Thursday, August 24, 2006

Sad for Saad   [Cliff May]

I have not been among those who see fostering freedom and democracy in the Middle East as a mission improbable, akin to trying to establish orange groves in Siberia. But I must concede this: Those making that case received a huge gift yesterday in the form of an op-ed in the Washington Post by Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “an Egyptian democracy activist, professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo, and chairman of the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies.” I know Saad, or at least I’ve met with him and read his writings. I even hosted him at a recent FDD/NED multiple-day conference on democratization.

So to read what Saad wrote was, for me, dispiriting.

He begins by railing against what he calls the “cynical exploitation” of post-9/11 sympathy for the United States by “so-called neoconservatives to advance hegemonic designs.” Bush’s statements about "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq were, he asserts, “dishonest.”

In his view, it is not the Islamists who are hostile to the U.S. and Israel but quite the reverse. He adds: “Now the cold war on Islamists has escalated into a shooting war, first against Hamas in Gaza and then against Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

He goes on, atonishingly, to call Hezbollah a “model actor in Lebanese and Middle Eastern politics.” He has kind words, too, for both Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas. These “groups, parties and movements are not inimical to democracy,” he says, adding: “They have accepted electoral systems and practiced electoral politics, probably too well for Washington's taste.”

This does not sound like the Saad Eddin Ibrahim I have heard and read before. Maybe his views have changed and he is simply calling it the way he now sees it. If so that is distressing. Or maybe he feels the winds blowing from a new direction now and has trimmed his sails to weather the coming storms. That, too, would be an ominous sing.

The entire op-ed is here. 

08/24 04:35 PMShare