Washington Post
Richard Cohen: Egyptian democracy will be “a nightmare”
The longtime Washington Post columnist is terrified of the prospect of Muslims governing their own country
People demonstrate in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, Jan. 31, 2011. Right: Richard Cohen Nothing saddens Richard Cohen more than the sight of hundreds of thousands of Egyptians peacefully protesting. The longtime Washington Post columnist is sad because those childish Arab Muslims might end up with a democracy, but they don’t know how democracy works. Here is how democracy works: We like it unless “the people” want something that complicates our current foreign policy objectives.
Cohen is just broken up about this. “Egypt, once stable if tenuously so, has been pitched into chaos.” “The dream of a democratic Egypt,” he says, “is sure to produce a nightmare.” It is sure to. Such a nightmare it will be. Just not anywhere near as pleasant as these last 30 years of “stability” have been, for everyone.
Cohen is totally an expert on Egypt and Muslims, because he is a longtime opinion columnist for the Washington Post, and not at all a blinkered idiot. Egypt “lacks the civic and political institutions that are necessary for democracy,” he tells us. And you can’t argue with that. I mean, do Egyptian newspapers even run syndicated Richard Cohen opinion columns? Do they have “Dancing With the Stars,” to teach them how voting works?
My take on all this is relentlessly gloomy. I care about Israel. I care about Egypt, too, but its survival is hardly at stake. I care about democratic values, but they are worse than useless in societies that have no tradition of tolerance or respect for minority rights. What we want for Egypt is what we have ourselves. This, though, is an identity crisis. We are not them.
No. We are not them, at all. Because they are Muslims. We all know Americans could handle democracy because we were super good at respecting the rights of minority groups. But the Egyptians are sometimes resentful of or even violent against minority groups, so no democracy allowed for them. (While some Coptic Christians worry that a more Islamic Egyptian government would be less friendly to Copts, demonstrators are stressing an inclusive, nationalist message, and there’s evidence that Christians are themselves involved in the protests. The right-wing CBN has even filed a report on the growing “bond” between Christians and “their Muslim neighbors” in Egypt.)
Cohen is concerned that the Muslim Brotherhood — which “runs the Gaza Strip” under the name “Hamas,” he tells us — will take control of Egypt and attack Israel, at which point “the mob currently in the streets will roar its approval.” That “mob” certainly does seem pretty bloodthirsty. They clearly want all-out war with the region’s sole nuclear power. Pretty sure that’s what these demonstrations are about. “I’m actually pretty cool with Mubarak but I really wish we were waging war against Israel right now” — An Egyptian protester.
Cohen seems to understand that the Brotherhood, while involved in the demonstrations, did not organize them, and he has been told that the majority of the demonstrators have no ties to the group, but he thinks that might just be because they are sneaky. “It has been underground for generations — jailed, tortured, infiltrated, but still, somehow, flourishing. Its moment may be approaching.” Scary!
And why should we all be super-scared of them? “The Islamists of the Brotherhood do not despise America for what it does but for what it is.” Thanks, Richard Cohen, for explaining who these Islamists are, and what they despise about us. It’s not our lengthy history of propping up the dictator who brutally repressed them — they hate us for our freedom. (You may compare Richard Cohen’s history of the Muslim Brotherhood to that an an actual expert on the subject, if you wish.)
This column is so full of winning lines, I have to stop myself from quoting the entire thing. There is literally an “I like democracy, but” part: “Majority rule is a worthwhile idea. But so, too, are respect for minorities, freedom of religion, the equality of women and adherence to treaties, such as the one with Israel, the only democracy in the region.”
I’m sorry, I can edit that one to more clearly express Cohen’s actual point: “Majority rule is a worthwhile idea. But so, too … [is] respect for… Israel….”
These are the last lines:
America needs to be on the right side of human rights. But it also needs to be on the right side of history. This time, the two may not be the same.
The “right side of history” might not be the “right side of human rights.” Got it? Sometimes you have to be on the “wrong side” of “human rights,” and history will totally understand.
Poor Egypt. Maybe you will be grown-up enough in the eyes of Richard Cohen to handle a democracy someday, but right now, it’s just not in the cards.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
Washington Post introduces incredibly useless new way to follow 2012 buzz
The @MentionMachine ranks candidates based on how often they're tweeted about, so congratulations, President Paul
Republican presidential candidate Texas Rep. Ron Paul (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci) The Washington Post’s new “MentionMachine” tool explains in its introductory post precisely what is wrong with it. The “candidate trend app” simply maps Twitter mentions of candidates and then ranks them. Here the Post attempts to make this sound useful:
Continue Reading CloseWhen Texas Gov. Rick Perry declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination Aug. 13, the same day as the Ames Straw Poll, those watching social streams could have rightfully assumed he had won the Iowa contest. Twitter exploded with Perry mentions, even though he didn’t participate in the straw poll, while the winner, Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), drew far less attention. Social media was the writing on the wall. Perry would soon trend up in polls, surpassing Bachmann and the rest of the field. Twitter was the early — scratch that — Twitter was the real-time warning system.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
2. Jennifer Rubin
The Washington Post blogger is hateful and repetitive
The Washington Post had a big problem. It failed, twice, at hiring a proper “Conservative blogger,” a commodity every newspaper website needs. Its first hire was a plagiarist, and then it accidentally hired a reporter who wasn’t conservative enough. The third time, it got someone directly from the neocon Weekly Standard Commentary, ensuring her bona fides. The only problem with Jennifer Rubin as a “conservative blogger,” though, is that while she’s most definitely a Republican, she doesn’t seem invested in any conservative issues, bar foreign policy. And by foreign policy, I mean a fanatical hatred of Arabs and Muslims accompanied by constant fear-mongering about the jihadist menace and regular accusations of anti-Semitism (and tacit support for terrorism) levied against anyone slightly critical of Israeli government policies or remotely sympathetic to Palestinians.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
7. Robert Samuelson
The business columnist can't stop rehashing ancient, discredited Reagan-era dogma
Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson is an exercise in how often and for how long one can continue repeating the exact same received conservative economic dogma when observable reality contradicts each of your arguments before people begin to stop taking you seriously. (The answer is “always and forever.”)
So. In Samuelson’s telling, the European debt crisis was caused by the welfare state. But internationally, there’s no real correlation between government debt burdens and government spending on social programs. (Like, for example, Germany is doing better than Greece, which has a smaller welfare state.)
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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
19. Ruth Marcus
The Washington Post columnist makes up for her bland liberalism with her unquestioning fealty to authority
Longtime Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus is, like most longtime Washington Post columnists, an eminently predictable fount of polite elite Beltway-area opinion. She’s generally a good moderate liberal. She dreams of bipartisan compromises, and lavishes praise on politicians willing to reject party “orthodoxy” in order to come to very orthodox centrist positions. She cares very much about tackling our long-term federal debt. She thinks Republicans are too extreme. She liked Mitch Daniels, except for the antiabortion stuff. She agrees with Robert Gibbs that liberals are “deranged” to criticize Obama, who, after all, has done the best he can, a few wasted opportunities, betrayals and inexplicable tactical missteps aside.
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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
Washington Post education blogger writes sad defense of for-profit colleges
The Kaplan Company's newspaper arm says Kaplan schools aren't as horrible as everyone says
(Credit: AP/Salon) Jay Mathews, the Washington Post’s education columnist, writes a blog for the paper’s local section that is mostly about Washington, D.C.-area school news and politics, though he also writes thoughtfully on national education policy questions. Here is his challenge, though: A vital revenue source for the Washington Post Co. is Kaplan Inc., a test-prep company that branched out into owning and running for-profit online colleges. For-profit colleges, as Mathews knows, are a huge rip-off, targeting poor and minority students with deceptive and aggressive marketing, then burying them in loan debt and barely graduating anyone. The for-profit college sector has come under fire from the government for basically being an elaborate scheme to reap government-subsidized loan money, and the industry has responded with a massive, well-funded lobbying and public relations campaign. This post that Mathews published yesterday seems depressingly like a part of that campaign.
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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
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