THE FATUOUS NONSENSE OF CRITICIZING EGYPT’S MILITARY

Barack Hussein Obama interrupted his presidential vacation briefly last week to deplore the bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  To show his displeasure, he cancelled a joint military exercise scheduled for next month — but said nothing about the $1.3 billion in aid the U.S. gives to Egypt each year.

He should have suspended aid, said Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt, Carl Levin, D-Mich, John McCain, R-Ariz, Ted Cruz, R-Tex, and Rand Paul, R-Ky, and many others. The editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post agree.  So do pundits from left to right.

The president’s statement was "a model of pusillanimity," wrote Amir Taheri in the New York Post.

His policy is: "speak softly and carry no stick," said Foreign Policy magazine columnist James Traub.  Suspending aid "has become a matter of national self-respect," he said.

"Not only has the administration looked weak and unprepared, but it looks unintelligent, too," said New Republic Editor Isaac Chotiner.

Rarely in politics these days has there been so broad a consensus.  But it’s as shallow as it is broad, thinks columnist Charles Krauthammer.  "Anything John McCain and Rand Paul agree on has to be wrong," he said.

Mr. Krauthammer is right. Those who advocate a cutoff in aid indicate they favor the form of democracy over its substance, the prestige of America over protection of our vital interests.  The turmoil throughout the Middle East has been caused in large part by such fatuous nonsense.

Mr. Obama made outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood the centerpiece of his Middle East policy.  This was odd, because the Muslim Brothers (Ikhwan Muslimi), who grew prominent through alliance with Adolf Hitler, have the same goal as al Qaida — a world-wide "caliphate" governed by Islamic law.

Because the Muslim Brothers have been less overtly violent in pursuit of it, Mr. Obama considered them "moderate" Islamists, who would moderate still further if invited to participate in the democratic process.  He was by no means alone in assuming this.

"Most of our political and policy class is deeply steeped in these beguiling fantasies about how the world works," said Bard College Prof. Walter Russell Mead.

But like their Nazi mentors, the Ikhwan believe in one man, one vote, one time.

"President Morsi and his now-deposed Muslim Brotherhood government weren’t practicing democracy," said Leslie Gelb, a former president of the Council on Foreign Relations.  "They were co-opting the laws and slowly destroying all possible opposition."

The price of hubris has been high.

"Even in the Middle East, it is hard to get yourself hated all at once by Islamists, the military, the Arab Street, Christian minorities, and secular reformists," said the historian Victor Davis Hanson. "In Egypt, the Obama administration has somehow managed all that and more."

The collapse of his Mideast policy into "an ugly and incoherent mess" has given the president a "rude awakening," Prof. Mead said.

Better late than never.  But many who shared the president’s illusions slumber on.

Many politicians and journalists are "appalled by complexities," so they "wear blinders" to Middle East realities, said Mr. Gelb.

The reality is the bloody struggle in Egypt will get bloodier, and at the end of it either the military or the Muslim Brotherhood will rule.  An Ikhwan victory would be catastrophic for Egypt and for the U.S.

Journalists report on the bloodshed, but neglect "Morsi’s strangling of opposition rights," Mr. Gelb said.  "Elections, whatever the realities, are great. Coups, whatever the realities, are bad. End of story."

When the military shoots "civilians" (the 9/11 hijackers were civilians, too) it’s big news.  When the Ikhwan murder policemen, assassinate generals, burn Christian churches, not so much.

"It would be nice to live in a world in which we could conduct a foreign policy that aims at the realization of our dreams," wrote Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal.  "A better foreign policy would be conducted to keep our nightmares at bay."

Those who wag their fingers at Egypt’s military should ask themselves if it is worse for the military to overthrow a democratically elected government that is undemocratic, or for a democratically elected government to destroy democracy, Mr. Gelb said.

The worst thing we could do would be to cut off military assistance, "thereby humiliating the Egyptian government and driving the relationship into crisis," he said.

Then the finger waggers should ask themselves what the U.S. response should be if aid is withdrawn, and Egypt retaliates by forming an alliance with Russia.  More finger wagging?

Moral posturing is a lot easier than asking the hard questions, much less finding answers for them.  But the consequences are frightful.

"Barack Obama promised that if he were elected president he would ‘remake’ the world," said Peter Wehner of Commentary magazine. "He has; and America is paying a terrible price for it."

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.