Read: Egypt And Syria: the sins of democracy?

From: Irish Political Review: Editorials

Date: August, 2013

By: Editorial

Egypt And Syria: the sins of democracy?

Democracy must be reaching the end of its shelf-life as a manipulable illusion. It has served Western Imperialism well. But can it survive its Egyptian fiasco?
Possibly it can. But if it does it will not be as an illusion sincerely believed in, but as a deception deliberately practised.
Ten years ago Iraq was reduced to a shambles in the name of Democracy. Some of the vociferous supporters of that invasion, which was followed by the destruction of the liberal Iraqi State, appeared to believe that Democracy is what happens when "tyranny" is overthrown. As we go to print, it seems likely that the Syrian State, which has resisted the Western-backed Islamist insurrection for two years,, is about to be destroyed by direct Western intervention. If, after the example of Iraq, Libya and Egypt, Syria is reduced to a total shambles, any use of the word 'Democracy' in justification of the act will be calculated deception.

Of course, powerful States engage in exception as a matter of routine. In an era when Democracy has been made the official ideology of the world by the United Nations, the Governments of powerful states could not operate without deception. But what we are talking about is the people. When Iraq was pulverised in the name of Democracy, the action had extensive popular support on the ground of belief that the purpose of the action was to enable the people of Iraq to establish a democratic State for themselves. One might accept that this was grounded on credulity. But credibility is no longer possible in these matters. Support for a Western war on Syria can only be based on a cynical calculation of interest, and a cynical dressing up of interest in the verbiage of democratic principle.
As we go to print, the British Government, seeking to drum up popular enthusiasm for war, assures the public that its military action will not be an interference in the Syrian "civil war", and will not be directed towards regime change. It will just kill some people in Syria as punishment for the regime being suspected of using poison gas, but it will leave the regime in place and allow the civil war to continue.
Hitherto what has been going on in Syria has been described as a conflict between "the Syrian people" and an entirely unrepresentative regime based purely on a capacity for terrorising the populace. Recognition of the legitimacy of the Damascus Government was withdrawn long ago, and the Opposition, though altogether lacking in political or military coherence, was recognised as the legitimate authority in Syria. But now, in order to garner support for war, recognition of the Opposition as the legitimate authority is tacitly withdrawn, and "the Syrian people" is dissolved into an internally-divided body engaged in civil war.
This is done, of course, in the certainty that, if a war of intervention can be started, all that was said in order to get it started will become litter in the rubbish-bin of history. War always brings its own dynamic, its own logic, its own state of mind, its own imperatives, and the pre-war chatter required to bring it about loses all its force.

The chatter at this particular instant is about whether an act of war against Syria would be illegal under international law. It is a fantasy debate. An act of war by the US, the UK and France could not be illegal because those States placed themselves beyond the law of the United Nations when they created the United Nations. The legality of acts of war is decided by the Security Council. For the Security Council to be able to decide that the contemplated act of war against Syria was illegal, the three states that seem determined to commit that act of war would have to give judgment against themselves, and brand themselves as criminals. That is the meaning of the Veto which each of them has on Security Council decisions.
Unless a distinction is made between being legal, and not being illegal—and we have never seen such a distinction made—discussion of the possibility that war on Syria might not be legal is the empty chatter of facade politics.

Meanwhile Assad's decision to provide the West with the means of working up a warmongering campaign against him by using poison gas in Damascus, after Washington said that poison gas would be a reason for war, conveniently takes attention away from the embarrassing situation in Egypt.

And so, on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous speech, a black President is on the brink of demonstrating that the dream has been realised. The descendants of the slaves have become equal citizens, to the extent that a black man has the power to commit the State to an act of war. It is a remarkable achievement of American democracy. But it is a thing of no consequence to the rest of the world. It just means that able people amongst the descendants of the slaves are trusted to be warmongering Imperialists in the highest Offices of the State. The "content of their character" has become suitable.

Meanwhile in Egypt the liberal secularists, hatched under the wing of the military dictatorship, who came out on the streets demanding Democracy last year, having had an experience of democracy, demanded a restoration of military dictatorship and have scurried back under its wings.
Did they really not understand that they were not "the Egyptian people"?
Their complaint, when they were demonstrating on the streets against Morsi—with military aircraft dropping leaflets supporting them—was that "the Revolution" had been "stolen" from them—stolen by the populace.
In the immediate aftermath of the military coup, the Al Jazeera television channel engaged in the severe mental cruelty of giving them lots of air time to explain themselves. They tied themselves up in ideological knots explaining—or thinking aloud in a groping for explanation—of how it was they who were the democrats, though supported by the military backed by Saudi Arabia, while the winners of the election were fascists, or something like it.

There was much generalised chatter, with no detail, about the awful things that Morsi had done. But then somebody said that the awful thing was nothing he had actually done, but was what he would do if allowed to serve out his four years.

What would he have done if he had not been overthrown? No diabolical plans were discovered in his office. It began to emerge that the awful thing was that Egypt would have become accustomed to Islamic democracy, and the authority of the military hegemons of the State would have withered.

New notions of Democracy were tossed off in an attempt to make it synonymous with elitist liberalism. The elected Government, in order to be authentically democratic, should have empowered the Opposition, which had proved to be entirely incapable of empowering itself in electoral politics. Democracy suddenly ceased to be an adversarial political system, and became a system of consensus in which the majority does what the minority wants.

In the midst of this nonsense, an Israeli "Middle East expert", Yoram Ettinger, said that the normal and effective mode of Arab Government was military government and that Democracy should not be attempted in Arab States.
In the days when Arab countries were governed by more or less stable military regimes backed by the United States, criticism of Arab countries for not being democracies was regularly made as a debating point by Israel. But Israeli authorities knew all the time that the Jewish State was a colonial implantation whose projects could only be realised if the surrounding Arab countries were prevented from becoming democracies and were ruled in the last resort by dictatorship regimes subject to American influence. Now that this has been said outright, there can be no going back to spurious Zionist debating points about Democracy.

The undistinguished RTE coverage of the restoration of dictatorship included, around the time Mubarak was released from prison, an interview in which it was said that Morsi was guilty of trying to "appropriate" the State apparatus of the Mubarak regime instead of getting rid of it. The interviewer made no attempt to draw out the meaning of this.
The only practical sense it makes is that the Brotherhood should not have contested the elections, but should have come to power through physical force conflict with the apparatus of the dictatorship.
But the Brotherhood was committed to peaceful methods. And, when it won the election, it did not have the means to break up the apparatus of State constructed by the dictatorship—essentially the Army, with its control of a large segment of the economy, and the Judiciary.
Morsi governed in conjunction with the apparatus of the dictatorship. That apparatus was committed to subverting him. But, if the apparatus had allowed the elected Government to continue for four years, and become a familiar fixture in the political scene, its capacity for arbitrary action would have suffered erosion.

Morsi wanted to hold Parliamentary elections to confirm his mandate. The election which he won in January 2012 was declared illegitimate by the Mubarak Court six months later, in June. Morsi issued a Presidential decree ordering a Parliamentary election this April, but the Decree was over-ruled by the Court.
Morsi was President by direct election, but the representative body on which his Government was based was the Senate, or Shura Council. The powers of the Senate were slight compared with the powers of the Parliament, so there was only a 10% turnout in its election. With Parliamentary elections forbidden by the Courts, a case could therefore be made that Morsi's electoral mandate was weak.
Ninety seats in the Senate were made by appointment. The Army appointed a large chunk of these. Morsi ended those military appointments. This June the Court ruled that Government based on the Senate was unconstitutional.

Morsi tried to form a broadly-based Government but met with refusals from people who then complained that it was not broadly based.
El Baradei, who was out of favour with Saudi Arabia because he had been insufficiently anti-Iranian as head of the Atomic Energy Commission, refused a position under Morsi. He supported the coup and accepted a position in the restored dictatorship—but resigned when the dictatorship began "murdering its own people"—as the saying used to go when somebody was killed in the conflict that is now called the Syrian civil war.
Just before Egypt was taken off the news by somebody conveniently showering a poison gas attack on Damascus, a BBC political correspondent reported on a detailed briefing he had received from a senior figure in the restored dictatorship. The policy was to decapitate the Brotherhood, whose leadership was Nazi. There was a second layer of leadership which was heavily tainted, and that would have to be got rid of too. But the third layer, the body of the Brotherhood, though infected to some extent, was capable of being redeemed This layer was to be brainwashed and made usable by the dictatorship.
Some time later Amr Mussa, head of the Arab League and a member of the dictatorship, said much the same thing in a long interview.

Are we mistaken in remembering that that is the kind of thing that was said and done following the Soviet intervention in Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the Cold War, and condemned as outrages on human integrity by the Western media?

Editorial Note
On 29th January 2013 the Mail Online carried a story entitled,
"U.S. 'Backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad's regime'.

This was pulled shortly afterwards but can be found at the following address:

http://globalresearch.ca/us-backed-plan-to-launch-chemical-weapon-attack-on-syria-and-blame-it-on=assad-government/5346907

CONTENTS
Egypt And Syria. The Sins Of Democracy? Editorial
Budget Choices. Editorial
Victims Of The Peace. Pat Walsh
What The Minister Said, Reply To A Vile Accusation,
                  (or, Why Didn't He Just Pick Up A Phone?). Philip O'Connor
Straw Says Nuclear Deal With Iran Scuppered By The US In 2005. David Morrison
Shorts from the Long Fellow (Kenny's Betrayal; The Quinn Family; Reasons To Be Miserable?; Political Nerves?; Stimulus Package)
Don't Mention The War. Pat Walsh
Another Day At Béalnabláth. Manus O'Riordan
Fred May And Dev—a very odd couple. Seán McGouran
Es Ahora. Julianne Herlihy (Micheál Martin & his 'evolutionary politics'; Micheál Martin & Merriman Summer School; UCC & Populism; Canon Sheehan)
Corrections, 3. Brendan Clifford (Part 3 of The Irish Bulletin & The Academy)
The Omagh Bomb—15 Years On. Pat Walsh
A Jolly Good Fellow. Fergal Patrick Keane, OBE. Donal Kennedy
Biteback: Budget Options On Cuts And Taxes. Philip O'Connor
                  Kilmichael Statement. Peter Beresford Ellis
Bradley Manning. Willson John Haire (Poem)
Does It Stack Up? Michael Stack (The Irish Holocaust, Not a Famine; Dukes Of Devonshire; Taxes=Charity)
Labour Comment: The Apprentice Boys. Mondragon, Part 22
Trade Union Notes

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