The Redhunter

Right Now

As of this writing, the Egyptian capital seems to have fallen into anarchy. Protesters own the streets. The army and police are overwhelmed, and at this point are holding back and not even trying to disperse the protesters any more. They have relegated themselves to protecting what government and state television and radio buildings as they can. Military and police vehicles are overrun by demonstrators. Yesterday, the protesters burned down the ruling party's headquarters.

The government has shut down all Internet access, cellular and landline telephone systems. Foreign news media report their stories through private satellite links.

Photos via Fox News

What is happening is going far beyond what happened in Iran last year and is more reminiscent of the Iranian revolution of 1979. Mubarak has not had to flee, however, as did Ceausescu. Mubarak has fired his cabinet, but the crowds have made it clear that they are not going to be satisfied with that. They want him gone.

The Democracy Alternative

Maybe, just maybe, we would not be in this situation if we had spent the past few decades promoting liberty in these countries instead of just proping up whatever strongman was in power as long as we could work with him.

To be sure, sometimes we were able to follow this policy and get away with it. The Kuomintang government on Taiwan ran the country as a single party state, i.e quasi-dictatorship, until the 1990s. South Korea was run by a series of autocrats until maybe the 1980s. Both are full democracies today.

But as with the Iran or Nicaragua, sometimes the opposite happens, and they go from a pro-American authoritarian dictatorship to an anti-American totalitarian one. They go from the frying pan into the fire, as it were.

The biggest criticism that the left made about US policy during the Cold War was over our support of right-wing dictators over a communist alternative. It was wrong to support a dictator who oppressed the people just because they were "our guy," the argument went. And, truth be told, their case was hardly without merit.

Our justification was that 1) these dictators were the lesser of two evils, and 2) they might evolve into democracies whereas communist countries would not (see Jeanne Kirkpatrick's Dictatorships and Double Standards) Although countries like the ROC and ROK did evolved into democracies, the left did have a point. We should have pushed these countries harder to reform.

The Islam Problem

But it's not just a lack of voting rights or free speech that is the problem. We would be sticking our heads in the sand if we didn't say that there was a problem within Islam as well.

This is emphatically not to say that "Islam is the problem," or is unreformable. I reject that conclusion. What it is to say is that the way all too many Muslims interpret their religion is conducive to radicalism, whether it goes by the name of Salafism, Wahabism, Khomeinism, or something else. The Sharia of old must be rejected. The Caliphate is not a legitimate form of government.

That this will be difficult to achieve is an understatement. Now is not the time for me to lay out my ideas on how to push the Islamic world in that direction, and I've done so too many times before here on this blog (start here and start scrolling).

All Choices Now are Bad Ones

Right now we have three choices

1) Support Mubarak
2) Call for Mubarak's ouster and support the protesters
3) Do nothing except issue a general plea for peace and calm.

The problem with the first is that it goes against our principles, and if he's overthrown the new government will remember that we supported him.

The problem with the second is that the protesters would likely set up an Islamist government that is at best unfriendly to us, and at worst is straight out dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. It may well become the Sunni equivalent of Khomeinist Iran.

The argument against the third is that we ought to at least try and push things in a direction that is favorable to us.

Either way, in the long run we cannot go back to the old way of supporting one dictator over another. Hopefully, whatever the outcome of this current situation, we come to realize that we have to adopt a policy of pushing this region of the world towards some sort of pluralism and Western concepts of liberty.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Long story short, the Muslim Brotherhood was formed in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna as a response to the fall of the Turkish Caliphate in 1924. In the intervening years, it has become the world's largest Muslim organization, with branches and front organizations in nearly all parts of the world. It's stated goal is the restoration of the caliphate and imposition of Sharia rule. Groups in the United States like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) are Brotherhood front groups. The National Islamist Front, the political party that runs Sudan, is a Brotherhood organization. The Brotherhood created Hamas, the terrorist organization in Gaza. On and on it goes.

Although officially banned in Egypt, the Brotherhood is in reality quite active. Over the years, in order to prepare for the day when Islamists can seize power, they have spent their time infiltrating Egyptian institutions. Over the decades the government has attempted to destroy the Brotherhood by mass arrests and persecution, but has never been completely successful, as the Brotherhood always comes back.

Brotherhood is independent of any state. It works with rulers who are sympathetic to it, but operates outside of them. Theirs is a "grassroots" strategy. While the Wahabists "float with the world", the Brotherhood floats with the target society, which thus far has always been a Middle Eastern one.

The Brotherhood is part of the same Sunni Salafist tradition as the Wahabists. To some extent the Brotherhood competes with the Saudi Wahabists for influence within the Muslim world. Sometimes they cooperate, it all depends on the politics of the moment.

Basically, the Brotherhood seeks to change a society and government by trying to put its members or sympathizers in positions of influence. These positions may be in the media, industry, military, or, if it exists in the target country, a parliament. It is willing to start small, encouraging members to join at the "entry level" and work their way up. Rather than fighting the regime directly, it seeks to undermine it from the bottom up.

After infiltrating from the bottom up, they work their way back down again. As Walid Phares explains, "the Brotherhood would be interested in spreading through the elites, converting them patiently into the Salafi doctrine, and only then enlisting them into the organization." They never engaged the regime directly until they reached full strength. Their methods were "amazingly fluid and adaptable to circumstances. Their ideal shortcut wa to infiltrate the ranks of the military and proceed with a coup d'etat against the government. Their next choice was to "advise" the ruler and influence him instead."

Although the Brotherhood appears to be officially sitting out the protests, they are no doubt waiting in the wings, positioning themselves for a takeover or at least to have significant influence in any post-Mubarak government.

All of this is why we cannot ignore groups like the Brotherhood and pretend that there is no problem within Islam. This is why we need to celebrate and promote true reformers in the Muslim world. We need a long term policy of pushing for reform so that we are not faced with these devil's choices.

Why Should We Care?

We should care because whether we like it our not we are a nation with worldwide interests. The world complains about us, but expects us to "do something" to solve problems when they arise, whether they be tsunami relief or revolutions.

We didn't support Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua and the Sandinistas proved worse. We didn't support the Shah and the Khomeinists have become a huge problem for the world. We didn't support Ceausescu (not that we would have, but just for the sake of example), and the new government proved far better. Which way will Egypt go if the revolution topples Mubarak?

Iran is now on the verge of getting nuclear weapons. Egypt could have nuclear weapons if they wanted them. We can stop Mubarak from getting them, but have little chance against an Islamist government.

It's also bad enough to have the Muslim Brotherhood as an independent organization trying to spread it's ideology throughout the world. The problem would be far, far, worse, if they had control of a government. al Qaeda is dangerous enough as it is; they were far more so when they were fully supported by the government of Afghanistan.

An Islamist government in Cairo could incite wars, support terror in ways a private organization could not, abrogate the peace treaty with Israel, and threaten our access to natural resources, i.e. oil.

In Conclusion

Mubarak will have to go, but we should not fully support the protesters either. Whether Mohamed El Baradei should be the person who takes over or someone else is a matter for the experts, but perhaps we can thread the needle between options #1 and #2 above.

We must make sure that a post-Mubarak government has minimal Brotherhood infiltration (that there will be some is inevitable), but most of all is perceived as legitimate by the people. And we must adopt a true program of pushing them towards some sort of pluralism, liberty, and Islamic reformation. Difficult? You betcha. Impossible? Stranger things have happened.