The Muslim Brotherhood is in the news a lot these days, thanks to the upheaval in Egypt. Glenn Beck — living proof that pregnant women shouldn’t do LSD — apparently sees the Twitter Revolution as a choreographed performance behind which the Brotherhood will dance its way to power, and as a first step toward bringing everything everything from London to Jakarta under a revived Caliphate. The equally goofy Frank Gaffney elevates the Brotherhood and “Sharia Law” into objects of paranoia comparable to International Communism for the Birchers.
So guess which country has courted the Muslim Brotherhood since at least the 1950s? That’s right. The U.S. government, since Eisenhower’s administration, has promoted the Brotherhood as a conservative counterbalance to secular radicals like Nasser.
In 1953, writes Ian Johnson (“Washington’s Secret History With the Muslim Brotherhood,” New York Review of Books, Feb. 5), Ike invited around thirty Islamic scholars and civic leaders to Washington to impress them with America’s status as the premier defender of religious and spiritual values against Godless Communism. Among them was Said Ramadan, representative of the Brotherhood and son-in-law of its founder.
By the late ’50s the U.S. overtly backed Ramadan, boosting the Brotherhood as an alternative to radical Arab nationalism on the pattern of the Free Officers’ Movement and Baathism.
Why am I not surprised?
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of something like this. I recall reading a few years ago that Israel had secretly funded Hamas as a counterbalance to secular radicals — in this case Arafat and Al-Fatah. It’s an open secret in the American intelligence community that Israel funneled financial support to Hamas, starting in the late ’70s. A religious competitor, the Mossad hoped, would undermine and weaken the PLO. The Israelis were subsequently surprised by the scale of Hamas’s involvement in the Intifada.
Come to think of it, didn’t the U.S. support Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan a few decades back against some secular socialists or other? Zbigniew Brzezinski thought it a cunning move, in the great game of chess with the USSR, to draw them into a Vietnam of their own — a shooting war with fundamentalist guerrillas on the border of their own predominantly Muslim southern regions. Interestingly, Al Qaeda was named for one of the bases at which the Mujaheddin trained for war against the Soviets. And Osama Bin Laden, having witnessed the defeat of one superpower, decided there was no reason to stop with just one.
This pattern should be instructive. Governments are like organized crime families, operating as “executive committees” of their domestic ruling classes, enforcing the privileges and artificial property rights by which their members extract rents from the domestic population. These crime families deal with each other, establishing constantly shifting alliances of convenience and redividing the world between themselves, as their relative strengths shift.
Palmerston noted that nations have no permanent allies or enemies — only permanent interests. But there’s no reason the principle should apply only to the recognized governments of nation-states. The truth is a lot older than the Westphalian state system.
So you wouldn’t expect a bunch of jaded characters like the U.S. national security community to be surprised that the Muslim Brotherhood or Al Qaeda didn’t have the decency to stay bought.
I wonder, though, if they really were all that surprised. Each defection of a former ally of convenience creates a new Threat of the Week, a new Moral Equivalent of Hitler, to justify the state’s self-aggrandizement. As Randolph Bourne said, “war is the health of the state.” But war is impossible without enemies.
If the tools of yesterday’s war become enemies in today’s new war, from the state’s perspective that’s a feature rather than a bug. Just look at Dubya. If not for 9-11, he’d probably have been a one-termer. Instead, we had Tom Daschle announcing that there was “no daylight” between Congressional Democrats and the President, and fearless Fourth Estate champion Dan Rather saying “Just tell me where to line up, Mr. President.” The Democrats rubber-stamped USA PATRIOT faster than you could say “Reichstag Enabling Act.”
Brzezhinski said in retrospect, after 9-11, that he still considered his splendid little war in Afghanistan to have been worth it. And I’m sure Dubya agreed. Don’t get me wrong — I’m really not into the 9-11 Truth thing. But if you’d warned the folks at the helm that their cunning little chess move would create blowback in the form of three thousand dead serfs and a whole raft of new powers for themselves, I don’t think they’d have cried themselves to sleep.
If governments didn’t have enemies, they’d have to invent them. And it seems they sometimes have.
Citations to this article:
- Kevin Carson, For the State Blowback is a Feature, Not a Bug, Al Arabiya (United Arab Emirates), 02/12/11
- Kevin Carson, For the State Blowback is a Feature, Not a Bug, Antiwar.com, 02/12/11
- Kevin Carson, For the State Blowback is a Feature, Not a Bug, Daily Star (Lebanon), 02/12/11
Man oh man one day these meglomaniacs will hang themselves.
But nothing wrong with helpin em along.
Bush was a 0 termer, vote fraud installed him twice.
Frank Gaffney, Mr PNAC. What a __________. Can't he get on the Express Train to the Eternal Inferno?
I don't disagree with anything in Kevin's article, but I really just can't get that pumped up on the present popular uprisings in places like Egypt or Tunisia the way a lot of libertarians, from Lew Rockwell over to the left-libertarians, seem to be doing. I'm pretty sure a popular revolution in just about any Middle Eastern nation would produce a state that is far more illiberal and reactionary than the Western puppets or secular dictatorships that exist there at present. A popular revolution in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. would likely be a repeat of the Iranian revolution of 1979 or what has transpired in Iraq since the removal of Saddam Hussein or what happened in Afghanistan following the Soviet exit. As Pat Buchanan has observed:
"But before we do this, we should be on notice what a democratic Egypt, where the government reflects the will of the people, may look like. According to the most recent Pew Research Center poll.
—Twice as many Egyptians identify themselves as Muslim fundamentalists as identify themselves as “modernizers.”
—By 95 to 2, Egyptians believe Islam should play a large role in Egyptian politics.
—While 48 percent of Egyptians say suicide bombings are never justified, 32 percent say “rarely,” 12 percent say “sometimes,” and 8 percent say suicide bombings are “often” justified. Half the people of Egypt believe there are times a suicide bomb is the right answer.
—Half of all Egyptians have a favorable view of Hamas, and one in five has a favorable view of al-Qaida.
—Three in four Egyptians believe cutting off the hand of a thief is proper punishment. Four in five favor stoning adulterers to death. And 84 percent favor executing Muslim converts to Christianity."
The scenario in the Middle East is a perfect illustration of the Schmittian dichotomy between liberalism and democracy. Democracy in the Middle East almost certainly means the death of whatever pittances of liberalism that exist there now. The realization of this throws a wrench in the perspective of those libertarians who try to synthesize libertarianism with egalitarianism. More egalitarianism in the form of democratic majoritarianism or popular rule in the Middle East will mean a net reduction in the amount of liberalism in those societies. The reason for this is that those are pre-Enlightenment societies whose levels of cultural evolution are centuries behind that of the West. To the degree that there is any liberalism at all in those places, it is largely due to the influence of their secularized, Westernized elites.
As an opponent of the US empire, I'm fine with its client states being overthrown, but I don't expect any kind of libertarian or even contemporary Western liberal results to come out of the morass.
I don't disagree with anything in Kevin's article, but I really just can't get that pumped up on the present popular uprisings in places like Egypt or Tunisia the way a lot of libertarians, from Lew Rockwell over to the left-libertarians, seem to be doing. I'm pretty sure a popular revolution in just about any Middle Eastern nation would produce a state that is far more illiberal and reactionary than the Western puppets or secular dictatorships that exist there at present. A popular revolution in Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. would likely be a repeat of the Iranian revolution of 1979 or what has transpired in Iraq since the removal of Saddam Hussein or what happened in Afghanistan following the Soviet exit. As Pat Buchanan has observed:
Problem is, those secularists were either A) nationalists that we could not be rid of fast enough, or B) pro-Western collaborators who tarnished any idea of secularism, the Shah being a classic example, replacing the secular nationalist Muhammed Mosaddeq in a US-backed coup d'etat. The face of secularism for Egypt is currently Mubarek-hence the popularity of Islamism. Back when Gamel Abdel Nasser was in power (though no democrat himself) secularism was far more popular. Today we have women, for instance, embracing the hijab and even niqab voluntarily whose mothers or grandmothers would not have been caught dead in one. As Kevin points out, we also backed these self-same fundamentalists against securalists who opposed the US. Our imperialism destroyed the securalist winds of change, or at least damaged it heavily.
I agree with this in part. Noam Chomsky pointed out decades ago that one of the effects of US imperialism is to destroy any opposition forces in client states that have progressive and enlightened values, thereby insuring that only the harshest and most retrograde element will survive and become dominant in the event of regime collapse. The most awful example of this was US destablization of Cambodia to the degree that the Khmer Rouge, which had previously been a very marginal group, was able to seize power.
But it's also true that in every country with a majority Muslim population where democracy has been introduced the result has been to establish a reactionary theocratic state. It happened in Iran, Algeria, Iraq, Palestine. The only partial exceptions are Turkey and Lebanon, which are the most Westernized of the Muslim nations.
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>By 95 to 2, Egyptians believe Islam should play a large role in Egyptian politics.
Crikey, that's like only two ninety-sevenths less theocratic than the crowd at CPAC..
While I am no fan of either Christianity generally or CPAC specifically, a bit of context is important. It is doubtful that three quarters of American Christians favor capital punishment for apostasy or adultery, or punishing thieves by dismemberment, or honor killings for young girls who have the audacity to be seen in public without a male chaperone. Even the most conservative Christians in the West are generally quite liberal by historical or contemporary world standards. The Islamic world today is a mirror image of what the Christian world was like before the Enlightenment. Islam has never undergone an Enlightenment, and doesn't seem to be planning on having one any time soon. Christianity in the contemporary West is a pale, watered-down imitation of what it was in the 1500 years between its conquest of Rome and the revival of pagan intellectual culture in the 18th century.
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Just a small point, you say that "the U.S. overtly backed Ramadan, boosting the Brotherhood as an alternative to radical Arab nationalism on the pattern of the Free Officers’ Movement and Baathism.". From this people might get the (false) impression that the US didn't back Baarthism. Please make a note to clarify this.
I'd like to point out that the thrust of US foreign policy in the Middle East is driven and wholly supported by a certain dispensationalist crowd. If you know anything about Christian eschatology, dispensation says that the modern Israeli state is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and must be protected at all costs by America. Further, there must be perpetual warfare in the mideast, because the Bible says there will be "wars and rumors of wars" right up until Christ's return. However, that return is only the first one. In his first return, he will rapture the Church (all the world's christians). Immediately afterwards, two-thirds of Jews will be annihilated in a "tribulation" period. Having been around many of these "rapture ready" folks, I can tell you that it is the dominant theme every Sunday morning. This is why Muslims are viewed with contempt and suspicion and everything the Israeli State does is considered to be unquestionable. Any calls for cutting foreign aid to Israel (nevermind anyone else) or somehow changing US foreign policy in that region is met with howls of anti-semitism, even among the so-called Tea Partiers. This crowd dominates both parties.
So while the muslim fundamentalists support draconian measures, they don't have the world's most powerful military backing them. US-based "rapture ready" fundamentalists hold huge sway over US foreign policy and they use it to further their ends.
That's just a brief overview of those views. My point is that while there is genuine concern about a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt, let us also look at the dominating Christian view here in the US that contributes to so many unnecessary deaths in that area of the world.
I'm not so knowledgeable about the region, outside of Israel/Palestine, but I have to quibble with some of your examples.
First, Palestine never really got democracy – it got to vote on which party got to conduct limited governmental functions in an overall framework of occupation. After initially voting in the truly horrible Fatah, which was corrupt, ineffective at delivering services, and made no progress towards liberation of the country, Palestinian voters let Hamas have a go. Fatah then took up arms against the government, not as a liberation movement but as an authoritarian movement trying to recapture power, and in the West Bank, succeeding in doing so. It's true that Hamas is involved in reactionary suppression of secularism, but it's hard to put down Palestinian support for Hamas to their love of reactionary religious government, particularly when no credible liberal alternative exists.
Second – Iraq? When did they create a theocratic state?
And Iran – was there really a democracy that led to the creation of a theocratic state? In my understanding, the clerics created a theocratic state, and elections came later. Maybe you can fault Iranians for not reforming the system quickly enough, but that's quite a different point.
I believe there are many examples of Muslim countries where democracy did not lead to theocracy. Indonesia and Bangladesh come to mind.
It is not about Israel, Islam, Muslims, Jews, Christians, anymore! It is about the rapid collapse of the last and greatest Caucasian empire, the U.S.A. as their dollar fades in value and is replaced in world trade by the Yuan, as the final shipments from a pumped out Saudi Arabia"s oil, America's life-blood, are shipped, as U.S. manufacturing is replaced world-wide by Asian products, as China adopts a Solar, Wind, Wave, Hydro, Tidal, Geothermal, Nuclear, electricity based economy over and oil based one, as America so mistakenly has.
The rising Asian Empire is so rich and affluent, it will soon be able to reject the American dollar as a unit of trade, and in fact trades openly with Russia for petroleum resources in Yuan today, outside the formerly viciously manipulated U.S.Dollar! To think! Saddam Husein lost his country and his head for the same simple act!
Little, insignificant, resource poor, politically unstable, Israel, still kicking up a political storm after all these years, rates back page stories in light of the astounding Asian take-over of the economics of the mighty U.S.A. and China's absolute win against the U.S.A. on the economic battlefield of the world!
Americans have rarely ever paid higher in their currency for a barrel of oil as they do now! In the coming decade, they will see the buying power of their dollar fall, they will see competition from the Yuan drive world resource prices ever upward, they will see food prices escalate in a starving over-populated world – even to the point where food is scarce for some Americans. These, financially strapped, paper-money holders, watching their own good fortune fade as their fiat money loses grace in this world, will have less patience with Israel and its stranger antics. As Americans struggle themselves for survival against the monumental Asian forces in the world today, they may be forced to forsake a resource-less Israel altogether!
I am 100% supportive of Palestinian independence, but an independent Palestine would not be a Western-style liberal democracy. The question is why is the Palestinian resistance being led by conservative Muslims like Hamas in the first place? It's because that's what Palestinian culture at its present stage of evolution would produce. Even a secular Palestinian regime would be highly illiberal by Western standards.
Iraq is not a formal theocracy like Saudi Arabia, but since the demise of Ba'athism in that country both Islamists and Shiah fundamentalists have gained significant influence, and repression against religious minorities, homosexuals, women, etc. has escalated.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-11-12-ira…
The popular revolution that swept away the regime of the Shah in Iran had the effect of installing the clerics. Again, that's because the cultural norms of Iran all but guaranteed such an outcome. I've written about some of these issues elsewhere: http://attackthesystem.com/2009/12/18/the-%E2%80%… http://attackthesystem.com/in-defense-of-islamic-…
Indonesia and Bangladesh are not formal theocracies, either. But they are rather illiberal states when compared with those of the West. Indonesia, for instance, imposes capital punishment on petty drug sellers (as does Saudi Arabia).
My point is that Western liberalism is not a manifestation of some kind of "universal rights" as its proponents like to claim, but rather it is a product of the evolved traditions and customs of a particular civilization at a particular juncture in history. It is the product of a specific place and time. Its ability to be transferred to cultures and civilizations lacking the necessary prerequisites concerning cultural foundations and level of social evolution is rather doubtful.
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