11-2-11

Finally a recent date has come to pass reflecting positively on the peoples of the Middle East.&nbsp They richly deserve it.&nbsp September 11, 2001 was a horrendous crime against the world.&nbsp But on this day its worth remembering that those who attacked on that day drew inspirations, at least in&nbsppart, from the hands of their torturers&nbspin Egyptian jails.

On 11/2/11, the world can collectively celebrate, as it witnesses persistent civilization&nbspcourageously revolting to earn their freedom, secret police be damned.

That Mubarak was an authoritarian dictator kept on political life support by&nbspthe West, especially the United States Congress, will remain fresh in peoples minds, and a stain on&nbspAmerica’s&nbspown foreign policy.

But all that’s for the historians.&nbsp After dithering and taking wishy-washiness to new levels since the revolution began, President Obama’s foreign policy team is resigned to the category of&nbspregional&nbspirrelevance that it merits.&nbspSo too are the Johnny-come-latelies in the EU and elsewhere, who&nbsponly phoned in their&nbspsupport once the&nbspPresidential plane was wheels up for Sharm. 

 

They Egyptian people know pthey ousted Mubarak in spite of Washington, Brussels, or Tel Aviv. The entire Arab world knew from the beginning that all those parties, especially the U.S., were singularly obsessed with one pathetic question throughout: whether the next Egyptian leadership would continue to support the peace agreement with Israel. 

 

The American blinders were far narrower than the&nbspmasses at Tahrier Square could have possibly appreciated.&nbsp As they stood outside day and night there was no time for them to watch episodically interested American&nbspnetworks.&nbsp Spotty internet service probably denied them the ability&nbspto peruse the latest Wikileaks revelations.&nbsp If they had they would have noted, perhaps to&nbspno suprise, that their unelected Vice President Omar Suleiman was so eager to do the US-Israeli bidding that in December 2007 he advocated seeing the people of Gaza (fellow Muslims no less)&nbsp”go hungry but not starve” in response to the election of Hamas.&nbsp&nbspThere are much worse anecdotes in our recently released Palestine Papers.&nbsp How about that Freedom agenda, America?

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That logic taken further, it means the same Suleiman would do far worse to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood within Egypt, which is especially what the American Right and the eager-to-prove-their-security-credentials Left would like.&nbsp “The Muslim Brotherhood is a mortal enemy of our civilization,”&nbspsays Newt Gingrich, the&nbsprevered Republican party strategist.&nbsp&nbspEven if they were, and they most clearly&nbspare not,&nbspGingrich and&nbspany other&nbspUS&nbsppolitical parties will have to&nbspcome to terms with a reality they have so far failed to grasp.&nbsp The Arab and Muslim world are making changes with their feet.&nbsp They draw their strength and power from the numbers they bring and the righteousness of their causes. They are unafraid and unshackled to take on the status quo. 

These are the same people who will determine their destiny, arbitrarily chosen for them by Westerners with last names like Sykes and Picot and by DC-based lobbies and think tanks&nbspthat once mattered in the scheme of things but don’t so much any more.

This is not a time in history to fear, though many would like us to.&nbsp The devil we have known has not been good to the world either in its place, the Egyptian people step forward to offer this inspiring gift, a moment of change for the Arab people, and a real opportunity for the West to reflect on its sordid Middle East interventions.&nbsp

 
The best lesson of all, of course, is the promise of what can the Arabs can accomplish not on the back of an American tank, but through the coalescing of masses around information and ideas, which in the New Media age of Facebook and Twitter,&nbspis beholden to no dictator, lobby, or monopoly.&nbsp &nbsp