Egyptian protesters stormed the U.S. embassy
in Cairo, and ripped down the American flag that was hanging there.
The
Egyptians had a clear message: they don’t want American government personnel
operating in their country anymore. The American media, and many other
Americans for that matter, will spin this story, saying any number of things:
1.
All Muslims hate Americans, not because of the crimes we do, (America doesn’t
do anything wrong, remember?), but because of who we are, for us just simply
existing.
2.
Muslims hate America because they’re jealous of the wealth and freedoms that we
have.
3.
Muslims are violent people so they just stormed the embassy just because an
anti-Islamic video that may/may not have been showing at the embassy.
Etc
etc the list goes on, but I digress. My point of this post is that the
Egyptians had good reason to storm the embassy. Islam, Christianity, and American
values would all support these protests and what they did. (This is a totally
different story than the attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya. I
condemn that attack, as Islam does not support an attack based on the
circumstances in Libya. But again, I digress). For a minute, forget the crap
that the American media constantly spews out about Islam, Muslims and the
Middle East. Forget all the xenophobic bigoted bullshit that many Americans say
every day. Let’s look at this story with logic and context (*gasp* I know, what
a dangerous innovation that is!).
American
support for past Egyptian dictators is well known and well documented.
Americans seem to act like this isn’t such a big deal, or that it never
happened in the first place, and act all surprised when Egyptians protest
against the U.S. government. American military support, (not counting any other
type of support), for Hosni Mubarak’s repressive and torturous dictatorship was
$1.3 billion a year alone, (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2011/0127/Joe-Biden-says-Egypt-s-Mubarak-no-dictator-he-shouldn-t-step-down).
The protesters in last year’s revolution were burning with anger when they saw
that the rubber bullets and tear gas canisters being shot at them had “Made in
the U.S.A.” on them. Their blood boiled when they saw the police’s vehicles and
APCs were given to Mubarak’s thugs by the U.S.
Not
only did the U.S. finance Mubarak’s dictatorship, but we knew exactly what
the fuck he had been doing for decades, and still financed it anyway. We
can’t play the “we didn’t know” excuse for this one. Jane Myer, in her book The
Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on
American Ideals, says that the U.S. State Department reported that: “detainees
were "stripped and blindfolded; suspended from a ceiling or doorframe with
feet just touching the floor; beaten with fists, whips, metal rods, or other
objects; subjected to electrical shocks; and doused with cold water [and]
sexually assaulted," (p.112).
On
January 15, 2009, the U.S. Ambassador in Egypt wrote the following in a secret
cable published by WikiLeaks:
"Police brutality in Egypt against
common criminals is routine and pervasive. Contacts describe the police using
force to extract confessions from criminals as a daily event, resulting from
poor training and understaffing. Brutality against Islamist detainees has
reportedly decreased overall, but security forces still resort to torturing
Muslim Brotherhood activists who are deemed to pose a political threat. Over
the past five years, the government has stopped denying that torture exists,
and since late 2007 courts have sentenced approximately 15 police officers to
prison terms for torture and killings...NGO contacts estimate there are
literally hundreds of torture incidents every day in Cairo police stations
alone." ("US embassy cables: Police brutality in Egypt,"
Guardian/UK, January 28, 2011.)
And
we gave these guys weapons, food, vehicles, and surveillance equipment! Again,
as I’ve asked in my past posts, what does that make us? But wait! It gets even
better. Not only have we knowingly and voluntarily financed torture,
kidnappings, rapes, oppression and denial of people’s basic human rights in
Egypt, we’ve actually facilitated it! That’s right, according to the ACLU, a
former CIA officer said "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a
prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If
you want someone to disappear—never to see them again—you send them to
Egypt." ("Fact Sheet: Extraordinary Rendition," ACLU, December
6, 2005).”
So
now do you see why Egyptians are so pissed off at the U.S.? It’s not because
they’re ignorant and violent, it’s not because they’re jealous of our
“intelligence and power”, it’s not because Islam is commanding them to attack
non-Muslims, no, it’s because WE FINANCED AND SUPPORTED kidnappings, torture,
sexual assaults, murders, and assassinations in Egypt! And since the
American embassy is the only piece of American territory in Egypt, that would
make it the logical place to start. Since foreign aid to Egypt goes through the
embassy and embassy diplomats are the ones that facilitate the money to
Mubarak’s thugs, again, that would make it the logical place to attack.
Imagine
if it was the other way around, if you still can’t understand the legitimacy of
this anger. Imagine if Egypt gave billions of dollars to an American politician
or general that had his own army, and he took control of this country and made
it a dictatorship. And, using this money that he got from Egypt, he took away
our rights guaranteed by the Constitution. He used this money to pay thugs to
kidnap American citizens that were brave enough to become politically involved
against the dictatorship. These thugs would torture American citizens,
sometimes killing them, and they would never be heard from again. American
women who were kidnapped would be sexually assaulted and raped.
Wouldn’t
you be just a tad pissed off at Egypt for causing so much pain, destruction and
agony against the American people? Wouldn’t you want the Egyptian embassy to
get the fuck off of American territory? Yeah, you would be pissed off! Now you
see my point.
Some
people would counter this, saying “This attack is not about any U.S. support
for Mubarak, this about some dumb anti-Islamic film that was possibly being
shown in the U.S. embassy.” I would answer “The film was simply the fuse that
lit the powder keg. That was the thing that sent the Egyptians into the
streets, but they do not have short term memory loss. They have not forgotten
what the U.S. had been doing to them for decades. Was World War 1 all about the
assassination of Arch-Duke Ferdinand? Of course not, but his assassination
sparked the war. You cannot look at events without background history and context.”
Lastly,
some people will say “Oh well, Mubarak fell in 2011, so why are the Egyptians
attacking us just now?” I would answer “Just because a crime happened last
year, doesn’t mean it should count anymore? No, that’s not logical. That’s not
how we think towards any other crime, so why should we think that way towards
this one? Who cares when it happened, the fact is that we did these crimes
towards the Egyptian people, and now, they are fighting back. They have every
right to fight against torturers, rapists, and killers. Christianity supports
this. Communism supports this. Islam supports this, etc. We have these rights
as Americans, (right to attack people who are injuring/killing/raping other
people), so American values supports fighting against criminals as well.”
(Photo is from CNN. Some sources and quotes are from revcom/us).
(Photo is from CNN. Some sources and quotes are from revcom/us).
