the side of the protesters -- seems to have decided to give Mubarak the hook. The obvious question is, What now?

One option is that power be transferred directly to Omar Suleiman, the former military man and recently-appointed vice president (read: protester consolation prize) of Egypt. This could bring real change or, more likely, plus ca change. Maybe Suleiman is really a softie with the interests of his people at heart. Who knows? The thumbnail biography that has emerged of him over the past few weeks, however, argues that he's a dyed-in-the-wool professional Mubarak minion. In some ways, it doesn't matter: a decision by the army to simply hand power to a new face would be a bait-and-switch move completely contrary to the spirit and demands of the protests. If, as Gen. Hassan al-Roueini, military commander for the Cairo area, claimed, "all your [the protesters'] demands will be met" today, promoting Suleiman won't wash. The protesters know who's who and what's what; I strongly suspect that such a back-door move would not convince many people to pack up and go home from Tahrir Square.

Another option is for a provisional military government to take over. Obviously, this option could play out in a few ways, the best case being that the military takes over, cleans out the old regime, sets up elections, and disappears into a happily democratic background role. Or the generals could take "provisional" power, develop a taste for it and make it permanent -- new packaging, same old Egypt! Option three would be for Egypt to go the way of Turkey, as I detailed a couple of posts ago: the army steps in, takes power, then steps back enough to allow a civilian to stand in front of the controls but without the army ever really letting go of the levers of power. Clearly, the first is the best-case scenario, the second is the worst and the third could persist for a long time without ever proving itself good or bad (Turkey has done so for 90 years and counting).

The last and least likely outcome is that the Islamists swoop in and turn Egypt back to the 14th Century. Unless I'm reading the tea leaves completely wrong -- and the rest of the Western press is equally fleeced -- this will not happen unless something goes drastically wrong. Since this revolt began, the Muslim Brotherhood has been caught in a comedy of errors and has usually appeared just as out of step as the White House. The Brotherhood has persisted under the conditions fomented by Mubarak's repressive regime because it, like most other Islamist opposition groups in horribly downtrodden Arab countries, was designed to persist as the other side of the coin as the equally-persistent regime. Such organizations are escapist and self-indulgent of Arabs' learned helplessness, created in the absence of real alternatives and under the assumption that the regimes they oppose will continue in perpetuity. They are not merchants of good old "hopey-changey" messages so much as they present some kind of alternative (essentially anti-regime and by extension anti-Western) "agenda" or "ideology," make themselves out to be the only true Muslims in the game, and then play up their repression at the hands of the government to show how evil and un-Muslim it and its Western backers are.

That kind of trope works as long as everyone accepts the status quo and plays his part: the Great Satan funnels guns and money to the apostate authoritarian in charge, the local ruler kowtows to the Great Satan while he runs roughshod over his people, and the people accept that such is life in their bass-ackwards corner of the world and there ain't a damn thing they can do about it.

The one constant in the above danse macabre is that everyone agrees that democracy was and always will be completely out of the question; the choices are between the dead-ended policies of the Western-backed autocrat or the equally dead-ended ideas of the local Islamist crowd. The one thing no one expects to emerge in that situation is a massive popular revolt demanding real democracy and directed by young, educated people putting technology to work for them in organizing the resistance. That, of course, is what finally emerged in Egypt in the past few weeks, and look how fast it went from challenging the status quo with a really new idea to -- probably -- toppling the old regime. Let that be a lesson to both autocrats and Islamists that democratic politics will always out-poll draconian ones when people can really express their wishes.

But let that further be a lesson to the United States, which has gone straight back to its bumbling, stumbling ways. From expressing support for the Mubarak regime at the outset of the crisis to today's report in the New York Times that "The White House was scrambling to keep abreast of the developments," we haven't exactly been championing democracy throughout. "'We’re going to have to wait and see what’s going on,' President Obama said in a surprise stop at a small lunch spot in Marquette, Mich.'" today.

Are you kidding me? The Egyptians aren't sitting around saying they're "going to have to wait and see" what this whole Tahrir Square business creates. More importantly, however, neither are they going to "wait and see" what the U.S. ends up saying about whatever outcome they get. We don't have a lot of say in what is going to happen to begin with and it's probably pretty safe to say that we will express some kind of support for whomever ends up in power (it's not like we're going to go out of our way to piss off Israel's new neighbors, anyway). Just as Egyptians have been saying all along that they do not want the Brotherhood to take charge, they have likewise been saying quite adamantly that they do not want the U.S. trying to meddle in the protests or their outcome. The best and only acceptable role for the U.S. to take, in their view, is to offer some genuine cheerleading for genuine democracy. Otherwise, we are to stay the hell out of the way.

It is time for the administration to take a listen and, like I said last time, either shut up completely or get cheering. Enough "wait and see" BS -- either say something constructive or don't say anything at all. Stop hemming and hawing about the Brotherhood: they were one of earlier Islamist organizations and al Qaeda do trace some of their ideological heritage to the early Brotherhood, but the pupils have long since outstripped the tutor in extremism. The Egyptians will have to figure out for themselves what and how much of a role the Brotherhood has in the future of Egypt; if the 20-something techno-wizards currently leading the charge toward democracy have a say in the formation of post-Mubarak Egypt, it is most likely that the Brotherhood will find itself pretty well frozen out.

In addition to the rather glaring hypocrisy of pussyfooting around a democratic initiative, there are two other crucial reasons why we need to get this right, and get it yesterday.

First, speaking of al Qaeda and its ilk, Usama's worst nightmare is a legitimate Arab democracy. Remember, al Qaeda, like the Brotherhood, is predicated on the idea that short of a total victory of its own agenda, no real change is coming to the Arab world anytime soon. Reactionary merchants of death only look attractive when they claim to be fighting against obviously corrupt totalitarian puppets of the West and handing out free tickets to heaven for those who die fighting these "near enemies." Think about that: we, the U.S. and the West, back rulers so crooked as to make Usama's version of "Islam" and "government" look like a legitimate alternative. If some Arabs actually manage the unthinkable and create a working democracy, Usama won't look so hot anymore. His whole shtick is based on being the only Arab with enough cojones to spit in the eye of Uncle Sam and his local goons. If one of those goons were to fall and be replaced by an Arab republic that wasn't an oxymoron, trading autocrats for ibn Taymiyya and sharia suddenly wouldn't seem like such a brilliant idea.

Secondly, and most importantly, the Egyptians are not going to wait for the U.S. to "wait and see" what it thinks about democracy. This is our huge gut-check moment in the Arab world: either we get ahead of the game on this one, polish off Obama's Cairo speech and sound the trumpet for democracy, or we get written off irrevocably as the hypocrites too many people there think we are anyway. If we haven't lost all credibility yet, it seems this would be the moment to make hay: with news that Mubarak is headed out, what safer moment are we "waiting and seeing" for to come out in favor of democracy?

The stakes are especially high with this crisis since the leadership are so young: if we screw up now, the 20- and 30-something Egyptian and Arabian democrats are not going to forgive us for it, and we will have consigned the Middle East to backwardness and apparently insolvable stagnation for another generation or more. If we can't manage a vote of confidence for Egyptian democrats now, do you think they are seriously going to give us an inch next time we invite them to Camp David to plot out the latest "roadmap" for peace with Isreal? Of course not. Any bridges we haven't burned with the up-and-coming generation in the Middle East over the past decade can be easily torched by inaction, hedging, or continued hand-wringing over the fate of Mubarak and Co. on the part of the U.S. right now.

Finally, bringing these last two points together, it is time to recognize the cognitive dissonance of supporting Mubarak-style thugs for fear of Islamists. The bottom line of my last two points is this: the inexhaustible fuel of the Islamists is our support for the Arab autocrats they resist. In short, we are funneling billions of taxpayer dollars in weapons and cash to bolster unsavory people against an enemy that is created by our very counterstrategy. The biggest stakeholders in the status quo are: 1) Usama bin Laden; 2) the toads we prop up against him; and 3) American arms manufacturers. We continue to support the dead-end status quo, they win. We unequivocally throw our lot in with the democrats and help nurse a new socio-political model to life in the Arab world, they lose. Which would you prefer?

Here's hoping the U.S. government takes 15 minutes to read the Declaration and the Constitution (no, John Boehner, not on the House floor again) and gets inspired to come up with a policy position that makes sense for once.

More on the Middle East

Hello again from the land of eternal winter (Hibernia, the Roman name for Ireland that seems quite appropriate to this week's weather). Here's your weekend edition, with a few picked-up pieces and interesting tidbits on all things Middle Eastern, Irish and American...

--In his online column today, New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow sets out a very interesting chart comparing various "Revolutionary Measures" (democracy indices, household food spending, internet penetration, etc.) in the Middle East, North Africa, and the U.S. for comparison. Things to note: the U.S. has the highest income inequality rating on the board (45 on the Gini Index), five points higher than Egypt, 10.6 points higher than Tunisia, and half a point higher than Iran. Turkey is one point higher than Egypt and 6.6 points higher than Tunisia in income disparity; moreover, its regime type is listed as "Hybrid" and has a 5.7 (out of 10) democracy rating on the Economist Intelligence Unit scale, which is only 2.6 points higher than Egypt. Granted, Turkey leads the field in the Muslim world, but even Israel's "flawed democracy" regime clocks in at a 7.5. More food for thought as we keep reading about how the Muslim world should emulate Turkey.

--Interesting that the elected and unelected portions of the GOP/Tea Party/Angry Reactionary coalition have been so quiet on Egypt. Mother Jones and the Times speculated last week that the GOP is so focused on blocking Obama's domestic agenda that it simply can't be bothered to comment on the Middle East; some articles went further, citing Republican leaders (usually of the behind-the-scenes variety) who said the administration had been handling the situation pretty well and who wanted to stay out of it so that America could speak with one voice on the crises. Notably, Speaker John Boehner was quoted both for and against the "unity and quiet" thesis, falling into line late in the week but earlier being quoted as saying that he wished Mubarak would remain. Memo to the Tea Party and those who kowtow at the "Don't Tread on Me" flag: democracy was pretty high on the priority list of those infallible Founders and their Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson (aka the U.S. Constitution). Read the lesser-known and slightly hysterical second half of the Declaration and replace His Majesty with Mubarak and see what happens. Just sayin'.

--Everyone should read this article by Mother Jones' David Corn, in which he interviews a disgusted David Stockman, architect of the Reagan tax cuts, on the GOP's fetishization of a misremembered/misinterpreted version of those cuts. According to Stockman (who comes across as a little slimy, it must be said), even the Gipper understood that you had to cut spending alongside taxes and the Reagan cuts--which were originally opposed by congressional Republicans--were only meant to be temporary (they were eventually recouped with tax hikes). Stockman maintains that his and the Reagan administration's fiscal policy was a mistake and lambastes today's GOP for taking "the wrong lesson" from the Reagan years ("that big tax cuts are economic magic") and turning it into untouchable doctrine. He hasn't gone blue yet, but he was "horrified" at George W. Bush's economic policies and publicly argued that the Bush tax cuts should expire.

--Employing a perfect-in-the-glow-of-hindsight version of Reaganomics sounds a bit like reading a cleaned-up version of the infallible Constitution on the House floor to open this session, doesn't it? For Michele Bachmann to claim that the Founders did their best to get rid of slavery -- despite owning slaves and in some cases being especially, ahem, fond of them (just ask Jefferson's Sally Hemmings) -- in this, the 150th anniversary year of the start of the Civil War, is disingenuous at best and blatantly disrespectful at worst. First, read a history book (just not one of those newfangled school textbooks that puts forward the "happy slave" trope). Then, read the Constitution -- all of it (yes, the amendments are part of the Constitution). First of all, it was amended. Secondly, note that blacks got the right to vote before women (Bachmann could not have entered a ballot booth, much less been on the ballot, until 1919). Third, note that there are two amendments that abrogate each other (18 and 21, of Prohibition fame). Fourth, recall that those infallible Founders couldn't shoehorn the Bill of Rights (including the precious Second Amendment) into the original document and had to go back later. Perfect? Infallible? You tell me.

--Remember how incensed everyone was when the Chinese forcibly spruced up Beijing for their Summer Olympics? Apparently the good people of Arlington, Texas, don't: City Council passed an ordinance in December outlawing panhandling within a pretty wide radius of Cowboys Stadium, home of tonight's Super Bowl XLV. As a local advocate for the homeless -- and there are plenty of homeless people in Greater Dallas -- wryly noted, it's pretty ironic that we push out the poor to welcome those (the players) who grew up in poverty.

--I like the Steelers to get one for the other thumb, 27-24.

--I've been in Galway for a month. Wow. As usual, it's still simultaneously brand new and old hat. Four months to go, and suddenly that doesn't seem very long if they go as fast as this month did...

--Finally, a thought on language: this first occurred to me last semester as I struggled to learn Turkish, but I think the power of learning language can't be overstated. Let's face it: the whole world knows English. There are few places left where I couldn't find someone who speaks my language; many countries (including Turkey) begin universal English education in primary school. Ireland is the same in many ways since almost everyone here speaks English, yet it is different because English is the colonial language here. As much as it was nice to be able to speak a little Turkish to get by and feel connected to the place I was living in last semester, I actually feel even more urgency with learning Irish than with Turkish. Why so? Ireland has a long and complicated relationship with language and culture, with the situation today being that hardly anyone speaks Irish here anymore outside of the Gaeltacht areas. (Galway is on the edge of the Connemara Gaeltacht, one of the biggest in the country.) Between the Famine and the English-language-only instruction in schools under British rule, Irish was pushed to the brink before the Gaelic League and cultural nationalism took off in the early 1900's.

These days, the language is making a little bit of a comeback, particularly in the west. And that is one of the reasons I'm so happy I chose Galway: NUIG is bilingual by charter, with a vibrant Centre for Irish Studies and the Acadamh na hOllscolaiochta Gaelige (Irish department). My two hours of Irish class every Thursday morning are my favorite class, and I'm desperate to learn as much of the language as I can before I leave. Not only is Irish an interesting and beautiful language (though not an easy one!), but it is a piece of my own heritage and an intimate part of this place. Many people predicted before I left that it would be nice to go back to speaking English in the spring, and it has been in some ways, but I'm actually a lot more interested in picking up Irish. Thanks to the British, everyone here now speaks English and there is absolutely zero expectation that anyone -- especially Mhic Leinn on Iasacht (visiting students) like me -- know two words of the language, but there are enough Irish speakers in and around Galway to make Irish occasionally useful in daily life (buying eggs at the market, say). And they are invariably surprised and impressed that an American would go to the trouble of learning Irish.

Two weekends ago, I went hiking in Connemara with the Mountaineering Club, my usual Sunday activity. Walking back up the road to the pub at the end of the hike, we passed a sign reading "An Gaeltacht" (the Gaeltacht) on the side of the road, on which someone with a sense of irony had spray-painted "RIP." A small but memorable bit of social commentary on the state of Irish and Irish-speakers in Ireland today (minimal and marginalized, respectively). The Gaeltacht areas are dying due to lack of economic opportunity, and English -- as it was before independence -- remains the de facto language of progress, so Irish speakers are fleeing the Gaeltacht for the cities and/or other countries as their homes suffer even more than the rest of Ireland in the economic crisis.

As my Irish professor pointed out at orientation, to understand how a people think, you have to understand their language, and the language of Ireland is Irish, whether spoken or simply evoked in modern Hiberno-English. Just as in Turkey, learning the Irish language itself is much more important than simply picking up a slang word or two or assimilating some Hiberno-Englishims into my vocabulary. It is a very powerful and humbling thing to leave the sure footing of English and step onto someone else's linguistic home field, where I distinctly do not have the advantage. Thankfully, the Irish, like the Turks, are usually tickled by and willing to work with a new learner of their language. As such, I make an effort to use Irish when and where possible, and take advantage of people's willingness to play along, for example by inserting English words into Irish sentence structures when I don't have the Irish word I need. We'll see what happens by the end of the semester, but for now it's a new, exciting and treasured challenge to be picking up a new language in a nominally English-speaking country. Slan!