Egypt and that feeling of Déjà Vu
As we watch the repressive regime of Hosni Mubarak crumble in Egypt, those of us who are old enough to remember the Iranian Revolution have an eerie feeling of déjà vu. As the Shah’s regime in Iran crumbled in the late 1970s, another progressive, idealistic president, Jimmy Carter, welcomed the change as a way to give Iran’s people freedom and a voice in their future. After all, the Shah, demonized by the western media, was a repressive dictator. His secret police killed many. But that’s only half the story. He was indisputably secular, had modernized Iran, and was unabashedly a friend of the West. But no matter, Carter welcomed a “man of peace,” the Ayatolah Komeini, and the rest, as they say, is history. Instead of freedom, Iran got a repressive, theocratic dictatorship that persists to this day, an economy that has been crippled for over 30 years, and a state that actively supports Islamist terror worldwide. Nice job, Jimmy. Your legacy persists …
Today, the Obama administration pooh-poohs the threat of an Islamist takeover of Egypt directed by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has “renounced violence,” state the Obama administration’s spokesman and their defenders in the media. Nothing to worry about there.
Really?
Andrew McCarthy provides an indepth discussion of the history and current status of the Muslim Brotherhood, the indisputable progenitor of al Qaida. He states:
“One might wonder how an organization can be thought to have renounced violence when it has inspired more jihadists than any other, and when its Palestinian branch, the Islamic Resistance Movement, is probably more familiar to you by the name Hamas — a terrorist organization committed by charter to the violent destruction of Israel. Indeed, in recent years, the Brotherhood (a.k.a., the Ikhwan) has enthusiastically praised jihad and even applauded — albeit in more muted tones — Osama bin Laden…”