Cerise and I were enjoying one of the favorite pleasures of Washingtonians this time of year – a bike ride down the shady, cool and scenic Chesapeake and Ohio Canal tow path – when Lydia Laureli Llewellyn-Lipschitz, former Henry Kissinger professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University, and currently Deputy Assistant Undersecretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, rode up. Since she and Cerise are old schoolmates, there was no polite way to refuse her request to join us. I knew what was coming, and after a few minutes of pedaling and girl talk with Cerise, it promptly arrived like a diplomatic pouch from a foreign capital filled with NSA dossiers on unsuspecting American tourists.
“Tom,” Lydia inveigled, “you know the State Department has utmost respect for you opinions. What’s your take on the situation in Egypt?”
“Is there some reason,” I bluntly asked, “why you couldn’t just make an appointment to discuss that on Monday?”
“Well,” she offered, “I checked, and you’re booked solid on Monday; and besides, things in Egypt are moving so fast, Monday may be too late.”
“And,” I added, “if you visit my office, there will be a record that you were there, plus a bill that will stretch your already beleaguered, sequester-tortured discretionary budget.”
“Ah, well, yes,” she admitted, “that, too.”
“Okay,” I sighed, “this one’s on the house, then. What’s your problem statement?”
“The United States of America,” she said, “simply doesn’t know what to think about the Egyptian government. Here we have the Morsi government, which was installed by a legitimate election with proper oversight by international observers. Not only that, but Morsi’s party also won subsequent popular votes for a constitution and a parliamentary majority.”
“In other words,” Cerise observed, “a textbook example of democracy in action.”
“Exactly,” Lydia nodded. “But then last November, Morsi granted himself unlimited police powers in order to ‘protect the nation’ from undemocratic influences, and the power to make up laws on his own and enforce them without involving Parliament or the courts. Massive popular protests made him back down after a month, but afterward, his governmental style was reactionary and ham-handed, to say the least. After about six more months of that, twenty million Egyptians signed a recall petition to remove Morsi from office, and starting last week on June 30, there were massive popular protests. Four days ago, the military stepped in, arrested Morsi and his party leaders, declared martial law and appointed an interim government headed by the Defense Minister, the Grand Imam, the Egyptian Coptic Pope and Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei.”
“Mohammed who?” Cerise inquired.
“The former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” I explained. “Winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, revered elder statesman and de facto leader of the Secular Muslim faction of the revolution that overthrew Muhammad Hosni el Sayed Mubarak…”
“Now come they’re both named ‘Mohammed?’” Cerise wondered.
“I don’t know,” Lydia chuckled, “now come so many Hispanics name their kids ‘Jesus?’”
“…the former Egyptian dictator,” I concluded.
“Right,” Lydia picked up, “then, on Thursday, the council appointed Adly Mahmoud Mansour, the head of the Egyptian Supreme Court, temporary president, and today, he appointed ElBaradei Prime Minister. But no sooner did we hear about that over in Foggy Bottom, than another cable came in saying ElBaradei was ‘not confirmed’ by the interim government.”
“Looks like the Egyptian government doesn’t know what to think about the Egyptian government,” Cerise opined.
“No doubt about it,” Lydia confirmed, “things are mighty confused in Cairo right now.”
“And equally,” I remarked, “it seems, in Washington. Despite Morsi’s fanatical Islamic despotism, the Obama administration immediately called for his restoration the moment the military stepped in.”
“We didn’t have any choice,” Lydia objected. “We were the ones who jawboned and hectored for democratic elections. We were the ones who espoused the necessity of the democratic process and extolled the virtues of democracy. And Morsi won the popular election for president, fair and square.”
“And now that the Egyptian military have totally ignored the Obama administrations howls of indignation,” I pointed out, “and are engaged in widespread suppression of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and his so-called ‘Freedom and Justice Party,’ and those self-righteous and benighted yokels are attacking Egyptian troops in public squares and blowing up gas pipelines in the Sinai, the United States is legally required to decide whether or not this circus constitutes a ‘coup’ or not. Talk about painting yourself into a corner!”
“Isn’t the military shutting down TV and radio stations, too?” Cerise wondered. “Seems to me I heard that on the news this morning.”
“They are,” Lydia affirmed. “But only the ones that espouse the Muslim Brotherhood party line.”
“Oh, yeah,” Cerise mused, “sort of like if the Pentagon were to shut down Fox News and all the other Rupert Murdoch operations here.”
“Except, of course,” I noted, “our military would be much more likely to shut down MSNBC, PBS and the New York Times.”
“But fortunately,” Lydia declared rather emphatically, “that can never happen here, because the Egyptian military, as a societal institution, is nothing at all like ours.”
“Absolutely nothing at all like it, I am so sure,” Cerise proclaimed. “But under the circumstances, well, the Egyptian military just did something, didn’t they? And if that something the Egyptian military just did walks like a coup, and flaps like a coup and swims like a coup and quacks like a coup, a lot of people are going to conclude it’s a coup, aren’t they?”
“Unfortunately,” Lydia agreed, “they very well might. As a matter of fact, John McCain already has, and furthermore…”
“Pardon me,” Cerise interrupted, “but who, besides Senator John McCain, cares what Senator John McCain thinks?”
“Nobody, really,” I answered. “But ever since the military threw Morsi out, McCain has been yelling about US foreign aid law, which is very clear on the subject, and about which the Obama administration is more or less obliged to care. If a foreign country’s military overthrows a democratically elected, legitimate government that the US recognizes diplomatically, the law says the we have to cut off its foreign aid. The only way out is a waiver which states that the continuity of government in that foreign country outweighs the violation of democracy there due to reasons of US national security.”
“Correct,” Lydia puffed as I picked up the pace. “And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. For the last week, the administration has been very, very careful not to say the word ‘coup.’ If anybody in the administration says it, the show’s over and McCain wins – we’ll have to cut off billions of dollars in foreign aid to Egypt. We simply can’t do that, Tom – Egypt exists entirely on imported wheat and oil bought with our foreign aid money, and if that stops, the entire society will collapse into anarchy and the only reasonable outcome to expect from such an environment is a Sunni version of Iran. But to prevent such a catastrophe, we will have to write that national security waiver and tell the world we care more about using Egypt as a tool to support Israel than we do about the ideal of democracy.”
“At which point,” Cerise presumed, “the United States loses it credibility as the moral superior to everybody else in the world, not to mention revealing that Israel continues to drag the US around by the nose.”
“A totally intolerable state of affairs, I’m sure you’ll agree,” Lydia huffed as she labored to keep up.
“So it seems that what the Obama administration needs,” I concluded, “is some semantic consultation. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, this all depends on what the definition of the phrase ‘coup d’état’ is, because that’s the kind of ‘coup’ to which the single word refers in diplomatic and political discourse. And according to the dictionary, it means, ‘a quick exercise of force in the public arena, resulting in the violent downfall or modification of an existing government by a small group.’”
“That sounds about right,” Lydia concurred. “So what?”
“Well, then,” I continued, “let’s examine what the Egyptian military actually did. Does it fit that definition or not? Obviously, it was a ‘quick exercise of force,’ but was it in the ‘public arena?’ No, the Egyptian military did not drive tanks into the streets and occupy Cairo. It merely conducted a series of arrests, and arrests are private matters. And while there’s no arguing with the fact that the military’s actions resulted in the ‘downfall or modification of an existing government,’ it’s obvious that those actions were by no means directed by ‘a small group.’ On the contrary, what happened was, lacking a constitutional mechanism to recall the Morsi government, a mass of the Egyptian people engaged in actions which amounted to a call for Morsi’s impeachment. In the absence of a way to dissolve their government in a legal manner, twenty million Egyptians signed a petition for new elections. Twenty million people hardly fits the definition of a ‘small group.’ So, according to the recognized definition of the term, the Egyptian military’s actions were not a ‘coup d’état’ by any stretch of the imagination. What happened in 1956, now, that was a coup. What happened July 3 was simply the military enforcing a national vote of no confidence.”
“Brilliant!” Lydia gasped as she fell irredeemably behind, stopping to dismount in a haze of exhausted sweat, waving affably, if insincerely, goodbye. “Thanks!”
“Tom,” Cerise fretted as we rode along together, alone, “if those twenty million people who signed that petition had voted against Morsi in the first place, would he ever have been elected president of Egypt?”
“No way,” I told her. “Democracy isn’t just about elections, however. It’s about establishing and maintaining institutions that promote freedom.”
“Nevertheless,” she reasoned, “to begin with, anyhow, they must have at least thought he’d be okay.”
“Presumably,” I agreed. “The problem was, Morsi failed to realize that, in order succeed, a democratic government needs to move forward, not stagnate in partisan bickering. It must take into account all the issues, points of view, requirements and goals within its society and, above all, engage in a series of constructive compromises which leads to genuine progress for the people it governs.”
“Oh, right, sure,” Cerise snickered, “like our government does.”
“Keep pedaling,” I advised with a glance over my shoulder, “Lydia’s back on her bike, she’s gaining on us, and it’s still two miles to Georgetown.”