The big
question on the minds of Egyptians right now,
notes Amir Taheri, is who’ll die first: Mubarak or the
revolution? In other words, who’ll prevail: The military
establishment or democracy? It sure as hell won’t be the latter, if
America keeps sending aid to the former.

Many conservatives who were gung ho about George Bush’s Freedom
Agenda of spreading democracy, by the gun if necessary, in the Arab
world are getting cold feet when it comes to democracy in Egypt
because it isn’t producing results they had hoped for. The
parliamentary elections last year handed major victories to the
Muslim Brotherhood and the presidential elections last week seemed
to be trending in the direction of Brotherhood candidate, Mohamad
Morsi, all of which is giving some members of the neocon
establishment heart burn.

To be sure, an Islamist group controlling all branches of
government is not a happy prospect. Its something that Egyptians
themselves are deeply worried about, as I noted
here. But, unfortunately, decades of political repression has
thwarted Egypt’s democratic infrastructure, leaving only the
military and the Brotherhood with the organizational capability to
contest elections that the more liberal groups simply can’t match
yet. Worry about the Brotherhood, however, is one thing and alarm
is another.

The Brotherhood hasn’t governed for a single, full day yet given
that the military dissolved the parliament at the prospect of a
Morsi presidential victory. But that didn’t stop The Weekly
Standard’s Fred Barnes from waxing nostalgic over the halcyon
days of the Mubarak regime and the mortal danger that the
Brotherhood poses to Egypt’s minorities. Here’s what he
said on Fox News a couple of days ago:

“[S]ome people, including me, will look back and compare it [the
military] to the Muslim Brotherhood who are taking over, Mubarak
looks not as bad as we thought, and particularly, if you are a
Christian. You know, the 10 million Christians in Egypt, are they
going to be protected, or are they going to be persecuted.  I
think they’re going to be persecuted. And Mubarak at least
protected them. 

Never mind that the Brotherhood in its public statements has

stressed its commitment to pluralism and protection of
individual rights. It certainly pledges allegiance to sharia – as
all candidates, secular and non-secular do – and wants to segregate
the sexes. But whether it intends to impose Saudi Arabia or
Iran-style restrictions on women is far from clear given that its
platform has shifted from favoring an “Islamic state” to a “civil,
democratic state with an Islamic reference.” 

The demonization of the Brotherhood might turn out to be
completely justified – although there is some reason to hope that
Islamists who come to power through quasi-fair elections (a la
Turkey) would behave palpably differently from those who do so
through a coup or a revolution (a la Iran). That’s because they
have to worry about getting reelected – and widespread and bloody
repression is not exactly conducive to that. Perhaps the
Brotherhood intends to follow the time-honored Arab custom of “one
man, one vote, one time” once it has consolidated its hold on power
and Egypt’s machinery of repression, precisely the prospect that
the Egyptian military and its Western apologists such as Barnes are
raising. But how is that any worse than the military overturning
even the first election?

 At any rate, between the military and the Brotherhood, the
military has less incentive to reform. Why? Because that would mean
giving up its chokehold on the economy – its lifeblood and the
source of its power. It needs political control to maintain
economic control and it needs economic control to keep its perks
and privileges intact.

The military controls vast swaths of the Egyptian economy – how
much is anybody’s guess. Estimates range from 15 to 40 percent.
Khaled Fahmy, head of history at the American University in Cairo,

told Al Jazeera that the military’s holdings are a “grey” area,
a giant secret. “We know very little of them, they are not subject
to any Parliamentary scrutiny, the Egyptian government auditing
office has no control or knowledge of them.” What’s more, notes Al
Jazeera:

The military has, over decades, created an industrial complex
that is well oiled and well funded. In over 35 factories and
companies it produces everything from flat-screen televisions and
pasta to refrigerators and cars.

It owns restaurants and football grounds. Much of the workforce
are conscripts paid below the average wage. And it is not just
manufactured goods: the military provide services, managing petrol
stations for example.

The influence extends far beyond Cairo across Egypt. They are
huge landowners in the country.

It is no coincidence that Ahmed Shafiq, the military’s
presidential candidate challenging Morsi, despite the dismal state
of Egypt’s economy, ran not on a platform of economic reform but
restoring law and order, which, admittedly, is going from bad to
worse. (In one particularly ugly recent
episode, a mob in Tahrir Square sexually molested women
protesting sexual harassment and demanding a new, post-Mubarak
Egypt.)

By contrast, the Brotherhood, whom the military has always kept
on a short leash, has few economic privileges to worry about.
Hence, not only did it put Egypt’s economic – not its religious or
security — health, front and center in its campaign. It’s platform
also touts a surprisingly free market agenda which involves not
only divesting government (read military) assets but also free
trade with America. Notes
Shadi Hamid of Brookings Institute:

The Brotherhood’s economic vision is unabashedly free-market
oriented, which has left it open to an additional barrage of
attacks from liberals and leftists. In its economic program, the
FJP [Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood’s political arm]
states its support for an “Egyptian economy built on the principle
of economic freedom.” “Economic freedom,” it goes on, “is the
guarantor of economic creativity, progress, and development, with
the state playing a strong monitoring role in ensuring competition
and preventing monopolies.” In another section, the FJP affirms
that “the private sector has a fundamental role to play in Egyptian
economic life,” and that “values and morals should not be separated
from economic development, as they are two sides of the same
coin.”

 The long and short of all this is that Egypt’s story can’t
be reduced to a Manichean struggle between the good guys and the
bad guys. Heck, contrary to the assertions of Fred Barnes and his
fellow neocons, it is not even possible to tell the lesser from the
bigger evil.

The proper course for America in the face of such endemic
uncertainty is to let events take their course in Egypt. That would
require ending the $1.4 billion in annual arms and fighter jet
shipments that the U.S. dispatches to Egypt. Such aid not only
intensifies the fight for the spoils, it also boosts the machinery
of repression at the military’s disposal, giving it an artificial
advantage.

Military aid to Egypt was meant originally to offset U.S.
military aid to Israel and maintain a regional arms balance. But
even that dubious rationale is no longer operative. As Steven Lee
Myer reported in The New York Times in March, the big
reason this administration decided to keep aid flowing to Egypt’s
military, despite the military’s obvious contempt for democracy,
was to avoid arms manufacturing-related job losses in the U.S.

Wrote Myer:

A delay or a cut in $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt risked
breaking existing contracts with American arms manufacturers that
could have shut down production lines in the middle of President
Obama’s re-election campaign and involved significant financial
penalties, according to officials involved in the debate.

Since the Pentagon buys weapons for foreign armed forces like
Egypt’s, the cost of those penalties — which one senior official
said could have reached $2 billion if all sales had been halted —
would have been borne by the American taxpayer, not Egypt’s ruling
generals.

The companies involved include Lockheed
Martin, which is scheduled to ship the first of a batch of 20
new F-16 fighter jets next month, and General
Dynamics, which last year signed a $395 million contract to
deliver component parts for 125 Abrams M1A1 tanks that are being
assembled at a plant in Egypt.

“In large part, there are U.S. jobs that are reliant on the
U.S.-Egypt strong military-to-military relationship,” a senior
State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity
under rules set by the department.

In other words, the America military-industrial complex takes
money from American taxpayers so that Egypt’s generals can thwart
democracy in their country and President Obama can buy re-election
in his. It’s a win-win!

Perhaps Obama can put in a good word for Egypt’s generals with
the Nobel Peace Prize committee. Or he can do the right thing and
defund them – and give democracy a fighting chance in Egypt.