A funny thing is happening in America
these days where every John Doe and his cousin – having time on their hand, and
nothing better to do – decide to spend their idle days speculating about Egypt . Even
though publications abound (translated from Arabic into English or written in
English) as to where the people of Egypt want to go, and how they have decided
to get there, the American speculators keep sprouting theories that have no
roots in reality, but make sense only to them, to their cousins and to the
other John Does out there.
The latest to try his hands at dissecting Egypt 's recent history is Fareed Zakaria who
wrote an article about the subject under the title: “Why democracy took root in
Tunisia and not Egypt ,”
published on October 30, 2014 in the Washington Post. Like most of those who
have ventured in this field, the author is basing his judgment not on the
comparison between what the people of Egypt want, and what has been achieved by
the revolution but – get this now – what a dead American named Samuel
Huntington wanted long ago, and what he, Fareed Zakaria, perceives as being the
achievements – or lack of them – of the Egyptian revolution.
In fact, Zakaria uses the Huntington yardstick to declare that the
Tunisian revolution has so far been a success with the caveat that: “it may be
too soon to celebrate.” He explains: “The government is battling militants at
home. Tunisia
is also [the] biggest exporter of fighters to join the Islamic State.” Despite
all of this, he uses Tunisia
as the yardstick by which to determine if Egypt had passed the test of the
dead American. And surprise, surprise, he finds that Egypt has been an “abysmal”
failure. What else could have come from the Washington Post or CNN?
To elaborate on his point, Zakaria takes a couple of
paragraphs to compare the history of the two revolutions as well as the
commentaries that were made by people who – like him – know little or nothing
of what they talk about when they talk about Egypt. He then tells about a book
that was written by Tarek Masoud who, unlike the others, seems to know what he
is talking about when he talks about Egypt . Masoud suggests that the
outcomes in Tunisia and Egypt have more
to do “with deep differences in those countries' political environments” than
with anything else.
But despite the fact that Masoud wrote a book on the
subject, all that Zakaria saw fit to report on the differences between the two
environments, is that Egypt
had more mosques than civil society whereas Tunisia had more civil society than
mosques. But then, as an afterthought, he threw in something that is actually
very significant, and placed it between parentheses. It is this: “Tunisia is
fortunate in that its army has always been subordinated to civilian authority.”
What he neglected to say is how this privilege, as crucial
as it is, came to be. The fact is that Egypt has been at war for centuries
… not because it wanted these wars, but because they were brought to it by the
big powers of the day. This situation gave the Egyptian army a significance
that was never known in Tunisia .
Thus, if you brush aside what Samuel Huntington might have wanted for Egypt decades ago, and if you brush aside what
Fareed Zakaria might want for Egypt
today, you will realize that what counts is what the Egyptian people want. And
what they want is the protection of their army from domestic and foreign
enemies. Period. End of discussion.
It may be that by the time Zakaria had reached this point in
the article, he realized he had lost the argument … not because there was a
push back from someone – there was none – but because he wasn't making sense
even to himself. And so he felt compelled to seek energy from another dead
American named Walter Lippmann. He quotes him as saying: “the endurance of
democracy rests upon a 'sufficiently even balance of political power' between
government and opposition.” What was the word again? Democracy? And who the
hell has the divine right to define democracy? Those who blacklist people for
life for saying Egypt
is a civilized country? Is this a democracy to love or to fight for, Zakaria?