US elections 2008 - view from Egypt
How do my friends in Egypt see the upcoming US election? The answer
may surprise US readers. My friends see it as a choice between two
candidates worse than each other. They have no preference for either
candidate and see both as representatives of the same system; a
system steeped in domineering unfavoured others.
They perceive that Obama has charisma, they know McCain is
experienced. They can see that Palin will hoover up votes from
certain demographics. They know about the US election cycle, and the
huge campaign budgets involved. But they fundamentally believe
neither candidate will make their own lives better. As far as they
are concerned: the US political system produces a stream of
standard-issue presidents.
Let's take the last two Democratic-Party presidents of the US:
Clinton and Carter. Clinton was no great reformer of US foreign
policy. He instigated sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime,
sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis; he authorised
illegal attacks on Sudan to pull attention away from his Lewinsky
scandal; and he tried to force Arafat to accept what he deemed a
'good' offer by Ehud Barak. When Arafat walked away, Clinton passed
on a decidedly anti-Arafat message to Bush.
Back in the late 1970s, even though Jimmy Carter was a personal
friend of Anwar Sadat, Carter leaned on Sadat to accept what then
became the Camp David peace accords. The Egyptian negotiating team
had decided unanimously that (Israeli Prime Minister) Begin's offer
was unsatisfactory. But Carter laid it on the line: "Anwar, if you
walk away from this, you walk away from it all, and I will cancel the
US aid program that we have prepared for Egypt".
The eight years of GWB have left people in Egypt (and elsewhere) in
no doubt that he is a particularly bad sample of US president. My
mother curses him whenever he appears on television. She sees him as
responsible for a lot of the bloodshed in Iraq; he lied about WMD and
he should be tried in court for it.
When my mother sees on television Condoleeza Rice, she says to her:
"you, God will punish you." Rice is not the typical US
white-man-in-charge; my mother expected her to come to the job with
an independent mind. Instead, Rice is working from the rule-book that
was set by her predecessors and her president.
The US has got itself in a terrible position: it is right in the
middle of a polarising "war on terror"; it supports a bad regime in
Egypt because the regime accepts instructions from it; and it is
always willing to see things from Israel's point of view. Put
yourself in the place of the common Egyptian: is the US on 'your
side'? Let's see.
The US supports the corrupt, oppressive regime that torments you on a
daily basis, it is "fighting terror" by launching wars against two
Muslim countries and killing lots of Muslims and torturing them, and
it refuses to stop Israel from occupying territories that are not
hers.
People here see the US as a blind supporter of Israel, a country that
in most people's minds is spoilt rotten by the blank cheques it gets
from the US. It is true that Egypt fought Israel as an enemy forty
years ago, but today most Egyptians just want a fair settlement,
something that will please the Palestinians and compensate them for
having lost their country sixty years ago. But the Americans are not
pressuring Israel to make serious concessions.
It is not just the US that is in a terrible position; the Egyptian
people are too. They absolutely resent the way they are being ruled,
but they are struggling to find a way to change the regime. There's
an old joke going around the country. The government raises taxes,
and the people cope. The government mismanages the economy so badly
that people can barely eat, and the people cope. Then the government
institutes a policy of whipping every bridge-crosser, and now finally
protests are organised: "the lines are too long, we need more
whippers".
I believe the Egyptian people need to change their own government by
themselves, I really do not want to see a US president try to "help
out". The best way to help out is to affect what is under the US's
direct control and to not interfere in other people's affairs. What
is under American control is their policies: they can stop giving in
to the short-sighted pro-Israel worldview, they can stop going to war
unnecessarily and fighting Muslims worldwide.
Almost everybody in Egypt thinks the US hates Muslims. Look at it
this way: the US is very worried about China, but it has actually
invested in China over the past twenty years in a manner that brings
puzzlement to many; it is almost like the US wants to help China out.
A lot of US debt today is in the hands of the Chinese government,
China can harm the US economy. But US policy is very careful when
addressing China. Likewise Russia; a lot of care is taken, and no
unnecessary wars or confrontations are sought. North Korea was able
to test a nuclear weapon.
It is only when it comes to the Muslims, be they Iranians, Iraqis,
Afghanis, Lebanese, or Palestinians that force is threatened and
actually deployed. It seems like the US is using these countries as
whipping boys. The US strategy seems to be to pick on the guys they
know they can beat, the guys they know they can play against each
other, the guys with 'development issues', who are still groping
their way out of bad governance. That's a really terrible strategy.
No one I know in Egypt thinks either candidate will change that
strategy.
