Christopher Hitchens On Egypt -- He's Not Happy -- And a Warning from Bernard Lewis
In “What I Don’t See at the Revolution,” his column in the current issue of Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens writes about the upheaval in Egypt. An autocrat, peacefully overthrown by a genuinely popular movement? Wouldn’t you expect Hitch of all people to be elated? He’s not.
Neither in exile nor in the country itself is there anybody who even faintly resembles a genuine opposition leader. With the partial exception of the obsessively cited Muslim Brotherhood, the vestigial political parties are emaciated hulks. The strongest single force in the state and the society—the army—is a bloated institution heavily invested in the status quo. As was once said of Prussia, Egypt is not a country that has an army, but an army that has a country. More depressing still, even if there existed a competent alternative government, it is near impossible to imagine what its program might be. The population of Egypt contains millions of poorly educated graduates who cannot find useful employment, and tens of millions of laborers and peasants whose life is a subsistence one. I shall never forget, on my first visit to Cairo, seeing “the City of the Dead”: that large population of the homeless and indigent which lives among the graves in one of the city’s sprawling cemeteries. For centuries, Egypt’s rulers have been able to depend on the sheer crushing weight of torpor and inertia to maintain “stability.”
All this bears very directly on a conversation we’ve been having here at Ricochet in recent weeks: namely, what policy toward Egypt should the United States pursue? I myself am becoming increasingly queasy at the thought that we’re telling the Egyptian military to go right ahead and hold national elections in September, right on schedule. As Bernard Lewis has said, quick elections would give an enormous advantage to the only organized political force in the country, the Islamists. And Egypt in the control of radical Islamists would prove—Lewis’s word—a “catastrophe.”
My fervent hope? That there are people at the State Department doing just what Lewis has suggested: Reading up on the way North Africa was governed before the autocracies of the twentieth century emerged. In the nineteenth century and earlier, Egypt (and other nations) possessed more or less tolerant rulers who operated in close contact with various consultative bodies. It wasn’t democracy per se, but it worked—and it was, on balance, humane. Bernard Lewis, in a recent interview:
If you look at the history of the Middle East in the Islamic period, and if you look at their own political literature, it is totally against authoritarian or absolutist rule. The word they always insist on is consultation. This is not just a matter of theory. There’s a remarkable passage, for example, in the report of a French ambassador to the sultan of Turkey a few years before the French Revolution.
The French ambassador was instructed by his government to press the Turkish government in certain negotiations and was making very slow progress. Paris said angrily, “Why don’t you do something?”
The ambassador replied that “you must understand that here things are not as they are in France, where the king is sole master and does as he pleases. Here, the sultan has to consult with the holders of high office. He has to consult with the retired former holders of high office. He has to consult with the merchants, the craft guilds and all sorts of other groups.”
This is absolutely true. It’s an extraordinarily revealing and informative passage and the point comes up again and again through the 19th and 20th centuries.
You have this traditional system of consultation with groups which are not democratic as we use that word in the Western world, but which have a source of authority other than the state…whether it be the landed gentry or the civil service, or the scribes or whatever. That’s very important. And that form of consultation could be a much better basis for the development of free and civilized government.
Consultative government. Secretary Clinton, do you suppose we could uge the Egyptians to start there? Please?
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Comments :
Feb '11
Re: Christopher Hitchens On Egypt -- He's Not Happy -- And a Warning from Bernard Lewis
Consultative government? Sounds too pragmatic for Obama. He's an academic and an ideologue (but I repeat myself...). Remember when he said he would prefer to raise the capital gains tax rate even though that has always led to less tax revenue being collected, because of "fairness?" He seems to prefer pursuing paths that enable him to tell himself that he is doing the ideologically pure thing, even if the consequences are messy.
On the other hand, I have to admit that he is capable of finally doing the right thing, as evidenced by his recent decisions (through gritted teeth, no doubt) on military tribunals and indefinite detention at Guantanamo. Only took him two years to figure it out. So who knows, maybe he'll eventually figure out the right policy for Egypt, though with any luck, we'll have a new president to make that decision before two more years have passed.
Aug '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens On Egypt -- He's Not Happy -- And a Warning from Bernard Lewis
Consultative government ?
Is that a facebook or twitter mode ? Or video conferencing ?
The sheesha and long lunch , the loya jirga , the ponderous tattoo of statemanship, all these memories are also lost on the Egyptians. Their commonality is poverty and the oppression of that and their rulers. Doubtful that any applied cures would take either.
Not alot of grand strategy chess players left on the bench.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens On Egypt -- He's Not Happy -- And a Warning from Bernard Lewis
A problem even with the consultative model is that the Brotherhood, quite purposely, has sold itself for decades to the educated class--the very ones who might be consulted. Doctors especially are disproportionately members. (can't remember where I read this unfortunately--probably a recent NR, TWS, or Commentary)
Also, the fact that there is no developed, sophisticated opposition is, in part, due to the Obama Administration's turning a blind eye toward Mubarak's suppression of same, in order to keep him on board with our silly efforts at an Israeli/Palestinian settlement. Oy.
I've no idea what can or should be done, frankly. My only hope comes from Reuel Marc Gerecht, a very smart guy who is more optimistic than most.
Oct '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens On Egypt -- He's Not Happy -- And a Warning from Bernard Lewis
Sadly, the Muslim Brotherhood is being presented with a vacuum to fill. We can pray that Obama's influence in the world is so weakened that he is inconsequential to the process. At least then there might be a fortuitous accident of political outcomes.
May '10
Re: Christopher Hitchens On Egypt -- He's Not Happy -- And a Warning from Bernard Lewis
Peter this post reminds me about Vietnam. Bruce Thornton said on the past episode of UK that Vietnam was won in 1972, and all we need to do was keep air power. Hitchens told us that the war was lost in 1954 (if not '45). I'm looking forward to the chapter on Vietnam in your book. If you can ever get Christopher on the podcast then please ask him about Thornton's position.