NYC Letter: Democrats In Charge VII - The Arab Autumn

Day 1,247 of CHOPE
D-minus 209 Days

There was never much spring in the Arab spring. It was a trade-down from brutal autocratic masters to brutal Islamist masters.

The Koran is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path, and death in the name of Allah is our goal.

Mohamed Morsi,
Muslim Brotherhood politico and newly elected president,
reintroducing the 7th century platform
CAIRO May 12, 2012 (ruvr.ru)

Meet Egypt's new president.

ISLAMIST MORSI ELECTED EGYPT'S PRESIDENT

CAIRO June 24, 2012 (ABC News/AP) - Islamist Mohammed Morsi was declared the winner Sunday in Egypt's first free presidential election in history, closing the tumultuous first phase of a democratic transition and opening a new struggle with the still-dominant military rulers who recently stripped the presidency of most of its powers.

... Morsi narrowly defeated [Ahmed] Shafiq with 51.7 percent of the vote versus 48.3, by a margin of only 800,000 votes, the election commission said. Turnout was 51 percent.

... In his first televised speech, the 60-year old U.S.-trained engineer called on Egyptians to unite and tried to reassure minority Christians [and here], who mostly backed Morsi's rival Ahmed Shafiq because they feared Islamic rule.

... In the lengthy and redundant speech, Morsi appeared to be struggling to compose his sentences. Wearing a blue suit and tie, he looked stiff and uncomfortable and did not smile throughout as he read from a paper. He was non-confrontational and did not mention the last-minute power grab by the ruling military, instead praising the armed forces.

The White House congratulated Morsi and urged him to advance national unity as he forms a new government. White House press secretary Jay Carney said Morsi's victory is a milestone in Egypt's transition to democracy after decades of authoritarian rule under Mubarak.

Yeah. Some democracy.

Just one week ago, at the moment polls were closing in the presidential runoff, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) issued constitutional amendments that stripped the president's office of most of its major powers. The ruling generals made themselves the final arbiters over the most pressing issues still complicating the transition— such as writing the constitution, legislating, passing the state budget— and granted military police broad powers to detain civilians.

... Also, a few days before that constitutional declaration, a court dissolved the freely elected parliament, which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, leaving the military now in charge of legislating.

Clueless Team Barry remains -- clueless.

BIDEN PRAISES ARAB SPRING ON SAME DAY
EGYPT DISSOLVES ITS PARLIAMENT

June 14, 2012 (CNS News) - Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at a high school commencement ceremony in Virginia on Thursday, called the Arab Spring a "democratic movement"--on the same day that the Egyptian high court nullified the Islamist majority parliament and the Egyptian military assumed control of the legislature.

EGYPT'S SECULAR FORCES CONDEMN US SUPPORT
FOR MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD CANDIDATE
June 23, 2012 (Ahram Online)

And then there is this mook.

KERRY: DON’T 'PREJUDGE'
THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

June 24, 2012 (PJM) - [Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) the] chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warned against "prejudging" the Muslim Brotherhood as Mohammed Morsi became Egypt's first Islamist president today. Mr. Kerry:

During my recent visits to Cairo, I’ve had two candid discussions with the new president. He's acknowledged that the central issue to Egypt's future is economic. His words suggest he understands the gravity of the challenges facing Egypt. In our discussions, Mr. Morsi committed to protecting fundamental freedoms, including women’s rights, minority rights, the right to free expression and assembly, and he said he understood the importance of Egypt's post-revolutionary relationships with America and Israel. ... Obviously American concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood’s past statements and positions are widely shared and well understood. But it would be a mistake for us to pull back from our engagement with a free and democratic Egypt.

This is the same mook who, in his expert opinion, assured all that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was a reformer. [Pause.] Yeah.

KERRY: TIME TO CONSIDER SAFE ZONES
AND ARMING THE OPPOSITION IN SYRIA
May 8, 2012 (The Cable)

Another spot-on revisionist call by Mr. Kerry! Oh. Wait.

REBELS RESPONSIBLE FOR
HOULA MASSACRE
By John Rosenthal

June 9, 2012 (NRO) - It was, in the words of U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, the "tipping point" in the Syria conflict: a savage massacre of over 90 people, predominantly women and children, for which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed by virtually the entirety of the Western media. Within days of the first reports of the Houla massacre, the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, and several other Western countries announced that they were expelling Syria’s ambassadors in protest.

But according to a new report in Germany’s leading daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ("FAZ"), the Houla massacre was in fact committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were member of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad. For its account of the massacre, the report cites opponents of Assad, who, however, declined to have their names appear in print out of fear of reprisals from armed opposition groups.

... The FAZ report echoes eyewitness accounts collected from refugees from the Houla region by members of the Monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. According to monastery sources cited by the Dutch Middle East expert Martin Janssen, armed rebels murdered “entire Alawi families” in the village of Taldo in the Houla region.

Already at the beginning of April, Mother Agnès-Mariam de la Croix of the St. James Monastery warned of rebel atrocities' being repackaged in both Arab and Western media accounts as regime atrocities. She cited the case of a massacre in the Khalidiya neighborhood in Homs. According to an account published in French on the monastery’s website, rebels gathered Christian and Alawi hostages in a building in Khalidiya and blew up the building with dynamite. They then attributed the crime to the regular Syrian army. "Even though this act has been attributed to regular army forces...the evidence and testimony are irrefutable: It was an operation undertaken by armed groups affiliated with the opposition," Mother Agnès-Mariam wrote.

And the trademark Islamist kill-everyone suicide bombs. Oh, yes! Let's give these Islamist terrorists freedom fighters bigger better weapons!

US HOLDS HIGH-LEVEL TALKS WITH SYRIAN REBELS
SEEKING WEAPONS IN WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON June 15, 2012 (Telegraph)

C.I.A. SAID TO AID IN STEERING
ARMS TO SYRIAN OPPOSITION
WASHINGTON June 21, 2012 (NYT)

Whoa! Whoa! We were kidding.

There are no easy calls in the Arab world, but Team Barry continues to mince American policy into irrelevancy. They were for bombing Libya to protect rebels but have demurred on bombing Syria to protect protesters. They were against arming the Syrian rebels before they were for arming them. They brag on exterminating Al Qaeda, yet admit that Al Qaeda has infiltrated the populist movements (and here) they support. Al Qaeda and Iran and Russia are already on the ground in Syria filling the vacuum of desultory American power and influence.

Team Barry's foreign policy confusion flows from the tippy-top -- Mr. Obama was against democracy in the Arab world before he was for it.

CHOPE.

Smart Power For Dummies By Dummies.

Posted by Damian at June 24, 2012 11:45 PM