US foreign policy probably isn’t designed to empower wild-eyed fanatics everywhere in the Middle East.
But one is hard-pressed to see what the Americans would be doing differently if it were.
First they destabilised the region by their unprovoked – and, what’s worse, foolhardy – attack on Iraq. The immediate result was plunging the country into sanguinary ethnic strife, which was something Saddam, monstrous as he was, managed to keep in check.
The long-term effect was a burst of energy experienced by every militant group in the Middle East, Sunni, Shiite or simply diabolical.
The Americans then felt they had to go into Afghanistan, allegedly to obliterate the terrorists’ strongholds there. At that point all hell broke loose, and whenever that happens it’s the devils who stand to benefit.
In this instance these weren’t the devils we knew – and knew how to handle. The beneficiaries of American meddling were the so-called Islamists, a term probably invented by the US State Department.
There’s no such thing. An ‘Islamist’ is just a consistent Muslim, someone who lives by the commandments of Islam.
Now that religion, with the civilisation it has produced, is our enemy, pure and simple. The more consistent a Muslim is, the greater danger he presents to us, both collectively and individually.
Therefore it’s in our interest to support the least consistent Muslim regimes, while isolating or trying to undermine those run by real, pious believers.
In practice this means supporting the most undemocratic regimes, for most Muslims, unlike most Christians and Jews, are active believers and practitioners of their creed. A democratic election is therefore likely to bring to power an Islamic regime – and this is exactly what happened in Iran, to cite one example.
As a rule, it’s the army that is the principal force for secularisation in Muslim lands. It wasn’t by popular uprisings that most secular or quasi-secular regimes have ever taken over. It was by military coups.
Turkey is a prime example. Atatürk secularised the country not by politicking but by brute force. And it was by that expedient that Turkey’s predominantly Islamic people have been made to keep their heads down ever since.
Then the West got into the act, this time spearheaded by the EU, with the Americans bringing up the rear. Turkey, they explained, is a European country – after all, as much as five percent of its territory is in Europe.
As we all know, every European country must belong to the EU, and Turkey is no exception. But the EU being a world-famous champion of democracy, it couldn’t possibly countenance the army exercising any serious power in any of its member states.
Since at the time Turkey unwisely wanted to join the EU, the army was shunted aside, and the country became sufficiently democratic to satisfy the refined tastes of the EU and the USA. As a result it predictably became ‘Islamist’. Which of course it had been all along at the grassroots – but, thanks be to Allah, not politically.
For Turkey, read Egypt, except that there the same process was provoked, encouraged and touted by the Americans (even the dialectical minds of EU chieftains couldn’t quite find a way of portraying Egypt as a European country).
The army ousted the royal family in 1952 and reinvented Egypt as a secular, if variously nasty, state. Actually, by Muslim standards, the governments of Sadat and Mubarak were as benign as they get.
They could stay that way because, as themselves military men, they could rely on the army to keep a lid on the predominantly Islamic inclinations of the populace.
This didn’t agree with the demands of America’s secular religion for which democracy is the principal tenet and the neocons the main proselytisers. The USA provoked the ‘Arab Spring’ with its democratic elections and the predictable result thereof.
The Muslim Brotherhood took over and immediately began to act in character. The transition was a bit too sharp for the people and they became restless.
The army then ousted Mohammed Morsi’s government, but the cat of Islamic fanaticism wouldn’t stay in the bag. The country has been brought to the brink of civil war.
Dozens of people have died in the ensuing violence. Last Monday alone more than 50 Morsi loyalists were killed in clashes with the army.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie, and nine other senior figures were charged on Wednesday with inciting Monday’s carnage, which they probably had.
The Americans instantly began to shed crocodile tears over the violence and protest against the ‘arbitrary’ arrests of Muslim Brotherhood members. That apparently isn’t going to prevent them from supplying to Egypt a batch of F-16 fighter-bombers – business has to come first.
But the US administration has to decide whether the military takeover constitutes a coup. Alas, US law prohibits export of arms to any country whose elected leader is deposed by a military coup. This is one area in which I trust the Americans: they’ll find a way.
One just wishes they spared us sanctimonious pronouncements and fulsome regrets. If you instigate civil wars, chaps, people will die. A lot of people.
More Americans were killed in the 1861-1865 Civil War than in all the country’s other wars combined. The English Civil War of 1642-1651 killed a greater proportion of the population than the First World War. That war claimed fewer Russian lives even in absolute terms than the Civil War of 1918-1922.
The old saw about being careful what you wish for is being vindicated. Americans, Egyptians and, vicariously, the rest of us are finding this out the hard way.