American-ness and the Promise of Global Democracy

As gov­ern­ments tran­si­tion and Egypt is fig­ur­ing out what to do in the after­math of a mil­i­tary coup, it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize this is not an event devoid of con­text, but is a prod­uct of a long his­to­ry, one in which we have had no small part.

“Wait a sec­ond”, it might be said,“what’s with call­ing this a ‘coup’? The peo­ple want­ed Mor­si out, and that’s what happened!”

In the lead-up to the ouster of Pres­i­dent Mohamed Mor­si, we saw some of the largest protests in his­to­ry, with mil­lions of peo­ple out on the streets. Peo­ple were angry, either because of being too con­ser­v­a­tive or not con­ser­v­a­tive enough, and he shut key allies out of deci­sions while work­ing to lim­it the rights of com­mu­ni­ties inside Egypt. In terms of val­ues, he’s some­one who should be vehe­ment­ly opposed with, and as evi­denced by the protests before he was deposed, mil­lions of Egyp­tians agreed. (The Huff­in­g­ton Post has a use­ful time­line of the events lead­ing up to Mor­si’s ouster)

But a demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly-elect­ed head of state being removed by mil­i­tary force is an action which should give pause to observers of the situation.

What’s hap­pen­ing in Egypt is a sit­u­a­tion that must bring out the shades of gray, because as par­lia­men­tary elec­tions and con­sti­tu­tion­al ref­er­en­dum were plagued by low-turnout, and the for­mer Pres­i­dent gov­erned with a con­stant neglect of wom­en’s rights and reli­gious minori­ties, there is lit­tle evi­dence that the after­math is much bet­ter, as sup­port­ers of Mor­si are being sub­ject to vio­lent crack­downs and mass killings. This crack­down on dis­sent does not lead to the rule of law and a healthy democ­ra­cy just as much as the dis­re­spect­ing a vote of the people.

Many peo­ple praise the new Egypt, ratio­nal­iz­ing that it will lead to an Egypt that is more pro-Amer­i­can, one that we can work with more and will like us bet­ter. Not only do these thoughts uphold a dou­ble stan­dard, but it removes from dis­cus­sion the role that the Unit­ed States has had in uphold­ing repres­sive regimes in the area, and our own path through history.

The Unit­ed States had a strong role in prop­ping up Hos­ni Mubarak’s repres­sive 30-year regime, through mil­i­tary equip­ment and oth­er tools to advance our inter­ests. While we gave him the tools to fur­ther his rule, Mubarak restrict­ed press free­dom, stran­gled polit­i­cal par­ties, and let police bru­tal­i­ty con­tin­ue with impuni­ty. Repres­sion does not remove beliefs, but rather inten­si­fies them, and when Mubarak was removed, it should not have been sur­pris­ing that many deeply-seat­ed reli­gious views, and anti-Amer­i­can sen­ti­ment from both our han­dling of Mubarak’s exit and our pre­vi­ous actions came to dom­i­nate the polit­i­cal sphere of the country.

We must not for­get how messy democ­ra­cy is, our own includ­ed, and we can­not judge the health of a democ­ra­cy by how much the par­tic­i­pants like the Unit­ed States. We must not think that a mil­i­tary not under the con­trol of elect­ed offi­cials is a good thing, because it’s abil­i­ty to inde­pen­dent­ly use force is unable to be checked by a vote of a peo­ple, but rather its own sat­is­fac­tion and good grace. Final­ly, we must believe in the pow­er of any peo­ple to self-gov­ern, lest we con­tin­ue new con­cepts of impe­ri­al­ism (such as that advanced by David Brooks) which sup­pose that some­how in the Unit­ed States we became equipped to gov­ern our­selves by the wave of a mag­ic wand, rather than a long and tedious process which still dis­en­fran­chis­es peo­ple of col­or, queer folks, indige­nous peo­ple, and the poor.

Right now peo­ple are dying in the Egypt for oppos­ing the cur­rent gov­ern­ment, a gov­ern­ment brought in by force (a change which many in the Unit­ed States have applaud­ed), and unless peo­ple are able to use democ­ra­cy and the rule of law to help shape the direc­tion of their coun­try, it will be hard­er for them to move past the rad­i­cal views engen­dered by decades-long repres­sion and sti­fling of polit­i­cal thought. We can look on at the deci­sions made by Egypt­ian democ­ra­cy and dis­agree with them, but if we inter­fere with those choic­es we are allow­ing for our­selves what we would not give for them; if we do that, then we’re say­ing we real­ly don’t believe in the idea of democ­ra­cy itself.