Volume VI, Issue VII

Volume VI, Issue VII

April 11, 2011

JHU POLITIK GOVERNMENT STAYS OPEN

ISSUE VII, 4/11/11

BUDGET DEAL CUTS $38 BILLION

Also in this Week’s Edition:

NATIONAL A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEOCONSERVATISM

By Jordan Kalms, ‘14 -Page 3

INTERNATIONAL VIOLENCE IN THE IVORY COAST CONTINUES

By Hilary Matfess, ‘14 -Page 4 CRICKET DIPLOMACY

By Rohit Dasgupta, ‘12 -Page 5 (Brad Troy)

MILITARYINDUSTRIALISM: AN INSIDIOUS EVIL

by Ari Schaffer, ‘14 Staff Writer

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ate Friday night, Democrats and Republicans agreed to budget cuts of $38 billion, thereby avoiding a federal government shutdown, which would have been triggered at midnight if no deal had been reached.

The compromise followed weeks of tense negotiations in which political partisanship had reached a boiling point. After months of limping along with stopgap budget allowances, President Obama had declared that he would not allow another stopgap measure to be put in place. Adding fuel to the fire, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released an aggressive budget proposal that included cuts lasting through 2021.

This strong move strengthened Republicans’ resolve rather than opening them up to compromise.

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OPINION

The Republican House members, invigorated by influx of Tea Party conservatives, have demanded steep cuts in spending for the 2011 budget.

The Democrats on the other hand have been more wary of cutting what they feel is essential programming too hastily.

Originally, Democrats had conceded to the original Republican proposal of $33 billion in cuts, but the release of Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget proposal, the “Path to Prosperity,” inspired Republicans to demand another $7 billion in cuts.

Harry Reid (D-NV) expressed his outrage several times, stating that his party had already bent back further than it should have in the first place.

Senator Reid also accused his opponents of rejecting the Democrats’ generous compromise for non-

By Wolfgang Alders, ‘14 -Page 6 THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD REVISTED

By Cary Glynn and Jacob Grunberger, ‘13 - Page 7

JOHNS HOPKINS’s Only WeeklyPublished Political Magazine

spending issues. “The only thing holding up an agreement is ideology,” Mr. Reid said, adding, “These matters have no place on the budget bill.” He explained that a deal was being held up by Republican demands for politically charged decisions, such as a ban on federal funding for Planned Parenthood. To these accusations, Senator Boehner replied, "Americans are concerned not just about how much we're spending. They're also concerned about how we're spending it.” To (Continued on Page 2) www.JHUPOLITIK.com

Volume VI, Issue VII

April 11, 2011

The POLITIK EDITOR-In-Chief

Editor-in-Chief

Editor-in-Chief

Joshua Ayal

Harry Black

Sam Lichtenstein

Staff Writers

Executive Editors

Randy Bell Alex Clearfield Rachel Cohen Rohit Dasgupta Eric Feinberg Becca Fishbein Conor Foley Cary Glynn Benjamin Goldberg Paul Grossinger Dan Hochman Jordan Kalms Anna Kochut Briana Last Hilary Matfess Daniel Roettger Ari Schaffer

Managing Editor

Will Denton Morgan Hitzig Hannah Holliday

Matt Varvaro PRODUCTION MANAGERS

Casey Navin Neil O’Donnell Faculty Advisor

Steven R. David JHU POLITIK is a student-run political publication. Please note that the opinions expressed within JHU POLITIK are those solely of the author.

Please sign up for our e-mail list on our website, www.JHUPOLITIK.com

NATIONAL REPORT

(Continued from Page 1) Boehner and the Republicans, social funding cuts are just as important as any other budget cut, regardless of political significance.

As of last Thursday night, the Senate and the House were stuck at an impasse with compromise seeming less and less likely. The White House then got more involved, despite House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) desire to keep the debate confined to Congress. Frustrating Republican hopes for a one week patch with $12 billion in cuts, President Obama promised to veto any short term budget bills that are not expressly for the purpose of drafting a full 2011 budget bill.

Even the looming threat of a government shutdown did not flag the resolve of either party. Each side of the debate had hoped, as each did before the shutdowns of 1995 and 1996, that the other side would take the blame for a government shutdown, which would result in the furlough of 800,000 workers. In the event of a shutdown, most vital government services such as transportation, security, and the military would continue running, but home loan services, passport processing, and other non-essential services would be stopped until the impasse was resolved.

Luckily, the deal agreed to on Friday evening avoided a repeat of events of 1995 and 1996. Democrats said that the agreement did not include measures sought by Republicans to limit environmental regulations and restrict

federal financing for Planned Parenthood and other such groups, though Speaker Boehner said in a statement that the deal did include a curtailment on abortion financing in Washington.

Despite the political compromise reached late Friday night, another larger debate about the future of government spending in the United States looms. Ryan’s 2012 budget has proposed drastic cuts, which will reshape the way government spending and the debt is viewed in America. Overall, the plan aims to cut $5.8 trillion in the next decade. It will restructure food stamps and Medicare, all but vetoing President Obama’s healthcare reform measures. According to Ryan, the strategic cuts in spending, if implemented, will steer America away from European-style bankruptcy fear that have dominated the world economic outlooks for much of the recent past.

According to Ryan, his proposal will also return America back to the smaller, more decentralized federal government of the past. Ryan declared his innovative plan dead on arrival in the Democratic controlled Senate and White House, but public support for the bill could still change the way budgets are written in the future. Ryan’s hope is more to reshape the way America views government spending for the future, rather than the immediate passage of his bill.

Thus, despite the collective sigh of relief that a gov(Continued on Page 3)

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NATIONAL REPORT (Continued from Page 2) ernment shutdown has been avoided, the question of future spending looms large. After all, while the few billions of dollars that separated the two political parties over the past week are important politically, they are insignificant when compared to the scale of American debt that has left many wondering about much larger fiscal issues. Until those questions have been answered, the 2012 budget will remain only a small piece of a much larger national conversation. s

A Brief History of Neoconservatism

by Jordan Kalms, ‘14 Staff Writer It can be hard even for the most politically engaged American to confidently attempt to explain the fundamentals of neoconservatism. Indeed, other than the vague recollection of hearing the word “neocon” used prolifically by the critics of the Bush administration, many Americans have no insights into the tenets of this seemingly young, but ultimately timeless, philosophy.

However, widespread ignorance of the neoconservative ideology has not stopped the movement from becoming a powerful force in the American and global political realms alike, spanning across multiple presidential administrations and taking shape in form of a number of foreign policy initiatives.

The foundations of neoconservatism can be traced through the intellectual lineage of a number of American academics. Prominent among the founders of neoconservatism are the political philosopher and GermanAmerican academic Leo Strauss, the classicist and Yale professor Allen Bloom, and the author and journalist Irving Kristol. By rejecting the emergence of nihilism as a positive force in society and making the case for a natural sense of right and wrong, Leo Strauss planted the intellectual seedlings of what would later become neoconsveratism. Bloom continued this attack on the multicultural, open-minded attitude of his students, which he saw as leading to the casement of critical analysis and the acceptance of all cultures and political regimes, regardless of their human rights abuses or blatantly pernicious policies.

Irving Kristol, generally accepted as the father of neoconservatism, saw the nihilistic, non-judgmental style of political discourse experienced by Bloom in the world of academia projected onto the national stage, specifi-

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cally through the stance of the American left during the Cold War. As American liberals refused to denounce the atrocious byproducts of Soviet rule in Europe, some American liberals, one of whom was Kristol, became fed up and disillusioned by the moral relativism of the American left. It is due to this disillusionment that caused Kristol to famously define a neoconservative as “a liberal who has been mugged by reality.”

Beyond this, the history of neoconservatism can only be vaguely traced through the sinews of American history. Neoconservative ideology appeared heavily in the Reagan administration, prompting one Newsweek article to question, “Why are so many Straussians in the Reagan administration?” In the Reagan years, neoconservatives were primarily focused on winning the arms race with the Soviet Union, and thus felt a decisive sense of victory when the Soviet bloc crumbled. Upon the dissolution of communist regimes in the Former Soviet Union and its satellite states, many American neoconservatives questioned what the future held for their new ideological alliance.

Since that time, neoconservatives have continued to appear in the administrations of many, if not all, of Reagan’s successors. The influence of neoconservatives in the White House was particularly apparent during the presidency of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, specifically with regards to foreign affairs, such as in Panama in the late 1980s, Iraq during the Gulf War, and the Global War on Terror that begun in 2001. Famed American neoconservatives include the author Norman Podhoretz, the lobbyist and political advisor Richard Perle, and Congressman and Senator Henry Jackson (DWA).

Since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, Democrats have made a noted effort to equate the ideologies of neoconservative to that of American conservatives. This effort has gone hand-in-hand with the anti-war movement’s attempts to turn the word “neoconservative” into one that pejoratively denotes a hawkish, imperialistic foreign policy.

However, the fact remains that neoconservatives were hardly cut from the cloth of American right (especially when one considers that the neoconservative ideology predates that of current Republicans), and that many neoconservatives will adamantly defend the notion that they are the true liberals.

The lesson from this is that one who is trying to compartmentalize the neoconservative philosophy and place it within the American party system is bound to oversim(Continued on Page 4) www.JHUPOLITIK.com

April 4, 2011

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NATIONAL REPORT / INTERNATIONAL REPORT (Continued from Page 3) plify something.

Neoconservatism is not a political party, nor is it a mutation of American conservatism. Instead, neoconservatism is a set of principles regarding the workings of the modern geopolitical landscape. Douglas Murray, author of Neoconservatism: Why we need it, defines neoconservatism as an ideology that objects to, “the post-60s western status quo, to increasing secularism, to illiberalism masquerading as liberalism, and to the destructive effects of the counter-culture.” Of course, what the future holds for this ideology and its place in the American political landscape has yet to be seen. That being said, neoconservatism is sure to have a decisive role on the future of American foreign policy and continue contributing an additional voice to the national dialogue. s

Violence in the Ivory Coast Continues

by Hilary Matfess, ‘14 Staff Writer While the eyes of the world have been transfixed on the situation in Libya, weeks of fighting have also occurred in the West African state of Côte D’Ivoire. Once a beacon of prosperity in the region, since 2002 the country has been mired in a civil war between its northern and southern regions.

The latest strain of violence, however, was set off in November 2010, when the incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to accept defeat in the presidential election. Though the election was originally scheduled to be held in 2005, logistical issues brought on by the civil war allowed President Gbagbo to use delaying tactics for five years. Since November, conflict between pro-Gbagbo forces and those loyal to Alassane Ouattara, the opposition leader, has plagued the country.

Earlier last week, the United Nations, lead by France, held negotiations with President Gbagbo, who has taken shelter in the basement of the presidential residence. It was rampantly speculated that these negotiations would lead to Gbagbo conceding power to Ouattara; the talks, however, led nowhere. According to France’s foreign minister, Alain Juppé, the negotiations failed because of Gbagbo’s “intransigence.”

The negotiations were also complicated by the fact that Ouattara’s supporters are pushing for Gbagbo to be prosecuted, while Gbagbo himself believes that the opposition intends to kill him. Cisse Sindou, a spokesman

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for the Ouattara forces, was quoted by the BBC as responding to Gbagbo’s allegations by saying, "We could have reduced everything within 500m of the presidential place to dust but people live there...We want to capture Gbagbo alive without killing all his neighbours."

A new wrinkle was added to the situation when France sent in an additional 400 soldiers, bringing its total number to roughly 1,500 in its former colony. These troops have augmented the 9,000 United Nations peacekeepers who have desperately been trying to contain the violence. Nonetheless, within the past week, France and United Nations forces have moved beyond simply trying to separate loyalist and opposition forces from each other, and instead have worked together to attack Gbagbo’s presidential residence.

Unsurprisingly, Gbagbo has framed international involvement in the conflict as a means by which imperialists are seeking to undermine national sovereignty. He is quoted in the New York Times as saying, “I still don’t understand how an electoral dispute in Ivory Coast can bring on the interference of the French Army; I find it absolutely incredible that the life of a country is played out, in a game of poker, in foreign capitals.” Since the speculation that he was negotiating terms of surrender, Gbagbo has since hardened his position, publicly refusing to consider conceding power.

As of this article’s publication, Gbagbo is losing military support at an astonishing rate; on Thursday, April 7th, it was speculated that Gbagbo had fewer than 1,000 soldiers left fighting for him. Of those thousands, some 200 are reportedly assigned to defending the presidential residence. Attacks on the building the previous day, lead by Ouattara’s supporters, have lead to a deadly stalemate.

Meanwhile, millions of people in Abidjan, the economic and former political capital of the country, and around the country are unable to go outside because of the violence. Main banks in the country have reportedly been closed for two months. Hundreds of people have been killed in the fighting, and there are few treatment centers for the wounded. Reports of extrajudicial killings committed by both Gbagbo and Ouattara’s supporters have lead to international outrage. Speculation as to which side will eventually triumph heavily favors an Ouattara victory. The question remains, however, at what cost?

As JHU Politik went to press, a tense calm has reportedly swept over Abidjan. After days of trying to take Gbagbo’s residence by force, Ouattara’s supporters have said that they will now switch tactics and try to seal him

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INTERNATIONAL REPORT off from the rest of the country. Nonetheless, a spokesman for Gbagbo made clear that loyalist forces were by no means conceding, a fact that was made clear by fresh attacks on the French embassy. All the same, citizens are hoping that slowly but surely the tense calm will translate into a permanent peace. s

Cricket Diplomacy

by Rohit Dasgupta ‘12 Staff Writer The finals of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 were held on April 2, as India captured the title by defeating Sri Lanka in the finals. It became the first nation to win a World Cup final on home soil and it was a cause for celebration in a place where cricket has been the(AP) national pastime for as long as anyone can remember.

However, it was not so much the finals that picked up a lot of press coverage, but the semifinals, which were played between two nuclear-armed neighbors with tumultuous relations – India and Pakistan.

The tense relations between the two nations reached heightened levels after the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, in which members of a Lakshar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based militant organization carried out more than 10 coordinated shootings in Mumbai, India’s largest city, killing 164 people and wounding almost twice as many.

After the Mumbai terror attacks, cricketing ties between the two countries were suspended. However, due to the World Cup, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to watch the match in the Punjabi city of Mohali on March 30th.

Cricket diplomacy between the two nations is not a new phenomenon as the two nations have used cricket matches to improve bilateral relations. Pakistani General Zia-ul-Haq visited India in 1987 for a test match, and President Pervez Musharraf watched a one-day match between the two neighbors in New Delhi in 2005.

However, Pakistan’s 1992 World Cup winning captain turned politician, Imran Khan, said both the countries’ present governments were not “strong enough” to take any initiative and the cricket diplomacy over the highvoltage Indo-Pak clash would be reduced to a “feel good” show with opportunities for the photographers.

“Unfortunately, we do not have strong governments in both the countries…especially in Pakistan where we

Pakistan's Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, left, and India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, at the start of the World Cup Semi-Final match between India and Pakistan in Mohali, India on March 30, 2011. (Reuters)

have the weakest government of all time. It is besieged by so many problems…so many crises.”

He was equally as candid about Manmohan Singh-led Indian government, saying, “After what I have seen in India, I don’t think that the Indian government is going to be able to make any initiative. So what will happen is that there will be a feel good factor.”

Khan also stated that things would have been better if the Mumbai attacks had not taken place, “Unless the contentious issues are sorted out, my worry is that there will always some sort of an incident like the Mumbai one. And after all the confidence building exercises, it will be back again to square one.”

The verdict about the Mumbai attacks is still up in the air. A cordial meeting between the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers was held at the cricket match two weeks ago, the latest in a series of diplomatic overtures. Pakistani and Indian officials agreed to open a terrorism “hotline” and Pakistan said that it would allow Indian investigators in the Mumbai case to visit Pakistan for the first time. However, no dates were set, and there was no progress on Indian officials’ requests to meet the Pakistani detainees or test their voice against cellphone calls from their alleged handlers in Pakistan.

Pakistani officials, while insisting that they want to get to the bottom of the Mumbai terror attacks, acknowledge that they are not in a strong position to crack down on the Lakshar-e-Taiba, and they express resentment over continuing American pressure on the issue. They note that Pakistan has been victimized by terrorism for years and has provoked public antagonism by allowing (Continued on Page 6)

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INTERNATIONAL REPORT / OPINION (Continued from Page 5) American cross-border missile attacks on suspected militants.

“Mumbai must have been terrible, but we have suffered many Mumbais,” said Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir. “All of us want to free the region of this lethal virus [Lakshar-e-Taiba], but it does not help to stigmatize us.” s

Military-Industrialism: An Insidious Evil

by Wolfgang Alders, ‘14 Contributing Wirter War is expensive. While over a trillion dollars have been spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, few people have bothered to ask where this money is going. Funding comes from the U.S. Treasury, but undoubtedly it ends up in the hands of the corporations that provide the American military with weaponry, food, lodging, transportation, fuel, medical care, and even additional manpower. War is pricey for the government, but highly profitable to the big businesses that specialize in supplying the government with whatever it needs.

There is great cause for alarm. If war is highly profitable to corporations, and corporations wish, above all else, to increase their own profit, then corporations will undoubtedly attempt to increase and prolong war. This is perhaps the most perilous moral hazard that history has ever known, and it is called the American MilitaryIndustrial Complex.

Through lobbying, campaign financing, activism, “revolving-door” politics, and simple corruption, corporations are able to influence American policy in a way that no single voting citizen is able. Former weapons dealers are offered high-ranking positions in government, and ex-politicians are offered high-ranking positions on the contracting side of business. Dick Cheney, the former C.E.O. of Halliburton, is a prime example.

To this day, Halliburton provides security, food, housing, transportation, and myriad of other services in U.S. military bases around the world, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and the other top five military contractors in the United States received a combined $107 billion dollars just last year alone to provide the military with weaponry. All of these companies have numerous connections in government, and all have a continued interest in American military

intervention and occupation.

In addition, U.S. military aid to foreign nations is military-industrialism in disguise. The United States gives money for military spending to over 150 nations, with the two largest recipients being Egypt and Israel, which receive around $5 billion combined annually. As a prerequisite, all the money must be spent on military products made by American companies. This is nothing other than covert corporate welfare to America's richest contractors. These corporations have every incentive to keep the American government involved in doling out taxpayer-funded military aid to dictators and corrupt governments around the world so that our hard-earned money can be transferred into corporate coffers.

It is not just arms-dealers who have an incentive to encourage American militarism and aggression. Most multinational corporations support American military intervention whenever laborers in developing countries start to demand fair working hours, or when leftist groups threaten to nationalize industry. Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. military and the C.I.A. have conducted small-scale operations in South America, Asia, and the rest of the world in order to secure and defend American business interests, sometimes at the expense of democracy and foreign sovereignty. With so many corporations incentivized to encourage U.S. military action, it is completely unsurprising that the United States goes to war so often.

From the dubious destruction of the USS Maine, which gave the US casus belli for a land-grab from Spain in the Spanish-American War, to the Lusitania incident, which drew America into World War I and proved highly profitable for American lenders, to the misinformation which led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Vietnam War, all the way to the false claims of WMDs in Iraq which dragged America into the Middle East at the start of the 21st century, politicians throughout American history have spun webs of lies to hide the truth behind why they send American soldiers to fight, die, and kill innocent civilians around the world.

The truth is that war in America is a great big moneylaundering scheme. War in the United States of America is, and has been for the last century, a convenient and highly effective way to make a huge amount of cash.

The method is simple: a contractor need only pay politicians to scare the American people with some faroff threat, whether it be the Spanish or the Kaiser or the communists or the terrorists, and they will gladly consent to military action in their name at the cost of bil(Continued on Page 7)

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OPINION (Continued from Page 6) lions of dollars. This money goes straight back into the contractor’s hands.

Big businesses win and politicians win, while Americans spend unnecessary tax dollars. But the real victims are the millions of civilians around the world who have been displaced or killed at the hands of American Military-Industrialism. s

The Muslim Brotherhood Revisited

by Cary Glynn, ’13 and Jacob Grunberger, ‘13 Staff Writers In last week’s issue of JHU Politik, senior Aliza Fishbein responded to our February article entitled, “In Defense of the Muslim Brotherhood.” We are pleased to see that we have started a dialogue on this important issue.

While we welcome this debate, we respectfully disagree with a few of her contentions.

"They argue that a Muslim Brotherhood takeover could only lead to a more democratized Egypt."

We did not advocate a “Muslim Brotherhood takeover,” nor did we ever claim that a state dominated by religion would lead to a better functioning democracy. In fact, we disagree with both of those ideas. The argument we proposed was that the best antidote to any extremist elements of the Muslim Brotherhood is a more democratic Egypt. Democracies allow for the open expression of ideas. The benefit of this is twofold.

First, the public could openly debate the Muslim Brotherhood’s more extremist assertions. The secular public will challenge the reactionary policies advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood’s old guard. The Brotherhood, in a democracy, would no longer be defined as Mubarak’s opposition.

Secondly, because the Muslim Brotherhood would no longer be a persecuted organization, it could not utilize a victimization narrative. As Shadi Hamid, Director of Research at the Doha Center of Brookings Institution, states, “I think where you're being repressed, there's a tendency to rally around the flag and not to criticize too much your own leadership, because you're just so focused on having that enemy, the regime, and getting rid of that enemy. But now I think the whole political spectrum in Egypt is opening up.”

“Glynn and Grunberger’s primary assertion is that the Muslim Brotherhood, while it was founded on a militant,

religious platform, has now shifted and become a secular group that only pursues social ends.“ This is not the case. We did argue that the Muslim Brotherhood had eschewed violence. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin-Laden’s deputy, even wrote a book criticizing the Muslim Brotherhood’s message of nonviolence. However, we did not argue that the organization is secular, nor did we claim that they exclusively pursue social ends. Regarding social ends, we did note that after renouncing violence in Egypt, the Brotherhood began building roads, schools, and hospitals. Yet the Muslim Brotherhood is certainly still a religious organization, which we mentioned numerous times. In being religious, it lacks the support of Egypt’s revolutionary (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters) secular youth; this saps its political power.

“The Muslim Brotherhood continues preaching its program of victory through violent jihad.” Fishbein continues, “The true measure of where the organization’s philosophy lays in it the leadership it elects.”

We believe the contrary: the philosophy of an organization is only as strong the support given to it by the members. If the head of a faction has an opinion that is unpopular among followers, his message does not carry much weight. We are not claiming that no one in the Muslim Brotherhood supports the statements made by the organization’s elderly leaders, but rather that the words of a few do not represent the will of the many.

There is evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood is in the midst of experiencing severe factionalism. The split between the old and new guard is one worth watching.

Analysts such as Hamr Hamzawy, an expert on Arab political movements and Research Director at the Carnegie Endowment's Middle East Center, that only the young members of the Brotherhood were involved in the Tahrir Sqaure protests.

This is significant. As Hamzawy stated during the protests, “the message young [Brotherhood] activists are putting forward is not a conventional [Brotherhood] message. This is not about Islam as a solution or about full implementation of the Shariah, or this is not about Islamizing Egyptian society. No, what they are saying up until now is democratize Egypt, equal citizenship rights.”

Hamzawy also noted that, “In a way, there's an act of defiance, which these [Brotherhood] members are doing by being at the Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt since Jan. 25. It is the young members who are stating and telling and forming the old guard what to do."

“Regardless of what they have said to some Western media (Continued on Page 8)

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OPINION

outlets, the Brotherhood is doing its best to increase its level of influence” Our evidence did not come from primary quotations in Western media. Most of our evidence comes from analysts with expertise in the history and organization of the Muslim Brotherhood. These academics would not be duped by rhetorical trickery, as they understand Arabic.

They have a deep understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood from many viewpoints and get their information from more than press releases.

Regarding Fishbein’s evidence, we thoroughly researched each quotation that she used. It is worth noting that all but one (from the New York Times) of them came from unreliable sources. We are not accusing her of intentionally using false information, yet we are worried that some of what she cites may be inaccurate.

Fishbein refers to the “recently elected Supreme Guide Muhammad Badi” as an example of violent rhetoric hinting at the Muslim Brotherhood’s subversive purpose. Yet, in Badi’s acceptance speech after the election, he explicitly said that “we believe in gradual reform, which can only be achieved through a peaceful, and constitutional struggle based on persuasion and dialogue and definitely not through coercion, hence we reject violence in all its forms by either governments or individuals.” This also counteracts her argument that the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership unequivocally preaches violence.

“‘Caution is the watchword,’ warns Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, one of the group’s founders, describing the strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood. He says its leaders know that ‘now is not the time to expose itself.’”

This is the quotation we mentioned earlier from the New York Times and, as Fishbein uses it, a misrepresentation of the opinion piece that Tariq Ramadan wrote in the newspaper. The full quotation reads as follows, “by deciding to line up behind Mohamed ElBaradei, who has emerged as the chief figure among the anti-Mubarak protesters, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership has signaled that now is not the time to expose itself by making political demands that might frighten the West, not to mention the Egyptian people. Caution is the watchword.” This seems to suggest something very different from Fishbein’s summary. Ramadan is not disclosing the Brotherhood’s secret strategy. He is describing the real political constraints the organization faces. Worrying about the will of the “Egyptian people” is exactly the constraint that is good for the Muslim Brotherhood.

In fact, Ramadan goes on to say more that supports

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our arguments. He writes, “the leadership of the movement — those who belong to the founding generation are now very old — no longer fully represents the aspirations of the younger members, who are much more open to the world, anxious to bring about internal reform.”

This represents the dichotomy we spoke of earlier.

Additionally, he notes, “the Muslim Brotherhood must be a full partner in the process of change — and will be, if a minimally democratic state can be established in Egypt.” This is in line with both our descriptive and normative claims. Finally, he posits, “it is only democratic debate and the vigorous exchange of ideas that have had an impact on the development of the most problematic Islamist theses – from understanding of the Shariah to (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters) respect for freedom and defense of equality. Only by exchanging ideas, and not by torture and dictatorship, can we find solutions that respect the people’s will.”

Final Thoughts The opinions held by the old guard of the Muslim Brotherhood are, at times, disturbing, but the immediate dismissal of their legitimacy in a democratic society is counter-productive. The fact that most of the extreme rhetoric of the Muslim Brotherhood arose in a time when they were viciously oppressed cannot be understated. We believe that in liberal democracies, all groups must be respected in order to prevent society’s most radical elements from going underground. The Muslim Brotherhood will be faced with many challenges in the coming months, as it must defend its conservative religious principles to a young, secularizing state and a growing liberal movement within the organization. If tensions between the old guard and new guard manifest themselves, we may see the foundation of a new party, split from the reactionary ranks within the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the end, failing to recognize a political entity that is democratically elected is bad foreign policy. Blowback would only help to facilitate “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Jihad,” as Fishbein titles her response. Using the victimization narrative, the Muslim Brotherhood could amass tremendous anti-Western support from secular Egyptians by noting that the West has failed to recognize the legitimacy of Egyptian democracy because the Egyptian people did not vote for a vehemently pro-American regime. This is the true danger to U.S. diplomacy.

Indeed, democracy will put Islamist movements to the test; they must now put forward programs and a political message that appeal to the mainstream. Any drift toward radicalism will not only run contrary to the law, but will also guarantee their political marginalization. s www.JHUPOLITIK.com