The Patriot's Trumpet

The Story From the Inside

We get news of the Egyptian crisis from CNN, AP, Fox or some other news gatherer. We get analysis from an array of fools or, on occasion, from wise men such as John Bolton. President Obama has rarely seemed so clueless. What follows is this rare and opportunity, “The Story From the Inside.”  Clarice Feldman is a regular contributor at The American Thinker. Through a colleague, she brings an incredible story from an Egyptian student, Sam Tadros. Sam writes:

One week ago, Egypt was a stable authoritarian regime, prospects of change were minimal and every expert in Washington would have betted on the endurance of its regime. Today, Egypt is in a state of chaos. The regime, even after using its mightiest sword is not able to control the country and the streets of Egypt are in a state of utter lawlessness. As the world stands in awe, confusion, and worry at the unfolding events, perhaps it is important to write the evolving story that is happening in Egypt before any reflections can be made on them.

Contrary to pundits, it turns out that the Egyptian regime was neither stable nor secure. The lack of its stability is not a reflection of its weakness or lack of a resolve to oppress. It is a reflection of its inherent contradiction to the natural desire of men to enjoy their basic freedoms. Egyptians might not know what democracy actually means, but that does not make the concept any less desirable. Perhaps it is precisely its vagueness and abstraction that makes the concept all the more desirable.

For two weeks calls were made using new social media tools for a mass demonstration on the 25^th of January. Observers dismissed those calls as another virtual activism that would not result in anything. Other calls in the past had resulted in very small public support and the demonstrations were limited to the familiar faces of political activists numbering in the hundreds. As the day progressed, the observers seemed to be correct in their skepticism. While the demonstrations were certainly larger than previous ones, numbering perhaps 15,000 in Cairo, they were nothing worrisome for the regime. They were certainly much smaller than the ones in 2003 against the Iraq War. The police force was largely tolerating and when they decided to empty Tahrir Square, where the demonstrators had camped for the night, it took them less than 5 minutes to do so.

But beneath that, things were very different. The social media tools had given people something that they had lacked previously, an independent means of communication and propaganda. Hundreds of thousands of young Egyptians in a matter of minutes were seeing the demonstration videos being uploaded on youtube. For an apolitical generation that had never shown interest in such events the demonstration was unprecedented. More remarkable they were tremendously exaggerated. At a moment when no more than 500 demonstrators had started gathering in that early morning, an Egyptian opposition leader could confidently tweet that he was leading 100,000 in Tahrir Square. And it stuck.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that after 58 years of organized state propaganda, people would not believe for a second the government’s media machine and its coverage of the events. Why they chose to believe the alternative propaganda needs more explaining. People believed the twitter messages and the facebook postings because they wanted to believe them. Tunisia had broken the barrier for many people. It mattered not that the situation and ruling formula in Tunisia is very different than the one in Egypt. Perceptions were more important than reality. If the Tunisians could do it, then so could we. With 15,000 demonstrating in Cairo, Egyptians were already texting each other with stories of the President’s son escape. The only debate being whether Hosni Mubarak would escape to London or Saudi Arabia.

It is impossible to summarize this first hand account. Do not miss out on the complete first hand account. Ger it all HERE.

Lesson #1 on Islam:

Before you make another move, Mr. President, let’s try lesson #1 once again; this time with this video from (now) Congressman Allen West.

(Hat tip, Jan & Judy)

And Looking For Sam Adams

Freedom House, Washington, D.C., has been grading countries (and territories, for that matter) on human rights abuse for seventy years. (I do not know or recommend their criteria.) Here is their worst abuser . . .

Oh no, can it not be Egypt?

It is instead,

Burma

Well, #2 is still unacceptable. Well, I see #2 is not Egypt either. Second worst is,

Equatorial Guinea

O.K. let’s just run down the list; find Egypt

Eritrea

Libya

North Korea

Somalia

Sudan

Turkmenistan

Uzbekistan

Belarus

Chad

China

Cuba

Guinea

Laos

Saudi Arabia

Syria

The two territories of South Ossetia and Western Sahara

Egypt seems not to have made the top 20 abusers. And did you notice, Tunisia is not there either. How did Afghanistan, and, for that matter, Pakistan escape the list. I didn’t see Zimbabwe on that list either. Well, we’ll stop before we beat this horse to death (a little civility lingo there.) It could be the criteria is simply faulty —I’m open to that. After all, Iran is not on the list nor are the Palestinians. Got that?

Of course, the human conditions are terrible in Egypt. We are not for that. But is this devil we know, who kept a peace with Israel for more than 30 years, worse than the devil, we don’t know? American Secular Fundamentalist group, Code Pink is lending their support to overthrow the human rights abuser, Mubarak. (Keep in mind, this outfit sees G. W. Bush as similar to Mubarak but thinks Cuba is paradise.)

We will have the Muslim Brotherhood if the demonstrators (with help from the Obama regime?) topple Mubarak. Who or what is the Muslim Brotherhood? They are the fountainhead of Hamas and the Sunni terrorist organizations (al–Qaida). America’s principal Muslim organizations (CAIR) all are committed to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Here is their creed:

“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

Of course it is useful to shuffle the deck from time to time. But, is it our job? Do we know where the jokers are? If this deck is shuffled now, can a winning hand be dealt?

What?

No Sam Adams To Be Found In Egypt? Look For A Patrick Henry!

When you find an Egyptian revolutionary proclaiming Liberty throughout the land, please report it here. Then, we shall join the fight.

Which Way For Democracy, Human Rights, Peace and Stability In Egypt?

That question is posed, one way or another throughout the media. The Obama government, we are told, has a very fine line to walk in this crisis. The President and his administration seem to have tipped away from the Mubarak Government in Egypt. Commentators are not overstating the danger, if anything, they are understating it. Egypt is a human powder keg and the fuse may already be lit.

 Who can know if President Obama’s hard position towards Mubarak is the right path. In the first place, how can we know if the American “back channel” message towards Mubarak is really all that hard? Perhaps what we hear from the President is for consumption by the left here or Governments elsewhere.

Let’s be clear, we have been here before. In 1979, we faced an Ayatollah led Muslim extremist uprising in Iran There was a hated, American backed strongman (the Shah) in Tehran. There was a failed President Carter in Washington. 32 years ago, Carter took a hard line: he knocked out the props; the Shah fell. In Iran, we have the —about to be nuclear— dictatorship of the Ayatollahs. Who can calculate the price the World and especially America has paid for Carter’s failure? The human misery and death suffered by the Iranian people is staggering.

Could our current failed President be making the same mistake? Could a dictatorship of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt be as serious? No question, worse! The inevitable lost energy resources will bring the World to her knees. The hate and rage of the Arab Muslim world is about to explode. Who will come to Israel’s aid? Perhaps, not even the Obama-led American government. Israel can, and I would argue, will take out Cairo, Tehran, Beirut, and any other Arab Capital they find necessary —nuclear if necessary.

Where will it stop? What’ll the Muslim populations in Europe do? What will Obama’s teleprompters do?

I just finished the profoundly important novel, THE HAJ by Leon Uris (Doubleday, 1984). Novels often tell the truth better than non-fiction. I believe The Haj casts light into “this Present Darkness,” and speaks truth to the present crisis.

As the book ends, it is fall, 1956, Haj Ibraham al Soukori, Muktar of Tabah, the West Bank of Palestine, with his family, has been a refugee for years in Jericho, Jordan. The years have been life draining; Ibraham was very tired and weak. All he had left was the family honor. His youngest daughter, Nada, had tasted freedom and “brought dishonor and shame” to the family. He brutally killed her for the sake of the family honor. During a subsequent confrontation with, his youngest son, Ishmael, Ibraham dies of a massive heart attack.

After days of abject grief, Ishmael, asks his employer, Dr. Mudhil, an old and wise Muslim (pages 563-564):

 “Why? Why, I whispered, “why.”

“You were three beautiful people who loved each other fiercely. But you were born into a culture which has no place for such love to express itself. We are accursed among all living creatures.”

“What is to become of us all?” I said, as much a groan as a question.

He was silent for ever so long. I watched the outline of his shadow swaying, moaning.

“You must tell me, Dr. Mudhil.”

“I shall tell you,” he said softly, in agony. “We do not have leave to love one another and we have long ago lost the ability. It was so written twelve hundred years earlier. Hate is our over-powering legacy and we have regenerated ourselves by hatred from decade to decade, generation to generation, century to century. The return of the Jews has unleashed that hatred, exploding wildly, aimlessly, into a massive force of self-destruction. In ten, twenty, thirty years the world of Islam will begin to consume itself in madness. We cannot live with ourselves . . . we never have. We cannot live with or accommodate the outside world . . . we never have. We are incapable of change. The devil who makes us crazy is now devouring us. We cannot stop ourselves. And if we are not stopped we will march, with the rest of the world, to the Day of the Burning. What we are now witnessing, Ishmael, now, is the beginning of Armageddon.”

“It is only fiction,” some dreamer or apologist or Secular Fundamentalist or Code Pinker might say. Here is my testimony. In the last six years, I have read extensively, more than 20 books, on Islam. I have read at least four borrowed from my library. Here, in no particular order, are the titles I own:

• Willful Blindness, Andrew C. McCarthy
• The Force of Reason, Oriana Fallaci
• The Sword of the Prophet, Serge Trifkovic
• The Iranian Time Bomb, Michael A. Ledeen
• The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright
• The High Cost of Peace, Yossef Bodansky
• World War IV, Norman Podhoretz
• America Alone, Mark Steyn
• A God Who Hates, Wafa Sultan
• Son of Hamas, Mosab Hassan Yousef
• Muslim Mafia, P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry
• The Grand Jihad, Andrew C. McCarthy
• The Post-American Presidency, Pamela Geller with Robert Spencer  
• Stealth Jihad, Robert Spencer
• Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t, Robert Spencer
• The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran, Robert Spencer

It is Islam itself, not simply the terrorists or the extremists, that cannot exist with freedom. A few days after 911, a television host asked Franklin Graham, “Dr. Graham, what is the difference between Islam and Christianity?” Graham’s said, “The god of Islam asks you to send your son to die for him; the God of Christianity sent His Son to die for you.” Because Islam is the opposite of Liberty, Muslim governments must be some form of tyranny. Shariah law is a system of ordered tyranny.  Until Muslims are converted to Christianity, Muslim countries must be tyrannies. To expect democracy to find soil to root and grow in Islam is futile and, frankly, stupid. Democracy cannot produce Liberty and human rights. Democracy must be born in Liberty.

There is not and will not be an attractive Muslim government. I firmly believe Egypt must remain under the control of Mubarak until he can turn the government over to another sane, if ruthless, strongman. The Army is a required component of a stable Egypt. For the sake of the people of Egypt, the Middle East and the World, the Muslim Brotherhood must not gain control of Egypt.