In a piece that was published in the New York Times on November 30, 2011 under the title: “U.S. Policy on Egypt Needs a Big Shift”, Marc Lynch and Steven Cook make themselves look like two desperate eunuchs bursting out the door and going on the prowl to look for something – anything at all -- that will give them an orgasm the way things used to be prior to their castration. But who are these people and what do they do exactly as they search for the fabled orgasmic experience? Well, these two and others like them are a subset among a set of people who make a good living teaching about foreign affairs in the colleges and the universities. In addition to their teaching duties, the members of the subset seek to give advice to the government on how it should conduct its foreign policy. To do this, they engage in extra-curricular activities such as writing in the various publications that open their pages to them, and by speaking on the radio, on television and in the halls where they are sometimes invited to speak to a live audience.
Now called pundits and talking heads, these people were originally spurred to come down their ivory towers by a Vietnam War that was going from bad to worse, especially the so-called “Pentagon Speak” that confused the public and got it to ask for someone trustworthy to come and explain in simple language what was happening to them and to their society. The pundits came out of their hiding places and did a satisfactory job explaining the unexplained. The Watergate Scandal then broke and these people received a shot in the arm that made them indispensable to the media outlets. Thus, they became a permanent feature of the landscape where they remained for three decades before their profile was suddenly raised to a much higher level. It is that they gathered power and influence by advising Uncle Sam to turn himself into a swaggering stud as if endowed with an elephant size golden tool; and waving it like a threatening sword at a world that was increasingly becoming insolent and disobedient.
To a public that was told it should feel humiliated by the defeat in Vietnam, this was a welcome display of America's rising power and influence in the world. But when the country's back was broken in Iraq, the American people began to realize that the advice had come from the Jewish organizations whose interest was to serve Israel at the expense of their country. The people of America then turned against the media that brought them the advisers of bad advice, and this is how the pundits and the talking heads were made to bear the cross of America's second defeat. Castrated, they were made to relinquish their golden tool, and could not even replace it with a wooden piece; and so they wore the mantle of has-been stud. This is how they became the eunuchs who lost the ability to have the orgasm they used to enjoy. And this is why they are going out on the prowl trying to regain their lost glory and the pleasure that goes with it.
What they do more than anything else, however, is justify their existence by warning of an upcoming apocalypse that never comes, then advise the US government on how to avoid it. This is what you see Lynch and Cook do in the first paragraph of their article: “Washington should not be fooled by the peace that has returned to Egyptian streets.” But how is Washington fooled? Here is how they say things are happening: “The U.S. State Department ... has called on S.C.A.F. [Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] to transfer power … That is a good start, but is not enough.” But why is it not enough? This is how they respond: “Egypt's military rulers clearly believe that...” Wow! Did you get this, my friend? The two authors are Americans who could not tell you what goes on inside the head of their American compatriots in Washington yet, they “clearly” see what goes on inside the head of Egypt's leaders. What pompous assholes, these things are!
As if there is not enough pomposity in the claim that they figured out Egypt's rulers, they now tell you they figured out what the entire Egyptian population will do in the future. Here is how they accomplish this: “The violence last week … has created the conditions under which even small problems and challenges can spark massive instability. And has shown that Washington's ... approach to Egypt … must change.” Thus, they tell what the people of Egypt will do and they use this to say that America's attitude toward Egypt must change to avoid a looming apocalypse. This means they are advocating the remake of Uncle Sam's golden tool to wield it again like a threatening sword. And this is how they hope to shed the cross of defeat and start once again to enjoy the orgasmic experience of being influential.
They want this so badly, in fact, that they use both reverse psychology and forward psychology to goad the Obama administration to listen to them. Look at the supreme craftiness they employ in this passage: “...the Obama administration has done better … than most critics recognize … [Its] approach … worked, but it has lowered America's status in the eyes of many Egyptians.” What they hope to accomplish here is to make the government practice world diplomacy in the open so that they can participate in the process and highjack it by the sheer weight of their numbers and by their ability to hound the administration to go the way they choose for it. Their secret desire is to duplicate what the Congress has done when it snatched foreign policy from the hands of the executive branch, turning it into a tool to sell America short and boost the interests of Israel.
Lynch and Cook continue to play the double-edged psychological game. This time, they do it this way: “Until this week, arguments could be made either way on the balance between private influence and public pressure ... The U.S. was virtually silent as ... U.S.-made tear gas bombarded Tahrir Square. Only after a few days did it muster a demand for restraint ... Washington has toughened its language in recent days ... But few Egyptians even noticed ...This cautious ... response has done ... damage to ... Obama’s ... efforts to place the United States on the side of Arabs who want ... democratic societies. It is time for ... Obama ... to rise to the moment ... and shift its focus.”
Do you now see the problem that prompted our friends to act? It was the Egyptian people who did not “even notice” what must have been too subtle for them to notice. The moral of this story is that things must be made much clearer for the Egyptians to notice -- like perhaps hitting them on the head with a two-by-four. But in case this will not be sufficient to convince the administration to do things differently, Lynch and Cook resort to the use of the old style twisting of the arm. That is, they invoke the power of the precedent. It should be said that in America where the Common Law is practiced, the precedent has a quasi-judicial force even when it is invoked in matters that have nothing to do with the law. Thus, when the authors say: “The events of the last week … are not the only compelling reason for a policy change,” they signal that they have an argument with the force of law to throw in Obama's face. And here is that infamous argument unedited:
“The administration has articulated a new standard of legitimacy in its responses to Libya and Syria, among other countries, that leaders who use violence against their own people forfeit their standing to rule. Although Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and his officers are hardly in the same category as Muammar el-Qaddafi and Bashar al-Assad, the same standard should apply to Egypt.”
Now that our two authors have put their foot down, they feel that the time has come to tell in a nutshell what exactly they want the President to do. This is how they tell it: “The Obama administration's response should begin with a clear, public presidential statement … Washington should put the Egyptian military … on notice … [what] is unacceptable.” There is no mincing of the words here because the authors gave themselves the authority to speak with authority as to what presidential statement the president must issue – in public this time, of course. Understand this? In public this time. And what the presidential statement must contain is a notice to the Egyptian military as to what is acceptable and what is not. Get it, Obama? You have your marching orders, now march.
These people believe they have so much under their belt already that they feel confident enough and feel not the least bit ashamed to openly ask for something that is already happening all by itself; their intent being to take credit for what someone else has achieved. Look what these characters have written: “In addition, Washington should now throw its weight behind early presidential elections, a demand shared by virtually all Egyptian political forces and which the S.C.A.F. recently agreed to under pressure.” And of course, the menu of demands extends well beyond these points, but who wants to waste time reading them anyway? Not me.
By the time you have accomplished all this on paper and have it in your head also, you feel you are as good as a god, and so you behave like one. How you do that, you ask? Well, you pretend to yourself that the Egyptian people who did the revolution did not rely on themselves alone when they acted. This gives you the right to take the revolution to its ultimate conclusion, which authorizes you to get involved and commandeer it to where you feel it ought to go. How do you do that, you ask? Well, our two characters knew how to do it. Like two shameless dogs having sex in public, they wrote the following to end a piece of trash they believe is an article worth publishing in a prestigious publication:
“Egypt is now entering months of elections that hold out the promise of delivering the democratic system that Egyptians want and deserve. Now is the time for Washington to push Egypt’s military leaders to make the political changes needed to deliver on that hope.”
But will one of these two or both get the orgasm they have been seeking? I don't care. Do you?