Ambassador Patterson … Americans deserve better.

In March 2012, I watched Steven Spielberg’s movie “Lincoln” which – unlike previous movies that focus on Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War´-or-examine his catastrophic death - portrays Lincoln as a real man and a great political strategist and negotiator.

Abraham Lincoln’s humanitarian philosophies, personal ethics and common-sense approach enabled him to comprehensively understand human nature, and deeply sympathise with the American and other nations’ people who bitterly suffered under the yoke of official privilege and injustice.

Indeed, Lincoln championed "universal moral values" that propose and apply divine principle - previously reserved for privileged kings and royal families that enabled them to rule without the free consent of the governed - to self-government with equal legal rights and justice for all people, regardless of race, gender, political office, religion, social class, culture, ethnical background, wealth, education´-or-any other elements. Lincoln’s "universal moral values" approach continued to be discussed and adapted by all political organisations in civilised nations. Despite that these universal moral values seem to have no place in politics, Lincoln’s moral drive was behind his extraordinary inspirational achievements in social justice.

Lincoln and other great American presidents continue to haunt my imagination every time I reflect on the current American administration policies in the Middle East, especially in Egypt after what is called the Arab Spring. The current American decision-makers seem to have departed from Lincoln’s values when it comes to policies related to the Middle East, they only see the business side of politics.

There is a strong argument to identify politics as “the art of achieving what is possible”, and political decisions as the tasks of deciding who gets what, where, when? This is well explained by the notion of “Market Failure” - which is the most common economic model for extending government actions in society - to correct failure in public decision making. Such governmental intervention usually takes place by manipulating “market forces” to produce the optimal outcome.

The Secretary of State Hilary Clinton used the “Market Failure Theory” to explain why America created the global terrorist organisation “Al Qaeda”, which killed Americans everywhere in the world, during the Russian-Afghanistan war in late 1980s. She said:

“We also have a history of kind of moving in and out of Pakistan and let s remember here the people we are
fighting today, we funded twenty years ago, and we did it because we were locked in this struggle with the
Soviet [as] they invaded Afghanistan and we did not want to see them control central Asia” [1].

In addition to funding Al Qaeda, Clinton went further to reveal the details of how the American administration created Al Qaeda. This encompassed American collaboration with the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan “ISI”, Pakistani military, recruiting the Islamic terrorists who call themselves “Mujahedeen” and importing Wahhabi Islamist from Saudi Arabia led by Osama Bin Laden to the region.

Yes, the American administration’s approach to the Soviet/Afghanistan war – which was authorised by Regan and a democrats-dominated congress - led to the Russians’ defeat and loss of billions of dollars, as well as the collapse of the Soviet. Indeed, some may argue that Regan’s “market failure” approach was a worthy investment and good policy. Yet, one wonders whether creating Al Qaeda to fight the Soviet was the best outcome for Americans. Was it really the right thing for the American administration to rely on “Market Failure/Forces” to fashion their policies? Is it right to assume that the American government interventions make always things better? Like most observers, if not all, I argue that this approach was a disaster not only to the region, but also to the Americans themselves.

The sad thing is that the current American administration continues to use the very same approach “Market Failure” to justify its intervention in the Middle East, especially Egypt, claiming that such intervention is important to tame “Political Forces” in Egypt produced by the January 25th revolution. This argument is a naïve one, and one that highlights the administration’s hypocrisy.

The USA administration’s relationship with Egypt “the donor-recipient relationship” - which allows USA to intervene in Egyptian affairs - has been the core element that released the Egyptians’ anti-American backlash. The American administration has underestimated how riled Egyptians are by the Americans’ constant-meddling in their affairs. Yet, Americans find it difficult to understand the level of anti-American sentiment in Egypt. The Egyptians view hypocrisy as the fundamental fraud in American policies in Egypt.

Egyptians, and in fact the rest of the world, see that it is hypocrisy to hear the American administration say that it is taking a decision for one reason that appears morally good when it is really taking it for another. For example: the sickening and fictitious American rhetoric - which we hear from every American official - of how America supports the Muslim Brotherhood government for the good of the Egyptians, when in reality it is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood medieval government to guarantee Israel’s security by ensuring that the new Egyptian government doesn’t invalidate the Camp David agreement with Israel.

The American administration highlights its own hypocrisy when it denounces terrorist organisations – e.g. HAMAS and Al Qaeda – despite that they have been long time partners and allies with the Muslim Brotherhood which is the headquarters of terrorism that exports the Sunni Wahhabi terrorism around the world - HAMAS is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The irony is that America continues to propose sanctions against countries that trade with Iran, not only because Iran is on the list of the "State Sponsors of Terrorism", but because also it provides weapons, training, and funding to HAMAS and other Palestinian terrorist groups. Yet, America doesn’t hold itself to the same standards it imposes on other countries by supporting both the HAMAS government – Muslim Brotherhood government in Palestine – and the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, both governments embrace terrorism.

The American administration’s hypocrisy is even more every time they look Egyptians in the eye, promoting the idea that the USA supports democracy, freedom and universal human rights, whilst standing hand in hand with the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist governments and their Islamic party affiliates in Egypt, who are known to reject freedom, democracy and most universal human rights. In March 2012, The Obama administration abandoned democracy requirements to release up to -$- 1.5 billion in aid to Egypt despite fears that the country was backsliding on its commitment to democratic governance and rule of law.

US Ambassador Patterson continues to work her hardest to support the Muslim Brotherhood theocratic government in Egypt. A few days ago, she suggested to the Coptic Pope that he prevent Christians from participating in the forthcoming 30th June demonstration against the Muslim Brotherhood. In addition she took the lead to plan for the Egyptians how their revolution should end, discouraging the military leaders from being political during this period of Egypt’s history and ignoring the Egyptians peoples desire to have the military facilitate Egypt’s transition to real democratic government. Indeed, Egyptians would prefer a military transitional period than a theocratic government supported by the USA.

American administration hypocrisy touched every family in Egypt when it continued shipping tear gas canisters and arms to Egypt that the government used against various demonstrations and protests before and after 25 January revolution.
Obama’s Administration hides the lack of universal moral values in its Middle East policies by confusing two separate questions: “what is the actual meaning of the American policies?” and “what is the meaning of the language (words, sentences and semiotics) they use to convey such policies”. By confusing these two questions, Obama’s administration wants Egyptians to accept its institutionally-certified hypocrisy and double speak as an integral part of "reality". Obama’s administration attempts to make Egyptians believe that the Muslim Brotherhood theocratic government is a democratic one that defends human rights just because it is associated with Americans, something Egyptians don’t believe.

The American administration’s hypocrisy and lack of moral values is not only-limit-ed to their strategies in Egypt, but also in the whole Middle East, Arabic and Islamic countries, including Syria. No doubt the Syrian people – like most, if not all Middle Eastern nations – have been under the iron grip of one of the most repressive and brittle regimes for many years. Yet, this doesn’t excuse the American administration supporting, funding and arming the Al Qaeda-controlled “Free Syrian Army” to get rid of the dictator Assad’s regime. The Americans have not learnt the lesson from creating Al Qaeda during Soviet-Afghanistan. Once again, they support Al Qaeda to achieve its goals in weakening Syria, Iran, Russia and China.

In Iraq, the situation is taking a very dangerous turn, suggesting that Iraq is moving into a civil war. The places where the violence is erupting are the strongholds of al-Qaeda in Iraq. America’s sin of creating Al Qaeda is still haunting the world and its effort to fix Iraq’s problem.

In Libya, the terrorists – to whom the USA and its allies provided military backing to topple Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi – have assaulted the American diplomatic facility in Benghazi and killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. They are working towards establishing a theocratic government in Libya.
The USA and the notoriously repressive regime in Saudi Arabia have had a very close and strong relationship for the last 80 years, despite that Saudi Arabia’s government has at all-times exported the Wahhabi brand of Islam - which is the mother of all terrorism - to the whole entire world. The USA doesn’t mind to ignore human rights atrocities in Saudi Arabia in order to control the largest crude oil company in the world, Saudi Aramco. Oil makes America swallow the fact that Saudi Arabia leads and exports Wahhabi terrorism around the world which produced Osama Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader.

The above are mere examples of the American administration hypocrisy, but the list is very long, and it would need a book to list it all.

It is well known that – for decades - consecutive American administrations have defined America’s national security interests in the Middle East as securing access to Middle East oil, containing any ambitious regional hegemonic powers, and restricting proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In order to achieve these goals America has a network of informal security alliances - mainly with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. After 9/11 American policies’ in the Middle East shifted toward using military might to balance the power in the region. In addition, the USA continued to use its aid to form alliances with the leading aid recipients of Israel, Egypt and Jordan. The American aid policy has been challenged by both sides of American politics as it managed to officially win the alliance of these countries governments but not its people’s sympathy.

The “Market Failure” argument implies that the Market – which in this case is the market - Middle East, Arabs and Muslim countries - is perfect and the government intervenes only when this perfect market becomes imperfect. This is not the case as the politics of this region is always imperfect. The reality is politics in the Middle East is always highly volatile and unpredictable, therefore it is unreasonable to identify Middle Eastern political volatility as an excuse to assume that American’s intervention will make the Middle East better. The Market Failure also assumes that the government’s intervention is always rational, quantifiable and a utility maximising decisions, choices and actions. Such an approach relies on manipulating the market forces to maximise outcomes – I am quite confident that not many would disagree with me that 9/11 was not the best outcome for either the American people´-or-its government,´-or-the world. In fact, the market failure argument collapsed for all to see with 9/11 bombing of the New York World Trade Centre and the killing of thousands of Americans worldwide since the creation of Al Qaeda. Finally, the “Market Failure” approach lacks Lincoln’s moral values, which seem to be a trivial issue for lots of American politicians.
The question of “what is politics?” forces us to ponder another question, which is “What is a bad policy?” In my view a bad policy is the political decision that has no driving universal moral values,´-or-the decision that imposes immoral values at the time when decision-makers can substitute such a decision with another choice that enforces the universal moral values.

I believe that lots of the American policies in the Middle East are bad policies which show the American administration as hypocrites. In my view such policies are made out of either ignorance´-or-incompetence, and regardless of the reason, I believe that American people deserve better.

References
1.Hillary speech on creating Al Qaeda, viewed 25 June 2913, available from:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8A6Gq4I6ys&feature=endscreen&NR=1

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