When I announced that The award for the person most consistently wrong about the Muslim Brotherhood goes to … Roger Cohen of The NY Times, it was suggested that I acted in haste.
Why in the world had I not given the award to Thomas Friedman, SoccerDad asked.
Well, because he’s Thomas Friedman, and I was thinking of naming the award the Thomas Friedman Award For Delusional Wishful Thinking and thought it might be awkward to award the Thomas Friedman Award to Thomas Friedman. And Cohen has been particularly over the top, and worthy of the award.
The Muslim Brotherhood used its power to obtain a referendum on a new Constitution drafted by Islamists without input from the opposition, in which the opposition asserts the rights of religious and political minorities and civil liberties are not protected.
Opposition protests were beaten back by Muslim Brotherhood counter-protesters, and Mohamed Morsi kept his eye on the prize, getting the new Constitution in place, even as Cohen clung to the delusion that Morsi was acting in good faith.
The first day of the referendum was yesterday, and by all accounts the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies are leading, Egypt opposition alleges referendum rigging as Islamists claim victory:
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has claimed victory in the first round of the country’s bitterly divisive constitutional referendum, with opposition forces complaining of large-scale rigging and violations.
Unofficial results from Saturday’s first round showed 56% approval to 43% rejection on a low turnout of 33%, with a clear no win in Cairo, one of the 10 governorates where polling took place. The referendum is to be held in the country’s remaining 17 governorates next Saturday – where prospects for a no win are poorer.
The figures were reported by the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political wing of the Brotherhood, whose results have proved accurate in previous elections.
If, as expected, the trend is confirmed, the referendum will bolster the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, who was elected president on a 51% mandate last June….
How has Friedman reacted to all this? By wondering if Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood will become India or Pakistan:
But if it is still true [that Christians in Egypt are not in positions of power] in a decade or two, then we’ll know that democracy in Egypt failed. We will know that Egypt went the route of Pakistan and not India. That is, rather than becoming a democratic country where its citizens could realize their full potential, instead it became a Muslim country where the military and the Muslim Brotherhood fed off each other so both could remain in power indefinitely and “the people” were again spectators.
A decade or two to find out if the Islamists have grabbed permanent power?
We know it already.
Barring some electoral miracle which votes down the new constitution, Egypt is Pakistan not India. The opposition knows it, that’s why they are so furious.
The only ones who don’t seem to know it are columnists at The NY Times.
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Because they are such stellar examples, name the award for both men.
The Friedman-Cohen Award for Flawed Logic and Wishful Thinking or for short,
The Fried-Hen award.
Again the NYT put themselves in a win, win situation. If by some miracle in 10, 20 years the India model prevails, they will seem prescient. If more likely it goes south, they will achieve the dual goal of global population eduction with the bonus that alot of it will be Christians & Jews that do the dying. Win, win for the left & NYT.
Do you really expect them to admit that Obama’s Arab Spring is a massive failure?
The only ones who don’t seem to know it are columnists at The NY Times.
Not necessarily. It’s true that the Times’ columnists believe they are never wrong, but I am convinced that they also strongly believe religious freedom is a bad thing. The political Left sees government as the one true god, and if people believe in the real God, they may not like it when government tries to usurp that role. I teach in a community college, and I know a number of people who honestly believe that religion is a kind of dangerous mental illness that would never be allowed in a tolerant society.
Also, there is a strong element of anti-Semitic/anti-Christian bigotry in media and academia, which leads them to turn a blind eye towards the persecution, torture, and murder of Christians and Jews. The fact that these Islamic extremists are also brutal in their treatment of women (Islamic countries are where you can find a real “war on women”) and homosexuals seems to have been set aside. For now, the Left has made a tacit alliance with radical Islam, since Muslims in Islamic countries are doing to Jews and Christians what the Left has longed wished to do in the West, but has been (so far) prevented by the rule of law.
“I teach in a community college, and I know a number of people who honestly believe that religion is a kind of dangerous mental illness that would never be allowed in a tolerant society.”
Useful idiots with graduate degrees.
They’ve been duped into hating religion by the Marxist left who see it as an impediment to Communism. You can’t destroy western civilization and replace it with a Socialist dystopia without first destroying the judeo-christian religious traditions that form its bedrock. So of course they hate religion and use every opportunity to attack and disparage it.
Meanwhile other leftists work hard to corrupt and pervert various christian denominations into tools and mediums for promoting socialism itself, much the same way that Reform Judaism has been corrupted.
Correction : reduction, not eduction.
They replaced national, mostly secular Muslims with the imperial, Caliphate variety. That’s some kind of progress, but not in the interests of advancing civil and human rights. The latter class is notorious for violating both over a period exceeding one thousand years, from Islam’s conception.
Anyway, democracy is not the goal. For obvious reasons it can’t be, and yet it is through granted or coerced authority.
A Democracy of cannibals will do the very same things that a society of cannibals organized along other lines will do: cook and eat you.
A Democracy of radical Islamists will do the very same things that a society of such individuals organized along other lines will do: behead you while screaming God is great.
The Muslim brotherhoods does not think the same way the NYT does, but they do like the way the NYT thinks.
The reality-based community. Delusional as usual.
Tom Friedman and Roger Cohen have the extended party mix of Rebecca Black’s follow-up hit to “Friday,” playing on continuous loop in their heads:
“Arab Spring” by Rebecca Black
Kickin’ in the newsroom
Sittin’ in the back room
Gotta make my mind up
Which direction will they take?
It’s Arab Spring, Arab Spring
Gotta get down on Arab Spring
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the democracy, democracy
Arab Spring, Arab Spring
Gettin’ down on Arab Spring
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the democracy.
Many celebrities have claimed to have been Cleopatra in a former life.
Tom has just not admitted it yet.
It was easy enough to be politically correct and pretend islam is a religion of peace and there are moderates with influence over the course of muslim events back when only Pakistan among muslim countries had nuclear weapons and they were ruled by the military, not by radicals.
Today it is necessary, in order to have an honest discussion of these topics, to understand and state clearly that there are but two potential results of the conflict between Western democracy and radical islam: either we will kill all of them or they will kill all of us.
It doesn’t matter how good your heart, how earnest your intent, or how much you love animals: if you try to pet a rabid dog, you will be bitten.
If anyone is interested here is something mocking St. Thomas’ writing,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/rewrite-thomas-friedmans-syria-column-win-a-free-hand-grenade-20121114
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