Why do they hate us? The dispute between the West and the Muslim world

To the question of what causes what Westerners call Islamic terrorism, George Bush famously and stupidly issued the answer: "They hate us because of our values." In the wake of the accused killing of a soldier Lee Rigby by Michael Adebolago and Michael Adebowale in England, we may ask, what is the real answer to that question?

There is a real dispute between the world's more than one billion Muslims and the West, led by the United States and the office of the US presidency held by Barack Obama. In that dispute, the West is really on the side of bigotry and racism while the Muslim world is really on the side of human equality. It is a dispute Westerners usually do not think about, but when they think about it, they lie to themselves and each other. Westerners lie because in this dispute, the West is opposing its own claimed values and ideals.

The object of the dispute is the question: Should there be a majority Jewish state in Palestine? Barack Obama believes the answer is yes. When that question has been directly put to non-Jewish populations in Israel's region, most non-Jewish people in the region answer no.

Here is a poll of Iran taken in 2009, for example:

18. Level of agreement - The state of Israel is illegitimate and should not exist.

Strong Agreement: 51.9%
Mild Agreement: 14.6% (total agree, 66.5%)
Neutral: 21.1%
Mild Disagreement: 4.6%
Strong Disagreement: 3.9% (total disagree 8.5%)

Barack Obama believes there should be a Jewish state in Palestine in much the same way Ronald Reagan believed there should be a white state in South Africa. In both cases, that was a disagreement with most of the people in the respective regions.

South Africa created a fiction where it described territory under its control as bantustans, formally independent states where Africans could vote, but that would leave the South African government with a white political majority even if it allowed a small number of black voters to remain in South Africa.

Nelson Mandela's ANC took the position: no political majority white state in South Africa. White South Africans will have to live under majority Black rule. Any white South Africans for whom living under Black rule would be such an indignity as to be impossible should leave.

Ronald Reagan sided with White South Africans as they tried to transition their system of denying the vote to Black people to one in which Black people would be allowed to vote, but in subjugated states that for security purposes would be dominated by a state whose government was to have a designed white majority.

Today Barack Obama sides with Jewish Israelis in their attempt to create and pressure the Palestinians to accept that situation rejected by Nelson Mandela and the ANC. A subjugated, controlled, and for security purposes, non-sovereign non-Jewish state created to formally allow non-Jews to vote while maintaining by design a Jewish majority state.

The core disagreement over the question of should there be a Jewish state in Palestine leads the West, the United States, Barack Obama to policies that are unconscionable by supposed Western values, even if necessary to maintain a Jewish state in a region where most people do not believe there should be a Jewish state.

Hamas - an organization that, like most Palestinian voters and most people in the region, does not believe Israel is legitimate and should exist - won the most recent Palestinian election. To punish the people for voting for Hamas, Israel's leadership announced that territory under Hamas control would be put on a diet.

Barack Obama supports limiting Palestinian access to food and uses US political and diplomatic resources to limit Turkish efforts against it and to coerce Egypt to cooperate with the embargo over Palestinian territory. Children in Gaza are hungry today because of the diet Barack Obama supports on behalf of Israel. Most people in Western countries that support that policy are comfortably unaware of the ongoing pain the West is imposing on that large population of civilians.

The United States is directing the distribution of weapons to a civil war in Syria that now that has killed tens of thousands of people.

One of the directors of US policy in the region, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman favors removing Bashar Assad from power claiming Assad plays an "extremely negative role in the region". What is this extremely negative role? According to Feltman, Syria under the Assad government supports Hezbollah, which with its allies won the popular vote in Lebanon's elections and is an ally of Iran, which Israel has identified as its primary strategic threat because of Iranian policies that are supported by the Iranian population.

Supporting a civil war in Syria, when it was first contemplated, would have been expected to lead to tens of thousands of deaths. As it has. Barack Obama has decided that reducing support for Hezbollah and Iran, despite the popularity of Hezbollah's and Iran's anti-Israel policies, is worth tens of thousands of lives in Syria. Most Westerners are totally oblivious to these deaths, promoted by their governments ultimately on Israel's behalf.

Everything Iran and Syria do to play, using Feltman's words, an extremely negative role in the region, would be done, with more resources and at least in some ways in concert with Iran and Syria by many of the states in the region if their governments were accountable to their own people. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and others would support anti-Israel groups and would work to end Israel's military dominance of the region. The United States supports dictatorships over these countries to prevent them from taking popular measures that Barack Obama and Jeffrey Feltman would consider negative but that their own people would consider positive.

Outside of Israel's region, the United States is able to achieve its strategic and political goals with governments that have some degree of popular accountability. Israel's region, and Israel's inherent strategic vulnerability uniquely requires US ongoing support for the world's last remaining string of dictatorships directly descended from the colonial era.

Saudi Arabia in particular could base modern air defense systems on its territory that could reach Israeli airspace and deny Israel air superiority in any conflict. It could quickly reach a Japan-like nuclear posture that without actually building nuclear weapons would neutralize Israel's regional nuclear monopoly. It could also supply anti-Israel fighters with levels of armaments greater than those currently available to anti-Syrian fighters which would probably make living under Arab rule preferable for most Jewish Israelis than continuing to fight an active and indefinite insurgency.

The US' express commitment that Israel must alone have military superiority over all of its neighbors put together by itself requires a pro-US dictatorship in Saudi Arabia. That country must be ruled by a government that, unlike the people of Saudi Arabia accepts Israeli military superiority. Saudi Arabia spends more than three times as much on weapons as Israel every year. A Saudi Arabia which was accountable to its people rather than to the US would not cooperate with this open commitment by the US and would be impervious to some of the tools of coercion such as IMF loans that the US is now trying to use to control Egypt's policies after Hosni Mubarak, its pro-US dictator has been removed.

Saudi Arabia under its current pro-US colonial style dictatorship does not pose even as great a threat to Israel as Iran does because the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia is determined by people accountable to Barack Obama and Jeffrey Feltman but not accountable to the nearly 30 million people of Saudi Arabia. For Obama, dictatorship for those 30 million Arabs is an acceptable price to maintain an ethnic majority for fewer than 6 million Jewish people in Israel.

Barack Obama and Jeffrey Feltman disagree with the people of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and other countries on a key question: should there be a Jewish state. Because of that disagreement they work for the West to maintain hegemon-subordinate relationships with these countries that are remnants of the colonial era. Most Westerners are not aware of the string of effective colonies the US supports ruling tens of millions of Arab people on Israel's behalf.

The United States uses drones to attack in their homes people in organizations that oppose Zionism and the string of colonial-style dictatorships the US maintains on Israel's behalf. Victims of these attacks include US citizens and hundreds of children. Westerners are largely aware of the drones, but not that the children dying from them have been killed to ensure that fewer than six million Jewish people in Israel never suffer the indignity of living under non-Jewish rule.

The United States is supporting hunger, death and dictatorships throughout the Middle East ultimately on behalf of Israel. The dispute over whether or not there should be a Jewish state extends to be a dispute about whether or not civil war should be imposed on populations whose governments reflect their people's views on Israel. The dispute extends to whether or not Arab children should have limited access to food. The dispute extends to whether or not people in Israel's region in resourceful or strategic states should have governments accountable to them.

Barack Obama has taken the thoroughly racist proposition that fewer than six million Jewish people avoiding the fate of White South Africans is worth tens of millions of people who are not Jewish being ruled by dictatorship, millions of people going hungry, tens of thousands of people being killed in civil war, hundreds of innocent people being directly killed by American airstrikes and many other forms of damage and destruction that the US is committed to in the region on Israel's behalf.

The position that a designed Jewish majority state in Palestine is worth the misery continuously imposed on non-Jews, mostly Muslims, in the region to maintain its viability is no more defensible within the value system Westerners claim to uphold than the position that a designed White majority state in South Africa was worth the required misery for non-whites.

Westerners routinely ignore, lie about and evade issues related to Israel in the Middle East because their positions cannot be defended according to the values they themselves claim. George Bush and Barack Obama have never openly asserted that Jewish lives and interests are vastly more important than those of people who are not Jewish in the Middle East. They have consistently harmed huge numbers of people in accord with that belief that they do not admit they hold. But people are continuously dying over this Western bigotry whether Westerners openly state those views or not.

That is the real dispute between the West and the Muslim world. In that dispute, the West, even according to the values it claims to hold, is wrong.

If Barack Obama and George Bush were smarter and more honest they would have answered, "They hate us because we - supposed liberals or conservatives, democrats or republicans - are sanctioning, killing, starving, maintaining dictatorships and sanctioning millions of Arabs and Muslims on behalf of Israel."

The case against Israel, or why Israel should not exist

If a state was created by atrocities, etc, as Israel was, that does not lead to the conclusion that it should not exist. A hypothetical country with a pristine origin and history still does not have a right to exist. "Right to exist" itself is a term I've almost only seen used in pro-Israel propaganda. Can you think of a context other than Zionism where the term "right to exist" has even been used?

But Israel is not viable without the active oppression, today, of hundreds of millions of people in the Middle East who are not Jewish.

Iran is the most important strategic threat to Israel. The policies that make Iran threatening to Israel: its refusal to recognize or maintain ties with Israel, its support for anti-Israel groups and its efforts to increase its military capabilities are all popular with the Iranian people (PDF link).

Saudi Arabia has more money than Iran and is closer, and if the people of that country could vote, they would vote for a government that is has hostile to Israel as Iran is, or more. Israel would not be viable if Saudi Arabia was as actively hostile to Zionism as Iran is.

To avoid that, the United States supports a dictatorship over Saudi Arabia's almost 30 million people. The United States does not need the dictatorship to sell oil. A democracy in Saudi Arabia would still sell oil. The United States needs a dictatorship to refrain from using the proceeds of oil sales to threaten Israel. A democracy in Saudi Arabia would not do that. The pro-US dictatorships over the tens of millions of people in Jordan, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and others in the Middle East in the same way are ultimately maintained today for the sake of Israel.

The United States is a hegemonic power that disregards and acts against the interests of people, especially poor people, all over the world, but it only requires a string of friendly colonial-style dictatorships in Israel's region. The US requires this string of dictatorships in Israel's region because without them Israel is not viable.

Aside, Iran would also have no problem selling oil to the US. The US blocks Iran's oil industry because, and only because, Iran uses or would use the proceeds of its oil sales to support anti-Israel groups. Historically the US oil lobby once competed against the US Israel lobby in an attempt to participate in Iran's oil industry. The oil lobby was defeated in a humiliating fashion.

Another aside, Iran believes it has the right under the NPT to have the same nuclear capabilities countries like Japan have - which is to say while Japan has no weapon, it could build one in an emergency. Israel cannot tolerate other countries in its region even having NPT safeguarded legal Japan-like capabilities. Current US diplomatic efforts against Iran are motivated by this proposition.

Back to Israel. Most people in Israel's region consider Israel an injustice. That does not mean those most people in Israel's region hate Jews, any more than the African opposition to Apartheid South Africa could be explained by hatred for white people. But just as Americans offered rationalizations and justifications for US support for Apartheid South Africa that were not compelling to Black audiences; Israeli, American and other Western arguments for the necessity of Israel as a political majority Jewish state are reasonably not compelling to Middle Eastern audiences.

I'll point out that both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah have said that they favor Zionism ending by elections which put in place majority Muslim governments, not by killing anyone. That is how Apartheid ended. Supporters of Israel have a strong interest, because they disagree with the idea of Zionism ending the way Apartheid did, to present opponents of Zionism as more menacing and less reasonable then they are.

For the United States, in the face of the reasonable opposition of most of the people of the Middle East, maintaining Israel requires the active oppression, today, of the hundreds of millions of people in the region who are not Jewish.

For one example, the sanctions, invasion and occupation of Iraq that killed well over half a million Iraqi children would not have been necessary except that a powerful Iraq would threaten Israel more than Iran is acknowledged to today.

Again, the threat Iraq posed to the pro-US oil dictatorships, to the questionable degree that such a threat is real, is only threatening because the US needs those dictatorships for their cooperation with Israel, their refrain from using their resources to oppose Israel. The US does not need dictatorships to sell oil.

The United States did not kill half a million Iraqi children for oil. The United States killed those children for Israel.

To sum up, Israel should not exist as a majority Jewish state not directly because its creation was illegal and immoral. Israel should not exist because its existence as a political majority Jewish state requires the active oppression, right now, of hundreds of millions of people who are not Jewish on behalf of fewer than six million Jewish Israelis.

Congratulations Egypt on passing a constitution

I would have written a more secular constitution than Egypt's Constituent Assembly did. I would have, more importantly to me, given an entire committee of elected civilians oversight of Egypt's military budget, establishing at least as much civilian control over the military as exists in the United States. To top that off, I would have written into the constitution that foreign contributions to the military especially from former colonial hegemons such as the United States must be visible to the public.

But I don't vote in Egypt's elections. The people of Egypt do, and all indications are that Egyptians have written and approved by a substantial margin a constitution that fits their values and priorities, rather than Barack Obama's, Juan Cole's, Tom Friedman's values or even my values and priorities.

Cole might say that there should have been more secular representation in the Constituent Assembly. There in that case might exist a difference of opinion between Cole and the people of Egypt over exactly what is the right amount of secular representation in a constitution-writing body. A colonialist would propose that if the people of Egypt and Juan Cole, a US citizen, disagree about what would represent a reasonable distribution of power between secularists and religionists, Cole's position, rather than that of Egypt's voters, should prevail. No reader of this blog by now could be surprised that Juan Cole takes exactly that colonialist position.

But after decades of being ruled on behalf of the government Cole votes for, Egypt is coming to be ruled on behalf of Egypt's voters themselves. That is a great step forward, and the squawking we hear from supposedly liberal and supposedly conservative commentators in the West criticising Egypt's democratic process despite the election results is actually evidence of what a significant step forward it is.

Congratulations to all of the people of Egypt.

Also congratulations to Egypt's Muslim Brothers. They have campaigned or lobbied on the most popular sides of six elections post Mubarak now. The first constitutional amendments, the People's Assembly, the Shura Council, two rounds of Presidential elections and now the constitutional referendum.

The people of Egypt have clearly expressed faith in this group of people to set Egypt's policies. I send them all of my best wishes and hopes that they prove worthy of this faith that they've been shown by the people of Egypt.

"Near fatal blows" to a two state solution

So Israel is building more settlements. These settlements are in areas that if annexed apparently would make a continuous Palestinian state in the West Bank impossible. That would be according to every Western commentator I've seen on the issue an almost fatal blow to hopes for two states. Here's the New York Times with one example:

So far this week, Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-line government, defying the Western powers, has approved construction of more than 6,000 new housing units. The approvals follow an announcement late last month that Israel would continue planning for new development in the E1 area — a project northeast of Jerusalem that would split the West Bank and prevent the creation of a viable contiguous Palestinian state. Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, has called this project an “almost fatal blow” to a two-state solution.

Really quickly, first of course, Israel is not viable without US support. The US has to maintain a string of colonial dictatorships throughout Israel's region, has to impose bombings, sanctions and civil wars on countries outside of that string of colonies and if it was to stop, Israel would be forced to either negotiate a South-Africa style settlement that would end Zionism, or it would fight and lose wars against the countries in its region and accept such a settlement ending Zionism after.

So Israel cannot and does not actually defy Western powers. If Barack Obama told Netanyahu that these settlements would result in the US withdrawing its support for Zionism, Netanyahu would halt the settlements. Without US support not only would the settlements not be possible, but Israel as a Jewish state in a region of US-controlled stooge dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain and others would not be possible.

But beyond that, I find humor in the idea that these blows are "nearly fatal". That raises the question of when would claimed hopes for a two state solution actually die, what would have to happen for a blow to those hopes to be fatal, as opposed to nearly fatal?

The answer to this question as I've said in this blog before is that the point of these hopes for a two state solution is not for there ever to actually be two states, but to allow Israel's supporters to pretend that they are not as evil as they are.

Barack Obama supports Israel restricting the access children in Gaza have to food. That is a disgusting policy, even by the values Obama claims to uphold. But because of hopes for a two state solution, Obama tells himself and those who'll listen to him that this policy is only temporary. A two state solution is around the corner after which children in Gaza will be able to eat what they want, their parents will be able to produce goods and export them.

Instead of a reflection of Obama's racist idea that Jewish children in Israel are more important than Arab children in Gaza, the siege is a temporary sacrifice to hopes for a two state solution. The purpose of these hopes is to shield people like Barack Obama from the implications of their own pro-Jewish racism.

So are these settlements really almost fatal blows to these hopes? These hopes were never real enough to live or die. States with tens of millions of people live under pro-US dictatorships and will have to be under US control forever if Israel is to remain viable as a Jewish state.

How is fewer than six million Jewish people having an enforced Jewish political majority state more important than over 40 million mostly Muslim people in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and others having policy makers who are accountable to their voters? Because Barack Obama and other supporters of Israel are religious bigots who devalue Muslim people as human beings in service to Zionism.

Hopes for a two state solution are how they lie to themselves and to each other to disguise the anti-Arab racism and anti-Muslim bigotry inherent in their support for Israel. These hopes will not die or nearly die because of any settlement building. The impulse and need to lie to themselves and each other about their bigotry that fuels these supposed hopes for a two state solution are only growing stronger as Israel becomes more vulnerable.

But back to the Times, here is another funny passage:

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, hopes for Mideast peace have envisioned two states, for two peoples, living side by side in security. But there is increasing talk now of a one-state future, which would be disastrous to both sides. By absorbing the West Bank, Israel would risk its character as a Jewish state because Israeli Jews could become a minority in their own country. Israelis would also have to decide whether to give Palestinians equal rights, the denial of which would harm Israel’s standing as a democracy.

One state would be disastrous to both sides? The New York Times describes how the process of losing an enforced ethnic political majority state that White South Africans went through as a disaster for Israeli Jews, but where is the explanation of how it would be a disaster for the Arabs and Muslims? And if it's only a disaster for one side, why say both?

Westerners, liberal to conservative, just have a huge fog of lies that they tell themselves and each other especially about the Middle East and Zionism. If they were to stop lying, it would be more than a fatal blow to the supposed hopes for a two state solution.

Not rooting for Morsi, but rooting for democracy

To be clear again, I don't think of myself as necessarily a fan of Morsi - even though I am impressed that he is doing a good job preventing the SCAF from delivering the "monopoly over many aspects of foreign affairs" that it was until this summer very confident it could give the US.

I'm a fan of the people of Egypt selecting a leader, and selecting representatives in Parliament and that ruler and those representatives serving until the next election, held when the rules say they will be held, then Egypt's voters can choose again. I'm also a fan of the people the Egyptians select being the actual people who make policy in their country, as opposed to unelected groups carving out monopolies to serve foreign interests.

If we saw that in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and the other US colonies in the region then Zionism would not be viable, Iran would be maybe the fourth or fifth biggest threat to Israel's security, Israel would probably sue for peace the way the White South Africans did and a tremendous amount of misery in the forms of sanctions, stooge dictatorships, captured political officials, annulments of parliaments, drone strikes, blockades, invasions and imposed civil wars in that region would be averted.

I'm much less concerned with the names of the leaders or their parties. I don't root for any party, I just root for voters to decide and for the elected officials to have true policy making authority while being accountable to their own people.

The United States and the West - because of Zionism - oppose that and alongside that cause almost immeasurable amounts of pain and destruction throughout the region of the Middle East. That's why the United States is a horribly evil country measured on the basis of its own proclaimed values.

Egypt's judiciary admitted it does not want voters to control Egypt's policy

Just as background to the current conflict in Egypt, I want to point to an article that results from statements a high Egyptian judicial official made that were accessed by the New York Times:

Judge Gebali said her own direct contacts with the generals began in May last year, after a demonstration by mostly liberal and secular activists demanding a Constitution or at least a bill of rights before elections. “This changed the vision of the military council,” she said. “It had thought that the only popular power in the street was the Muslim Brotherhood.”

It was also around that time, Judge Gebali said, that she began helping the military-led government draft a set of binding constitutional ground rules. The rules protected civil liberties, she said, but also explicitly granted the military autonomy from any oversight, as well as a permanent power to intervene in politics. “The military council accepted it, and agreed to issue a ‘constitutional declaration’ with it,” she said.

... Egyptian jurists now say that the generals effectively planted a booby trap in the parliamentary elections by leaving them vulnerable to judicial negation at any time — if the generals allowed previous precedents to apply.

... The decision “is in the drawers of the constitutional court, and it could be taken out at any time,” Prime Minister Kamal el-Ganzouri told Parliament’s speaker, Saad el-Katatni of the Muslim Brotherhood, as Mr. Katatni recalled in March from the floor of Parliament.

I also want to make sure readers of this blog understand that the Constitutional Court was prepared to rule on December 2 that the Constituent Assembly should be dissolved because it was emplaced by the Parliament that it dissolved earlier:

The Supreme Constitutional Court set 2 December to issue a ruling on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting a new constitution.

Two lawsuits filed against the assembly demanded annulling the law issued on 12 July by the dissolved People's Assembly laying out criteria for the selection of the current Constituent Assembly members.

Deputy head of the Supreme Constitutional Court Maher Samy told MENA that two lawsuits filed against the assembly demand its dissolution for being based on a law issued by the dissolved People's Assembly.

Both lawsuits, according to Samy, contend that the Constituent Assembly constitutes an obstacle to the implementation of the ruling of the Supreme Constitutional Court issued in June annulling the parliamentary elections law and dissolving the People's Assembly.

The crisis in Egypt is caused by a judiciary that openly does not believe Egypt's voters should control Egypt's military and therefore Egypt's foreign policy. Many in the United States, ultimately on Israel's behalf, agree with this counter-democratic idea held by Egyptian court officials, people such as Juan Cole, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Thomas Friedman and the entire mainstream US foreign policy community.

It is easily predictable even if outrageous to see Americans project their own hostility against democracy in Egypt onto Morsi. So far, Morsi is innocent.

I'll also point to a statement of support for Morsi from Egypt's Nour Party:

"The president's decisions did not come out of the blue; it is clear to anyone following recent political events that there have been attempts to lead the country into a state of lawlessness," Nour Party spokesman Nader Bakkar stated.

He pointed in particular to the dissolution this summer of Egypt's democratically elected parliament based on a ruling by Egypt's High Constitutional Court.

The party spokesman asserted that the recent replacement of Prosecutor-General Abdel-Maguid Mahmoud – who, according to Bakkar, "had stood against the revolution" – with Judge Talaat Abdullah, "has given hope to the families of the revolution's martyrs, after everyone had accused the president of not doing enough to attain martyrs' rights."

Bakkar went on to warn against opposition calls to dissolve the Constituent Assembly (tasked with drafting a new constitution) and Shura Council (the upper, consultative house of parliament) and for President Morsi to step down.

"How can we allow a handful of individuals and political forces – which don't represent the people – to bring an end to all state institutions?" he asked.

I think that's well said, and I suspect a lot more people in Egypt agree with that statement than one might imagine reading twitters aimed at English-speaking audiences.

A note about Egypt: Outsiders who respect democracy will support the Islamists

The most important threat to colonialism - especially in the Middle East where the people of the United States have a vehement disagreement with the people of the region about Israel - is policy-makers who are accountable to voters.

You can bribe either Mubarak or Morsi, as long as there is nobody to compete with them for reelection who has an incentive to investigate and expose the corruption. It is much more expensive, in fact impossible for the US to bribe a majority of Egypt's more than 50 million voters.

So what's important is that there is a competitive process for control of foreign policy, and that the results of that competitive political process are respected.

So once a side wins a contested election, as long as it does not abolish future elections, there is no such thing as being over-supportive of that side. The people of Egypt support Morsi and a large Islamist majority in Parliament. Who I support is irrelevant compared to that.

The US embassy has recently begun tweeting that no one group in Egypt should have too much power. "We want to see the constitutional process in #Egypt move forward in a way that does not overly concentrate power in one set of hands". Somebody in the State Department, rather than Egypt's voters should, according to the US, decide how much power is too much and who should hold it. Not only did this principle never apply to Mubarak, but today this principle does not apply to the pro-US colonial dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and others. This is just an example of Americans across the political spectrum lying about the Middle East.

In countries close to Israel, the United States structurally cannot get the kind of cooperation it needs for Israel's security from voters. So it needs foreign policy to be outside of the control of the electorate, the way it has been in Turkey, though in Turkey responsibility for foreign policy is, in theory, slowly reverting to effective control by elected officials.

Turkey, when its foreign policy was fully controlled by the military and unaccountable to voters, is the exact model today proposed for Egypt by Juan Cole, and more or less openly by other US officials and commentators. To Cole that's good enough for Arabs and Muslims. If foreign policy is not under control of the voters, that's ok because eventually it may be in the future. For now the US Embassy should determine Egypt's foreign policy.

Cole is a pure anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigot, so is Barack Obama. They are supposed liberals who represent what is disgusting about the United States. Cole lies and says the reason he wants the army to control foreign policy is to protect minorities. What does the army have to do with women's rights? How many women's rights were there under Mubarak - who Cole described as unproblematic for the US? Disgusting. I've talked about that too long already, but that is the mainstream foreign policy view of the United States.

Back to democracy. Egyptians are in Egypt. They have the close view of all of the details they need to figure out the way to manage all aspects of policy, including foreign policy, most consistent with their own values. I don't know how they will solve the problem of Egypt's seemingly structural external dependency but they'll do a better job of solving it than I could from far away.

All they need are politicians who are accountable to them, not to the US Embassy and a little time.

Qatar is a US colony today. Qatar makes a lot of pledges. Those pledges are actually fulfilled if Qatar gets US permission to fulfill them. One day Qatar will be democratic but until then, pledges of support from Qatar mean no more and no less than the pledges Egypt has already gotten from the US and Europe. They are a problem, but the people of Egypt can and will solve those problems better than I could.

The question, as always, is will Egypt get a constitution that puts foreign policy under the control of voters. Juan Cole opposes that. Jimmy Carter opposes that. Thomas Friedman opposes that. The US state department, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama oppose that. All because the United States is an evil nation. They'll all come up with different rationales, but look at how each of them supported Mubarak yesterday, and how each of them supports Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan today.

A competitive electoral process in Egypt whose winner will control foreign policy. The US opposes it. The SCAS opposes it. The SCAS-courts oppose it. US non-official commentators oppose it. The Muslim Brothers have no reason to oppose it, especially now, after showing that they represent a majority of Egyptians. I've seen no indication that they or Morsi do in fact oppose it.

But until the people of Egypt stop voting for the Islamists, outsiders who respect democracy will support the Islamists.

If you want to be disgusted by American colonialism in the Middle East, Tom Friedman is always a good place to go

I thought I had earlier written here about Thomas Friedman as the author of the Middle East peace initiative, presented as coming from Saudi Arabia, but fairly openly dictated by Friedman himself. Looking into the archives, I didn't find it so I'll link to Friedman's earlier columns now.

Friedman's February 6, 2002 letter to the rulers of Arab states:

You need to face up to something: Ehud Barak gave us an Israeli peace plan, however rough. Bill Clinton then followed up with an American peace plan. Now is the time for an Arab peace plan. No more you guys sitting back complaining about everyone else's peace plans. It's time for you to put on the table not only what you want from Israel -- an end to occupation -- but what you collectively are ready to give in return.

Friedman in February 17, 2002 describing the response to his letter in a private audience with Saudi Prince Abdullah:

After I laid out this idea, the crown prince looked at me with mock astonishment and said, ''Have you broken into my desk?''

''No,'' I said, wondering what he was talking about.

''The reason I ask is that this is exactly the idea I had in mind -- full withdrawal from all the occupied territories, in accord with U.N. resolutions, including in Jerusalem, for full normalization of relations,'' he said. ''I have drafted a speech along those lines. ''

It goes without saying that this is not how independent countries make or publicize changes in policy. We'll never see an American journalist make a policy demand of China, then travel to China to be told "that's just what I was thinking". Or even Uruguay. Especially a policy that the people of the country reject about four to one. I consider this the best recent illustration of Saudi Arabia's status as a US colony.

A person like Juan Cole reflects American colonialism - he presents arguments similar to those of other people like who think like him to justify the US' ability to set policy rather than the people of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and others for their own countries but he does not implement the policies himself. A person like Barack Obama directly implements American colonialism. Obama openly says the United States will do everything in its power to secure Israel. Some of the things in the US' power have been to support pro-US colonial dictatorships in the countries listed above and probably also to non-publicly orchestrate things such as civil wars in Syria and Libya and the June 2012 dismissal of the Egyptian parliament by vestiges of the Egypt's pro-US dictatorship.

Friedman is somewhere in between Cole and Obama. Probably more influential than Cole, less directly involved in the implementation of colonialism than Obama. All three, when they do speak or write in public, sound essentially the same. Which brings us to Friedman's recent op-ed about Egypt in the context of Israel's attacks on Gaza. In every important way, it could have been written by any of the three or by any American or even western colonialist.

Friedman presents this wrong, bizarre but commonly held by Americans idea that China is an example of rational foreign policy while Iran or Hamas are not.

Hamas, by getting embroiled in a missile duel with Israel and then calling on Arab countries for support, particularly Egypt, was testing Cairo as much as Israel. And the question Hamas was posing to Egyptians was simple: Did Egypt have a democratic revolution last year to become more like Iran or more like China?

Many countries make sacrifices for objectives that are not purely strategic. Not least the United States that describes its support for Israel as sacrosanct - a religious term - and whose commercial oil interests were humiliated when they tried to oppose the American pro-Israel lobby. The US' trillion dollar invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as its maintenance of a string of colonies in the region in direct opposition to the US' own professed founding values are ultimately sacrifices the US makes for Israel, those sacrifices are the US acting like a cause instead of a responsible country. The cause being Zionism and the bigoted proposition that fewer than six million Jews avoiding the fate of White South Africans is worth any cost imposed on hundreds of millions of non-Jews in their region.

China does have good economic relations with the US - as long as and only as long as the US does not cross lines such as to even recognize an independent Taiwan. Mainstream US political leaders claim they are willing to jump into a ditch with rifles and fight and die to defend Israel. Fortunately for the US and China, nothing comparable has ever been the case regarding an issue the people of China feel strongly about. The Chinese opening to the US simply would not have happened if the US political system had been distorted in favor of Taiwan in 1970 as it was distorted in support of Israel then or as it is today.

If the US was willing to abandon recognition of Israel, it could have relations at least as close with Iran, with Egypt or with theoretical representative and popularly accountable governments in what are now the US colonies of Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and others and throughout the Middle East as it has with China. The United States is not willing to do that. The United States, Obama, Cole and Friedman would prefer to see colonialism, sanctions and civil war throughout the region than see Jews in Israel live under non-Jewish rule the way White South Africans do. But that's American irrationality, not Iranian, Egyptian or Palestinian.

Friedman says that Morsi should take up his peace initiative and bring it to Israel. The terms of that peace initiative are not popular in any Arab state, but the Saudi dictatorship still took the hint. Fortunately Egypt, though its parliament was dissolved after decreeing that Israel is its number one enemy, has a leadership emerging that is accountable to the Egyptian people, unlike Saudi Arabia, whose leadership is accountable to Juan Cole, Barack Obama and Thomas Friedman.

Of course Morsi is more legitimate than the pro-US dictatorship's judges

In an absolutely breathtaking move, in June 2012 the Hosni Mubarak-appointed Egyptian Constitutional court voided the parliamentary elections and dismissed Egypt's legislature because, like Juan Cole and most Americans, it was uncomfortable with the amount of Islamists the people of Egypt voted for.

Until last week, the constituent assembly worked to write a new constitution for Egypt under the threat that this body's efforts to write an Egyptian constitution could be, in a sweep, nullified by the remaining remnants of the Mubarak government in Egypt's judicial branch. Egypt's constitutional court is a throwback to the era when Egypt was ruled by Hosni Mubarak on behalf of the United States. When Barack Obama had more influence over Egypt's policy than the people of Egypt.

Israel was probably fortunate that there was no Egyptian legislature during its recent attacks on Gaza. If future attacks happen when an elected legislature is in place, the result will likely be, by parliamentary declaration, the free movement of people and goods into and out of Gaza through Egypt, in other words, the end of the blockade where Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu are conspiring to limit the access Palestinian men, women and children have to food, to calories, to punish them for voting for a political party that does not recognize Israel.

We don't publicly know what role the US embassy played in orchestrating the dissolution of Egypt's parliament. We do know that the US foreign policy community approved of it and defied any semblance of democratic ideals to justify it. Hillary Clinton and the US state department expressed no disapproval but hoped to see Egypt continue on the path to democracy despite the parliament the Egyptian people voted for being dissolved, their votes being thrown away en mass.

Since that time, in a critical counter-move Egypt's president Mohamed Morsi accepted the sudden resignation of interim stooge dictator Mohamed Tantawi, took legislative prerogatives away from the Army and put new leaders into key positions in the armed forces. I wondered at the time why he resigned and I still wonder. It crosses my mind that it is plausible that Morsi has information that would make it impossible for Tantawi to fight to maintain power - information such as details about corruption in his relationship with the United States - and Tantawi resigned with honor rather than try to fight to stay on.

One way or another, if the United States is unable to convince Egypt's military to recapture political power or the military is unable to do so, a constitution will be produced by spring 2013, Egypt's people will vote to approve it in a referendum and the era of US control of Egyptian policy will come to a final end.

The United States is still a filthy nation, a country that would impose hunger and malnutrition on the children of Gaza forever if it could. A nation that funds and promotes civil wars that kill tens of thousands of people in countries in the region that otherwise might theoretically threaten Israel. A nation that still and without an inkling of remorse continues to hold Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and others under the yoke of colonialism on Israel's behalf today. A country that claims to hold democracy as its founding value but whose supposed liberals out of pure bigotry believe that completely throwing out entire Egyptian elections because the wrong party won is close enough to democracy for Arabs and Muslims.

But the United States' may not succeed in preventing the people of Egypt from regaining control of Egyptian policy. Mohamed Morsi, in decreeing that the constitutional assembly appointed by the elected representatives of the Egyptian people cannot be dissolved by the remnants of Egypt's previous pro-US dictatorship, is saying that the political groups that have won Egyptian elections (all three elections so far, and also every round of each of them, eight rounds in total), not the party that has won elections in the United States, will decide the policies of Egypt.

If Egypt can become free, that will be a great thing. Of course by now the US embassy is furiously working behind the scenes to prevent Egypt from producing political institutions outside of US control. Juan Cole and the US public foreign policy community are, I expect, cheerleading and justifying that effort.

Brad Delong hates communism, isn't clear on why

I'm still not posting much these days.  Not that anything is wrong, but recently I've found myself too angry at U.S. policy in the Middle East for it to be healthy for me to concentrate on it.

In the meantime, I've been leaving minor comments on other blogs, and I'm still putting here comments that blog owners decide they don't want their readers to see.

Here's one from Brad DeLong's blog.  DeLong republished a book review from years ago where he criticizes Eric Hobsbawm for not sharing his hatred of communism and writing a book that reflects Hobsbawm's admiration of communism's ideals rather than DeLong's animus.

I admit I don't have a good understanding of Brad DeLong's animosity against communism.

I'd define communism, or the common thread of DeLong's examples of communism, as redistributionist non-democracy.

DeLong makes the empirical observation that redistributionist non-democracies have led to bad outcomes.

The question still remains, what part of the bad outcomes results from flaws of redistributionism, what part results from non-democracy and what part results from the capitalist world's executing a conflict with them?

DeLong seems, but not explicitly, to assign all of the blame for the bad outcomes on redistributionism.

He doesn't assign the all of the blame explicitly because it would be silly to claim that none, none of the problems in Cuba or even North Korea are caused by the US' and its allies' efforts against those countries.

Also the US has paid to overthrow democracies, and has plenty of money to continue to do so.  DeLong seems to leave out of his story that at least part of the non-democratic tendencies of redistributionist governments has been a defensive reaction to the US and the capitalist world's tactic of funding and elevating opposition forces to destabilize their countries.

DeLong clearly thinks "communism" is evil.  But he isn't clear what part of it.  From DeLong we see that communist governments just so happen to have led to bad outcomes, but DeLong does not show that these bad outcomes are ultimately caused by a philosophical defect rather than circumstance.

In fact, what exactly is the philosophical defect, if there is one?

Beyond that, as an American, DeLong greatly benefits from the place the United States has in the hierarchy of nations.  There is something self-interested, and maybe sinister, about his claim that countries that challenge the hierarchy of nations he benefits from are engaging in unmitigated evil.

Hillary Clinton and Juan Cole lying about Egypt

Juan Cole blocks comments that present him as hostile to Egyptian democracy really because there is no argument.  For him it is best to pretend such comments never existed.  It is what I'd do if I supported a colonial relationship between the US and Egypt, but would have to reconcile that with US values that purport to oppose such relationships.  Below is an adaptation of a post that has been blocked.

The establishment press in Egypt, al-Ahram (“The Pyramids”), reported cautiously on the meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi (from the Muslim Brotherhood party).

1. It noted that Clinton affirmed the US desire that the Egyptian military go to its barracks and leave elected civilians in charge.

About point 1- The United States provides Egypt's military with $1.5 billion per year. Beyond that, Egypt's parliament, when it existed was to be denied access to Egypt's military budget, including the US contribution to it.

1a - If Hillary Clinton was not lying about some desire to see the military relinquish political power, did she say that the $1.5 billion that she certified was in the US' interest to provide so that the US could retain leverage over Egyptian policy is at risk? Not publicly.

1b - If the military wants its budget to be secret from the people of Egypt, the US still could directly tell Egyptians and their elected officials of its contribution unilaterally. The US, according to Cole, is claiming to want civilians to be in charge, but won't even tell civilians who is getting the billion dollars a year it is spending for policy leverage.

The discrepancy between how the US acts regarding its payments to Egypt's dictatorship and the asserted US desire to allow elected Egyptians to control Egyptian policy indicates that the claimed desire is just a falsehood. A lie.

6. She said that the current constitutional crisis over the Supreme Administrative Court’s and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’s dismissals of the elected parliament, and Morsi’s attempt to reinstate it, was a matter of internal Egyptian politics in which the US would not interfere.

About point 6 - The US will not interfere?  The US gives one side of this dispute, the side that has never won an election, $1.5 billion per year.  The people of Egypt and their elected officials have no idea where the money is going. That's interference. Why even tell such a transparent lie?

The US just wants a few things from Egypt: Keeping trade flowing through the Red Sea and Suez Canal; the security of Israel; the security of Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf States… (Did I say, ‘the security of Israel?)

Of the items in the list of things the US wants from Egypt, one stands out as particularly difficult to achieve if the government is accountable to the people of Egypt rather than to the Obama administration. US opposition to Egyptian democracy is mostly due to that one item, security for Israel, and less importantly due to an irrational Islamophobia that pervades the US foreign policy community.

I also want to point out that as of today, Clinton has no reason to meet with Morsi about Israel as Egypt's president has no foreign policy making authority.  Instead Egyptians who are on her payroll, like Tantawi and like Mubarak before Tantawi, set that policy as modern colonial subjects of the United States.

***

That comment criticizes the fact that Juan Cole is misleading his readers by affirming the blatant lie that the US is somehow on the sidelines in the dispute between the pro-US dictatorship and the voters of Egypt who in every election, three so far totalling eight rounds, have supported Islamists or ideologically allied coalitions. Of course it will not be posted, but that is very low on the list of Cole's moral deficiencies.

The United States is an evil nation.  Juan Cole, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are evil people, the modern equivalents of Cecil Rhodes and Winston Churchill.  85 million Egyptian people should not have accountable government because they might jeopardize the desire of fewer than six million Jewish people in Israel to avoid losing their enforced political majority state the way White South Africans did. It is anti-Arab bigotry.  It is anti-Muslim bigotry. It is what the United States stands for, on behalf of Israel.

But since I'm here, I'd like to go over the US' relationship with Egypt since Barack Obama took office.

As historical background, we'll start with Egypt's previous colonial ruler, the British empire, and its plans to grant Egypt "independence" except over areas of policy where it chose to retain control:

When at last the combined forces of the occupying army and the Interior Ministry were able to quell months of strikes and protests, the British were compelled to reconsider their position towards Egypt. The eventual outcome of that process was the unilateral decision in March 1922 to grant Egypt a qualified independence. Although the country would be governed thereafter as a constitutional monarchy, the British retained the right to intervene in any matters seen to affect the security of imperial communications, the interests and safety of foreigners on Egyptian soil, the threat of foreign invasion, or the status of Egypt's relationship with the Sudan.

Coming to the Obama presidency, we'll recall when Obama was asked directly during his first year in office if he considered Hosni Mubarak a dictator and said he would not call him that because he approved of Mubarak's role in the region, particularly regarding Israel.

Justin Webb: Do you regard President Mubarak as an authoritarian ruler?

President Obama: No, I tend not to use labels for folks. I haven't met him. I've spoken to him on the phone.

He has been a stalwart ally in many respects, to the United States. He has sustained peace with Israel, which is a very difficult thing to do in that region.

Joe Biden said the same thing as protesters filled Tahrir Square.

JIM LEHRER: The word -- the word to describe the leadership of Mubarak and Egypt and also in Tunisia before was dictator. Should Mubarak be seen as a dictator?

JOE BIDEN: Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he's been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interests in the region: Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing the relationship with Israel.

And I think that it would be -- I would not refer to him as a dictator.

Then we'll look at a commitment the pro-US dictatorship made to the US press, that it would not allow Egypt's voters to set foreign policy. The New York Times reported the commitment with an approving and reassured tone.

The new majority is likely to increase the difficulty of sustaining the United States’ close military and political partnership with post-Mubarak Egypt, though the military has said it plans to maintain a monopoly over many aspects of foreign affairs.

Next we'll look at Jimmy Carter who met Egypt's dictatorship and afterwards told reporters that the military relinquishing control over all areas of policy would be "excessive".

“ ‘Full civilian control’ is a little excessive, I think,” Mr. Carter said, after describing a meeting he had Tuesday with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, leader of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF. “I don’t think the SCAF is going to turn over full responsibility to the civilian government. There are going to be some privileges of the military that would probably be protected.”

Lastly we'll look at Hillary Clinton's certification that US contributions to Egypt's military should continue specifically because those contributions advance US policy interests.

Pursuant to section 7041(a)(1)(C) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2012 (Div. I, Pub. L. 112–74) (‘‘the Act’’), I hereby determine that it is in the national security interest of the United States to waive the requirements of section 7041(a)(1)(B) of the Act with respect to the provision of Foreign Military Financing for Egypt, and I hereby waive this restriction.

So that now, when we see the unelected dictatorship decree that elected officials do not have control over foreign policy we are seeing this pro-US dictatorship keeping a promise it already made to Americans, it is trying to fulfil the role Great Britain hoped to achieve with its nominally independent colony of Egypt a century before, and it is pursuing the policies that Barack Obama applauded Egypt's previous dictatorship for pursuing.

This is the light in which we should see the defense of US commentators such as Juan Cole of the dictatorship's dissolving of the elected parliament. The fact of the matter is that the US, like Juan Cole, ultimately does not want to see Egyptian policy made by the Egyptian people.  They are clumsily if blatantly lying to themselves and to anyone who will listen to them about their position.

If there are bright sides, they are that Egypt, despite the US, may well be making progress toward independence and also that it is becoming easier to see through American lies about the Middle East. But Cole, Clinton and Obama, according to the US' own professed values, should be ashamed and disgusted with themselves.

Syria: A foreign-supported insurgency according to the New York Times

I've written earlier that no sovereign state can accept any of its territory being denied to its security forces.  The US massacre in Waco was an application of that principle. The US government killed the men, women and children there because it would not allow even that compound to be out of reach of government forces.

The New York Times has sourced the CIA admitting what honest observers have understood from the beginning, that foreign sources hostile to Syria's government are arming an insurgency there.  I'll just leave this here so it may be easier to find later.

A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

Nuances and lies by omission: Juan Cole on Egypt

I don't mean to pick on Juan Cole.  He just illustrates a typical American approach to the Middle East.  He is not worse than average for the US commentary community.  He may well be better than average.

On the other hand, like most Americans, including we now see Barack Hussein Obama, he is bigoted against Islam.  He is adamant that regardless of the expressed decisions, opinions and preferences of the Egyptian people,  Muslims must one way or another be prevented from setting policy in Egypt.

Cole has two agendas when reporting about Egypt.  One is to rationalize his and the US' continued support for the pro-US dictatorship as it directly opposes the principle of democracy.  For this he blames the Muslim Brotherhood for running in elections the dictatorship administered and for petitioning for and accepting positions on the ballots that were given by the dictatorship according to the rules in place at the time. 

Funnily Cole and those who think like him sometimes say democracy is about more than elections.  In the context of a group he supports voiding an election and dismissing the Parliament because he and it did not like the outcome, there is no principle in democracy as important as respecting the outcome of the election. There may be more than that, but without that, there is no democracy.  In justifying this action, Cole opposes democracy.  If there is more to democracy than elections, by breaking the principle of respecting voter outcomes, Cole is rejecting all there is to democracy more than elections as well.

His second agenda is to divert attention away from the US' role in the war currently being waged against Egypt's voters.  He lists the actors in this conflict, and the US is never one.  The US' opposition to democracy contradicts the US' founding values.  It cannot be justified or supported within the American moral system.  Instead the US' role can only be actively ignored.  For example, mentioning or even asking if the US has any impact on the situation will result in comments being blocked or deleted at Cole's website.

Cole's supporters have convinced themselves that Cole is telling a nuanced story, one that entirely leaves out any discussion of the US in favor of mostly ridiculous and certainly unsupportable assertions about the motives of the dictatorship and its opponents. He'll say he has no proof of US influence over the dictatorship.  He presents no proof though, that the military believes the Muslim Brotherhood is supported by the US.  Nobody he quotes ever said that.  He presented without proof his theory that the Brothers would conspire with the military against the people of Egypt.

So anyway Cole has this dual agenda regarding Egypt, to oppose the Muslim Brotherhood gaining power regardless of the will of the people of Egypt and to downplay the role the US plays in its client dictatorship withholding power from Egypt's elected representatives if Egypt's voters do not agree with Cole that the Muslim Brothers pose some threat to democracy.  Comments that challenge these agendas will not make it to his page.  But hiding from them will not make them go away.

Following is a comment that Cole immediately blocked, responding to his idea that all sides, the Muslim parties who were sent to Parliament with a majority and the US-supported dictatorship that opposes that majority are equally trying to "steal bases" as in a US baseball game.

Likewise, the Muslim Brotherhood tried to stack the committee writing the constitution with its members, then acquiesced when the courts intervened. There is no real penalty for at least trying to put your interest above that of the nation, and the feeling seems to be that you should try, and then back down if there is an uproar. (I think this metaphor of trying to steal bases is better for trying to understand the political situation in Egypt than the idea that it is a game with no rules at all).

And where is the US embassy?  Are we pretending the US suddenly has no influence on what has been a client dictatorship for over three decades?

Now if the elected representatives of the Egyptian people don't determine what proportions there should be in the constitutional assembly, who should? You? On what basis?

The Egyptian military's budget is kept secret from the Egyptian people.  Including the US' contributions to that budget.  Keeping it secret after a supposed transfer of power to civilian leadership is a primary demand of the pro-US military dictatorship.

Why would the Barack Obama administration not disclose to the Egyptian people where these funds that supposedly are given as aid to them are going?

This is not about stealing bases.  One side has shown a willingness to abide by the expressed majority of the Egyptian people, though that side may not have taken Juan Cole's concerns fully into consideration.

The other side, is not willing to abide by the expressed will of the majority of Egyptians.  That is the side supported by the United States, Barack Obama and whose anti-democratic policies are being rationalized by Juan Cole.

Juan Cole, like Barack Obama, you are a colonialist

A quick reaction to Juan Cole's most recent article in support of the pro-US dictatorship's voiding of Egypt's Parliament and its new assertion that it will write the constitution without any input from any elected body. Definitely not something he would publish, but I wrote it nonetheless.

If it is true that the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Muhammad Mursi, really has won the election, SCAF will likely craft a constitution reducing the president’s powers. But this step can in the nature of the case only be provisional. Nor would it in and of itself necessarily be such a bad thing for the president’s powers to be reduced somewhat. (Some elected provincial governors and mayors and judges independent of the president and his party would serve Egypt well).

I get no sense from writing like this that we're talking about a pro-US dictatorship dissolving a legitimately elected parliament because it did not like the non-fraudulently reached outcome of the election.

You obviously disagree with the people of Egypt about the amount of influence Muslim parties should have in Egypt's political system. It looks a lot like the Obama administration agrees with you. Not one word from anywhere in the US government that the billion dollars per year that the US inserts into Egypt's military establishment with no civilian oversight and that the Egyptian people are not privy to details of is at risk because of these recent actions.

But the word for the belief that your ideas of what party should rule supersedes the beliefs of the people being ruled is colonialism. Mr. Cole, you are a colonialist.

Good Enough Democracy for Egypt by Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton's press statement on Egypt's move to dissolve Egypt's legitimately elected Parliament.

QUESTION: Can we do it the reverse? I’m sorry. Scott and I always do this, get it a little confused. But in any case, thank you, Madam Secretary. I’d like to start out with Egypt, please. What is your reaction to dissolving parliament? Is this a step backwards?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, first, with regard to Egypt, we are obviously monitoring the situation. We are engaged with Cairo about the implications of today’s court decision. So I won’t comment on the specifics until we know more. But that said, throughout this process, the United States has stood in support of the aspirations of the Egyptian people for a peaceful, credible, and permanent democratic transition. Now ultimately, it is up to the Egyptian people to determine their own future. And we expect that this weekend’s presidential election will be held in an atmosphere that is conducive to it being peaceful, fair, and free. And in keeping with the commitments that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces made to the Egyptian people, we expect to see a full transfer of power to a democratically elected, civilian government. There can be no going back on the democratic transition called for by the Egyptian people. The decisions on specific issues, of course, belong to the Egyptian people and their elected leaders. And they’ve made it clear that they want a president, a parliament, and a constitutional order that will reflect their will and advance their aspirations for political and economic reform. And that is exactly what they deserve to have. Let me also note that we are concerned about recent decrees issued by the SCAF. Even if they are temporary, they appear to expand the power of the military to detain civilians and to roll back civil liberties.

No going back? They are trying to dissolve the elected parliament!  Clinton clearly hopes to see the pro-US dictatorship remain in effective control of Egyptian policy - annulling elections whose results are unfavorable to the US' regional agenda while calling that "a president, a parliament, and a constitutional order that will reflect their will and advance their aspirations for political and economic reform".