America’s Losing Wars

All of Egypt is in an uproar over the permission granted to non-governmental and unregistered organizations to work in Egypt. They are facing prosecution to force them to leave the country, a decision which has caused disagreement between the judges and lawyers themselves; between the governments and the Popular and Advisory Councils; and also between the citizens and all of the above. The Military Council, which tried to distance itself from the problem, is with them, but the Egyptian appellate judges are asking for the orginal mandate of the president to be repealed in favor of Justice Abd al-Mu’izz Ibrahim’s ruling.

We all know this even though the Israeli lobby and the other American Likudites and neoconservatives cannot say that all of Egypt is against American policy in the Middle East. Instead they attack Mrs. Faiza Abu al-Naja, the Egyptian Minister of Planning and International Aid, as if she had created a problem out of nothing.

Egypt is a bureaucratic country. It was practically independent and then independent for two hundred odd years after Napoleon fled under cover of darkness in 1799. Simply stated, the problem is that there are 10 civil organizations, among them five American ones, that worked without authorization and were subjected to legal investigation. The American administration “justifies” itself by announcing that it funded these illegal organizations.

As for the feelings of the Egyptians, they are in all the country’s media. I will choose Al-Ahram, which says that the foreign funding “aimed at sowing sectarian and racial discord.” In view of the fact that our sister Faiza Abu al-Naja was subjected to a campaign a month ago, the details of which I explained in this column, and in view of the criticism of David Kramer, executive director of Freedom House (the subject of my article yesterday), I am still with al-Ahram. It quotes the official in charge of the investigation into the issue as saying that, in brief, “its goal was to spread a lack of trust between circles of citizens and to incite against the country and all its institutions….”

This is only a grain of sand in the ocean, and the Egyptian media is open to anyone.

There is enough material for a book, although there is only room in a daily column for a few paragraphs. I will say that in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the CIA set up mock foundations to fight communism, while Congress under Ronald Reagan founded the National Democratic Front. Among the American organizations charged in Egypt that receive American financial support from government grants are the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House and the Center for International (American) Media Assistance.

I will pass over the foundations for both parties, Republican and Democratic, and the Center for the Media, and will be content with Freedom House and its director’s response to the Egyptian minister.

In the last few years, Freedom House has become a refuge for neoconservatives, the Israeli lobby and its mafia. As for its orientation, it suffices to know that the Board of Trustees included Thomas Dine, who joined it after working as Executive Director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), in other words the Israeli lobby. I also found Kenneth Adelman, who claimed in 2002 that the war in Iraq would be a walk in the park and who said a month after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that the ease of deposing Saddam Hussein proved him right. Then he apologized and withdrew his statement near the end of 2006, after terrorism and the opposition had destroyed the dreams of the Israeli mafia.

Even though I don’t know much about David Kramer, the current executive director of Freedom House, I did read that he was a major participant in the “New American Century” project, which was founded in 1997 by the most despicable anti-Arab and anti-Muslim elements of Israel and which was headed up by William Kristol, the godfather of the mafia after his father Irving. This project requested a war on Iraq in a letter to Bill Clinton dated 26 Jan. 1998 and attacked him when he didn’t do it. Then it called for war on Iraq in another letter to George W. Bush dated September 20, 2001, after the famous terrorist attack, as well as the targeting of Hezbollah.

I didn’t see David Kramer’s name in the list of signatories to either letter, so maybe he was not a leader in the project. But I will say to him what the Americans say: Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.

The neoconservatives, the Israeli lobby and the other extremists played a role in America’s losing wars, in which millions of Arabs and Muslims were killed. The killing still continues, and Israel, which they defend, is a terrorist, the fascist occupier of Palestinian land. It is not democratic, as Freedom House claims in its annual reports.