It’s time for the person most consistently wrong about the Muslim Brotherhood to admit that just about everything he said about the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s Arab Spring was wrong, including:
Already we hear the predictable warnings from Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu: This could be Iran 1979, a revolution for freedom that installs the Islamists. But this is not 1979, and Egypt’s Facebook-adept youth are not lining up behind the Muslim Brotherhood, itself scarcely a band of fanatics.
And:
But having watched Egypt’s extraordinary civic achievement in building the coalition that ousted Mubarak, having watched Tahrir Square become cooperation central, and having watched the professionalism of the Egyptian army, I’m convinced the country has what it takes to build a decent, representative society — one that gives the lie to all the stereotypes associated with that dismissive shorthand “The Arab Street.”
In fact, post-Tahrir, let’s retire that phrase.
And:
I said I was inclined to give Morsi the benefit of the doubt on his motives.
Egypt’s post-revolutionary political turmoil is obvious. Less obvious is how the wisdom and humor of the world’s oldest nation state temper and shape events….
Yes, wisdom and humor were on full display:
A campaign of intimidation by Islamists left most Christians in this southern Egyptian province too afraid to participate in last week’s referendum on an Islamist-drafted constitution they deeply oppose, residents say. The disenfranchisement is hiking Christians’ worries over their future under empowered Muslim conservatives.
Around a week before the vote, some 50,000 Islamists marched through the provincial capital, Assiut, chanting that Egypt will be “Islamic, Islamic, despite the Christians.” At their head rode several bearded men on horseback with swords in scabbards on their hips, evoking images of early Muslims conquering Christian Egypt in the 7th Century.
Look who’s laughing now:
An Islamist-backed Egyptian constitution won approval in a referendum, rival camps said on Sunday, after a vote the opposition said would sow deep social divisions in the Arab world’s most populous nation.
The end of civil society in Egypt was cheerled by columnists at The NY Times, and Cohen was not alone in that regard.
“Sorry” won’t help the women of Egypt, the Coptic Christians, Muslims who cherish modernity, or the “Google guys” who columists like Cohen naively thought would control the streets.
But it would be a start.
@nytimescohen MB constitution passes – how about a column admitting just about everything u wrote about MB and Egypt was wrong?
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) December 23, 2012
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Comments
Professor, your well supported and temperate, merciful Tweet is rebuke enough for us. It is for Mr. Cohen to repent now.
He is a NYT columnist and a mindless liberal. So it isn’t the case that everything he said was wrong, it is the case that it was wrong that what he said didn’t work out.
Does the phrase “when hell freezes over” come to mind? They do not apologize when caught. They blame it on us because we are not smart enough to be able to read between the lines or grasp their nuance.
This is where conservatives fail as a narrative-driving force equal to the Left. The NY Times, as an institution, should suffer for this. Indeed, the NY Times really should no longer exist. In how many other cases over the last 50 years have they been slanderously and epically wrong? But we, conservatives, as a combined force, don’t go after them with the intent to destroy. Why not? It’s what the Left does to us? Is such an effort of organized attack simply beneath us, against our natures as individuals (unlike the Left, which naturally thinks as a collective)? I don’t know. I only know the NY Times is a vile, truthless anti-American institution — a serial disgrace to journalism — that has no business enjoying its premiere position in the media world.
Raven, give it time. The beast cries loudest, just before it dies.
Other than the obvious, the Egyptian upheaval points one other thing — all conquering social media has it limits. When social media meets sword (gun, thug, knife, take your pick…) it falls apart. Restive fingers without stout hearts is but wisps in the wind.
“Waiting…”, Prof…?
Holiday safety tip…don’t…
1. hold your breath
2. drink adult beverages every few minutes
3. go without sleep
While you wait. We want you around.
This delicious illumination of Roger Cohen’s assertions in the NYT is a strong illustration of Anne Sorock’s 12/22 column in Legal Insurrection:
A reader of this site I was speaking with, who immigrated to the United States from a communist country, said that amongst his friends, they have a phrase to describe what happened in their countries: “first came the pen, and then the fist.”
Thanks to Anne and the Professor, and to the Instapundit who also took notice. Time for a few more million Americans to be introduced to the saying.
Where there’s life there’s hope, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Safe New York Jews like Cohen aren’t there ones dying in Egypt.
Best-and-Brightest Alert.
Obama is as conniving as the best of them, surrounding himself with through-and-through enemies of liberty. Cohen is a cheerleader, along with Obama and his crew, with this hate-America crowd. He likely approved of the 2011 Congressional testimony of Obama’s National Intelligence Director James Clapper in which Clapper asserted, with a straight if stupid face, that the MB was secular at base. “The term ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ is an umbrella term for a variety of movements. In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaida as a perversion of Islam. They have pursued social ends, betterment of the political order in Egypt, etc.”
Even if true that this so-called umbrella group has many movements, they’re all working toward one goal which is about to be firmly saddled to Egypt – pure, unvarnished Islam, with all of its inherent (1400 years’ worth so far) violence.
We expect intellectual self-immolation from the NYTimes, but we should howl extra loud when it’s our “own.” I agree 100% re Cohen, but let’s not fail to indict useful idiot RINOs such as Bill KriSTOOL, John McCain (and his hemorrhoid Lindsay Graham).
You’ll need the patience of Job.
Sitting patiently, waiting for the Arab spring to morph into a nuclear winter.
Let me see if I get this right, Mr.COHEN…After consistently mounting evidence(Duuuhhhhh..!)that the Muslim Brotherhood is a brutal, radical Islamist’Movement’, you, Mr.COHEN, are yet resisting the evidence??
How’bout you, Mr.Sulzberger Jr…??
And, how many city blocks is the Times located from Ground Zero??
Not enough.
Propaganda from the likes of Cohen is not meant to be discussed logically, it is produced as “independent” support for anti-American policies. Getting through the bad news cycle is all that matters.
Wise people knew this would happen, just as we knew government spending was unsustainable at least as early as the “irrationally exuberant” 1990’s. But Obama can tell any crazy lie and not care that he will have to back down to logic. A majority will support him thanks to friends like Cohen in the media.
None dare call it conspiracy, but Obama meets with Media Matters and coordinates a message that reverberates nationally on networks. A majority swallow it, despite high levels of distrust. For theater, Republicans conveniently stumble and fumble the football, always playing Charlie Brown to the Democrat Lucy.
Consistent explosion of debt despite promises, and yielding ground to
al Qaedathe Muslim Brotherhood from Iran, to Iraq, to Libya … indicates an imminent foreign and domestic danger, with cancers growing in our own government. Benghazi revealed that cancer, along with Obama’s “I’ll be more flexible after I’m reelected” moment. Impeachment isthe curea treatment.Who held back support from our ambassador? Was Obama deferring to his campaign and/or acting against national interest? Why are we arming
al Qaedathe Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, even as they become less democratic, more anti-Israel?Roger Cohen: Mirror mirror on the Arab Street, who’s the rightest one in his tweets?
Magic Mirror: Over the seven conservative hills, beyond the seventh Republican fall, in Casa Jacobson, dwells Professor Bill, rightest of them all. Bill Jacobson still blogs, smartest in the land. ‘Tis the brain of a pig you hold in your hand.
Roger Cohen: The brain of a pig! Then I’ve been tricked!
Cleopatra is thousands of years closer to us than the Pyramid guys & Cohen thinks he is Marc Antony albeit to Morsi . Can we find an asp for these star crossed lovers?
I once saw a documentary that had mummies being exported by the thousands to fuel trains across America,whilst in Victorian England they would have Mummy Parties. The highlight of the gathering after the 3rd gin & tonic would be the unwrapping of the newly arrived mummy.
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