After having heard and read ad nauseam criticism from the far-right neocons on the handling—or “non-handling”—of the recent Egypt crisis by the Obama administration, I braced myself for additional piling on by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a recent Washington Post opinion piece.
However, it turned out to be one of the most fair and balanced opinion pieces on this subject by either the far-right crowd or by more moderate Conservatives.
After lamenting that, in the past, the United States had, in the Middle East, “more than any other region, sought stability at the expense of democracy, and had achieved neither” and after praising both her and her former boss’s belief that “the desire for liberty is universal – not Western, but human – and that only fulfillment of that desire leads to true stability,” Rice contends that for a time, after June 2005, it seemed that the Egyptian leadership was responding: “it seemed a kind of Rubicon had been crossed.”
She then goes on to rightly condemn the subsequent “course reversals” by Hosni Mubarak, leading to Egyptians seething—“anger that would eventually explode into Tahrir Square” and to say that “The lesson to others in the region should be to accelerate long-delayed political and economic reforms.”
As others are recklessly predicting wild Islamic caliphate conspiracies and Armageddons, Rice calmly points out that while the Muslim Brotherhood represents the most organized political force in Egypt it is probably a direct result of Mubarak’s own policies: “While many decent, more secular political leaders were harassed and jailed by the regime, the Brotherhood organized in the mosques and provided social services the regime could not.”
Rice says that the Brotherhood “is likely to compete for the writ of the people in free and fair elections.” Free elections wherein the Brotherhood must answer many questions as to their vision for Egypt, sharia law, the existence of Israel, relations with Iran, Al-Qaeda and “Do they expect to improve the lives of Egyptians cut off from the international community through policies designed to destabilize the Middle East?”
As to Mubarak’s maintaining “a cold peace with Israel” and his support for a moderate Palestinian leadership, helping to keep Hamas at bay, Rice wisely says:
But he could never do so fully because he was afraid of “the street.” Authoritarians don’t know or respect their people, and they fear them. The United States has taken a good deal of public blame from friends who secretly supported our policies – fueling hatred against us while shielding themselves.
And these words and thoughts:
We cannot determine the foreign policy preferences of Egypt’s next government…
What comes next is up to Egyptians…
In Egypt, Christians and followers of other religions will also have to find a place and a voice…
The next months, indeed years, are bound to be turbulent. Yet that turbulence is preferable to the false stability of autocracy, in which malignant forces find footing in the freedom gap that silences democratic voices….
…the United States should support the forces of democracy, not because they will be friendlier to us but because they will be friendlier to their own people.
And finally,
Democratic governments, including our closest allies, do not always agree with us. Yet they share our most fundamental belief – that people must be governed by consent. It is as true today as it was when I said in 2005 that the fear of free choices can no longer justify the denial of liberty. We have only one choice: to trust that in the long arc of history those shared beliefs will matter more than the immediate disruptions that lie ahead and that, ultimately, our interests and ideals will be well served.
Thank you, Secretary Rice. And, no, I did not imply at the beginning that she was one of those far-right neocons.
Although I did not agree with her support of the Bush administration’s Iraq War policies, I did not consider her to be “one of them.” That view was recently reinforced when Mr. Rumsfeld singled her out for one of his choice zingers in his Known and Unknown.
Secretary Rice should be proud of that…
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.