The “Democrats” and the Egyptian Question

A professor of philosophy at the University of São Paulo, Vladimir Safatle, asked an interesting question in his Tuesday column in the Folha de São Paulo about the reason behind U.S. support for the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak: “After all, how can you justify that for 30 years, being harbingers of human rights, we support a despotic regime, with sham elections, murders of political opponents, rigid censorship and plutocracy?”

The same question, however, could be asked to intellectuals on the left, “harbingers of human rights,” who in the last half-century found excuses to support Fidel Castro and his “despotic regime, with sham elections, murders of political opponents, rigid censorship and plutocracy.”

Of course, one could argue that Fidel Castro stands for the “humanist” cause of the “liberation of oppressed peoples” and that occasional crimes committed by his government are the unfortunate side effect that arises when it’s necessary to contain “reactionary forces.” At the same time, defending dictators like Mubarak means, in the words of Safatle, the defense of “economic and geostrategic interests by the governments that have always viewed that region of the world as their protectorate.”

One can, however, reverse the equation. One could say that defending dictators such as Fidel poorly hides a career of totalitarianism and opportunism, one that uses anti-capitalist and anti-American rhetoric to maintain a hold on power and strategically get rich. At the same time, we could say that defending moderate dictators such as Mubarak means establishing just protection against the emergence of movements that are essentially undemocratic and hostile to the West, as in the case of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose fundamental goal is the construction of an Islamic state and the establishment of a caliphate.

With that in mind, it’s helpful to revisit Barack Obama’s historic speech in Cairo in June 2009, in which the American president outlined what would be a new kind of relationship between the U.S. and Arab-Islamic world, a kind of turnaround in relation to the turbulent Bush era. Many today have reminded Obama of that speech in order to coax him into complying with the pledge that he made: that Washington’s policy toward the Middle East would no longer make political freedom take a backseat to the need to contain fundamental Islamists.

Judging by the American reaction to the crisis in Egypt, Obama did in fact blink: First, he tried to help Mubarak save face — who Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had described [along with Mubarak’s wife] as “friends of my family” — holding back by only asking for “order” from the demonstrators and government. Later, when it became evident which side the force of history was on, the president moved to recommend a political transition in Egypt, although subtly, not saying whether this transition would happen with or without Mubarak in power.

Obama’s widely quoted speech in Cairo, however, contains another passage crucial to understand the dilemmas of this moment and what has been conveniently forgotten. Obama said:

“There are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: You must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.”