Democracy with an American Flavor

The Arab states’s quotas of political misery vary, but they are equal in their submission to the influences and pressures imposed by a United States that sees itself as protective of freedoms, human rights and the range of respect for the principles of democracy in the Arab world.

One result of those influences and pressures was that as soon as the last U.S. soldier withdrew from Iraq, the Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki rushed into expelling his Deputy Tareq al-Hashemi on charges of terrorism, the same charge that the Americans used against their opponents to get rid of them. No sooner had the last U.S. soldier withdrawn after Al-Maliki had held the reins of power and won the support of U.S. President Obama than the explosions and car bombs returned to Baghdad, marking the collapse of the Iraqi coalition between the communities and political blocs.

Most probably this is the democracy that — as Obama announced — the occupation left behind in a stable country after nine years, starting off thereafter the day of reckoning among the political powers at the hands of Al-Maliki.

We, in Egypt, don’t want this kind of democracy that is under U.S. auspices, often operating according to an external vision. That is why a great concern arises in Egypt whenever Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intervenes or instructs her spokeswoman to express her opinion on the internal situation in Egypt. It has been noted that the U.S. State Department has kept on a regular — almost daily — basis commenting on and criticizing the revolution and the military council with regard to its stance toward the sitters-in or the demonstrators alike or toward the security forces and their excessive use of force, as they say. And that was what prompted the Egyptian Foreign Minister to answer the U.S. State Department, confirming that Egypt would not accept interference in its affairs from any country whatsoever.

The issue here is not in the statements of conviction or support issued by senior officials in the United States, demanding Egyptians to show restraint, but in the attempt to interfere with and steer the events in the Egyptian street and to push the military council in contradictory directions, which would not serve the country’s interest and stability. And the U.S. press plays an important role in the incitement and excitement.

The statements made by the Egyptian minister of justice, by Mohamed Mahmoud and Sheikh Rihan, about the events that took place in Tahrir, have come to confirm several fears. The investigations that have been conducted showed the involvement of persons in providing large sums of money and gasoline containers and empty bottles to groups of boys and youths to carry out acts of sabotage inside vital institutions and establishments. The minister of justice has confirmed that the foreign funding portfolio is currently investigating the legality of receiving tens of millions of dollars from abroad from more than 200 human rights organizations.

And the picture has been completed by what was confirmed by sovereign security services tasked with monitoring movements and contacts made by foreign elements to implement a plot to overthrow the state on the first anniversary of the Jan. 25 revolution through the rise of another revolution aimed at getting into clashes with elements of the armed forces, preparing for arson and causing chaos.

And, according to what the security sources say, there is a third party seeking to get characters and elements at home to implement this scenario, after which foreign parties will take charge of the execution of the rest of the scheme in such a way that will lead to the intervention and imposition of custodianship over Egypt.

These concerns have been rumored in messages calling for caution and prudence posted on the military council’s page on the social networking site Facebook.

These concerns could be justified or not, but the suspicions raised by the extremely insistent U.S. pursuits, which are considered to be an interference in the affairs of Egypt, in addition to the abuse of U.S. aid by funding human rights organizations without the knowledge of the government, calls to memory the plots and conspiracies that were committed in Iraq by U.S. occupation forces, resulting in what Iraq has ended up with now: a country torn apart by sharp sectarian divisions — which overthrew the state and set it up for grabs by both Iran and America — in order to completely drive it out of the Arab world!