When you see a title that screams: “The True Nature of a
Coup Revealed,” you expect to read an article that will define “coup,” and that
will show how this coup is by its nature different from any other. You also expect
to see a discussion that will shed some light in a place where there was none
before. But then your eyes hit the line below the title, and you see a
screaming subtitle that says: “Those who cheered the military seizure of power
were willing to entertain the darkest of conspiracies.” And you wonder if the
light that is supposed to reveal the true nature of the coup will also shine on
those dark conspiracies to reveal something about them.
So you begin to read the Fouad Ajami article, published in
the Wall Street Journal on August 15, 2013, where the first great idea that
hits your eye is to the effect that “Dictatorship rests on a ... people
acquiesc[ing] in their own servitude, forg[ing] their own chains.” Wow, that's
powerful! But is this how the author defines coup? Or is this what makes the
nature of this coup so different from all other coups?
And before your eye has had the time to recover from what
hit it, something kicks hard at your rear end. Ouch! Apparently, those who were
willing to entertain the darkest of conspiracies were the “young rebels who had
come together to ... conspire with the military and police to overthrow … the
civilian ruler of Egypt .”
That's what Ajami says now, but you feel that something isn't kosher because he
seems to see the conspiracy as an irony more than a dark conspiracy. So you
stay cautious and suspend your judgment on this point for now to see what else
he has to say.
Eventually things got out of hand because it was inevitable
that they do, he says. “In truth, there was no avoiding the bloodshed,” he
writes, and goes on to explain that the Egyptians who “always prided themselves
on their peaceful temperament” now experienced something new. It is that their
“national chauvinism was unleashed, and the dream of an Egypt without
beards and veils took hold.” But this was a conceit on the part of the
modernists who are of the young and educated class, says Ajami. And it was that
conceit which clashed against the utopia of the religious fundamentalists who
are of the uneducated and impoverished class. A classic standoff, no doubt.
Okay, so we have his views as to why the bloodshed was
inevitable but will he elaborate on the idea of the standoff? After all, this
would be the scholarly thing to do. Unfortunately, the answer is no; he will
not do that because you cannot write an article like this, and have it
published in the Wall Street Journal unless you incorporate into it two
obligatory ingredients. You must make America ,
Israel or both the center of
your story, and you must denigrate Egypt . This, in fact, is what Fouad
Ajami sets out to do from this point on. But in doing so, he blows his own
thesis to smithereens.
This happens because the puzzle that we encountered in the
subtitle when reading about “the darkest of conspiracies,” is now brought under
the light. It is that the people who entertained those conspiracies were none
other than “the crowd that gave the coup its blessing,” says the author. But
this is the crowd that is made of the young and educated class, he told us
before. So why did these people believe in dark conspiracies? They did, he
says, because they “ran away from the reality of their homeland.” He goes on to
say they were “the dispossessed who saw in Morsi, a peasant's son, one of their
own.” And it's kaboom time where the thesis he has been constructing implodes
because he now says that the young and educated class is the dispossessed
peasants. A glaring contradiction that is a typical sort of Judeo-American
absurdity you often encounter in the American media.
The author had to do this to denigrate Egypt and to make America the center of his
discussion. He did the denigration by rattling off the old false stereotypes to
the effect that the crowd was running away from the reality of “the crippling
poverty and illiteracy.” And he made America
the center of his discussion by telling us all about the conspiracy that some
people see in Egypt .
These would be the highly educated and backward peasants who make up the
miserable moneyed class of Egypt .
Don't ask me to figure this out for you; ask Fouad Ajami.
Moreover, he assures us these people see that “the rise of
the Brotherhood was an American plot, a scheme to subjugate Egypt and deny
it its place among the nations.” Because of this, he has determined that “The
rule of reason had quit Egypt .”
And you can be certain he believes in the reasonableness of what he says, which
puts him in a position to tell the Egyptians a truth about themselves that
remains hidden from them: “In truth, patience could have served the Egyptians.”
See how profound this is?
But they got impatient too soon, he says, which is why the
army stormed the encampments that were put up in Cairo . This was responsible for the drama we
saw unfold, but that was a “drama in which the United States did not give the best
of itself,” says Ajami.
Still, having failed to define the word coup, he now chides
the Obama administration for not calling what took place a coup, which is why
the “administration has long lost its way,” in his view. And you can be certain
that he believes in the reasonableness of what he says.
Spinning things to satisfy a political constituency is what
tells the world America