Egypt Is Voting, Iraq Will Vote in April - Don't Count the Middle East Out Yet

It may not feel like a "normal" election in a Western country, but it is an election nonetheless. Today and tomorrow, Egyptians are voting on a new constitution in a referendum that will lead to a likely presidential try by the nation's top general, military chief General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in a sweeping turnaround of the Egyptian government last July supported by the vast majority of Egyptians who demanded it, then. And who support it massively, it seems, now. The vote is expected to result in the approval of a military-backed political roadmap for new elections for a president and a parliament to replace the radical islamist Moslem Brotherhood - Mohammed Morsi government ousted in July. Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation and a leader in religious and political thought in the Arab world, has been sharply divided between a small but often violent group of Brotherhood supporters in one camp, and the military, security forces and their supporters on the other. AP reports that the voting is marked by 'paranoia', with authorities, the pro-military media and a significant segment of the population showing little or no tolerance for dissent. Those who campaigned for a "no" vote risked arrest by the police, and Egyptians who voiced their opposition to the charter, even just parts of it, were quickly labeled as traitors or close supporters of Morsi. Some 160,000 soldiers and more than 200,000 policemen have been deployed across the nation of 90 million people to protect polling stations and voters against possible attacks by militants loyal to Morsi. According to AP, cars were prevented from parking or driving past polling stations and women were searched by female police officers. CNN showed military helicopters hovering over Cairo and other major cities. A bomb exploded at a Cairo courthouse, with no casualties, in the densely populated neighborhood of Imbaba - a Brotherhood stronghold. Four people were killed as clashes broke out between pro-Morsi protesters and security forces in the south. In the Cairo working class district of Nahya, pro-Morsi protesters shot and hurled rocks at a polling station before closing all entrances with chains, scaring away voters and locking election officials inside, Mohammed Seragedeen, the judge in charge of the station, said. This week's referendum is the sixth nationwide vote since Hosni Mubarak was toppled in a popular uprising in January, 2011, with the five others widely considered the freest elections ever seen in Egypt, including the June 2012 balloting won by Morsi, but afterward tainted by criticism that many of the freedoms won in the anti-Mubarak revolution vanished. After millions of Egyptians took to the streets to demand that the military remove Morsi, el-Sissi led a fierce crackdown on the Moslem Brotherhood and its sharia-based constitution. The new constitution is a heavily amended version of the Morsi islamist constitution that was ratified in December 2012 with 64% of the vote but with a nationwide turnout of just over 30% that made it suspect as representing the political will of the Egyptian people. BUT there are major changes in the new constitution -- it is backed by the military, would ban political parties based on religion, give women equal rights and protect the status of minority Christians. It also gives the military special status by allowing it to select its own candidate for the job of defense minister for the next eight years and empowering it to try in military courts civilians who attack military installations or personnel. And the military has carried out a major PR campaign, supported by threats to deal harshly with anyone who attempts to interfere with the referendum vote, in an effort to have a bigger "yes" majority and larger turnout to win undisputed legitimacy and a popular mandate for military chief General el-Sissi to run for president this year. The pro-military media have portrayed the balloting as the key to the nation's security and stability. Hundreds of thousands of fliers, posters, banners and billboards have urged Egyptians to vote "yes." People have been arrested for posters and campaigns calling for a "no" vote. El-Sissi has yet to say directly whether he plans to seek the nation's presidency, but his candidacy appears likely. After voting in Cairo's upscale Zamalek district, a woman told AP that the new constitution isn't perfect : "But we need to move forward and we can fix it later." Long lines of voters began to form nearly two hours before polling stations opened in some Cairo districts, including Imbaba, where the courthouse blast promptly whipped up anti-Brotherhood sentiment with chants and shouting against the Islamist group. The mood was generally upbeat, hostile toward the Brotherhood and hopeful that the constitution would bring better days. In one women-only line in Cairo, voters sang the national anthem together as well as patriotic songs dating back to the 1960s. "El-Sissi is my president," they chanted as some jubilantly ululated in the fashion of Arab women. Another AP interview was with Manal Hussein, who comes from a village below the Giza Pyramids plateau west of Cairo. She wore a dress in the red, black and white colors of the national flag. Her daughter wore an Islamic veil in the same colors. "This vote brings to an end the era of the Brotherhood, who divided us and turned family members against each other," Hussein said. At a nearby polling station, a 67-year-old voter said that Egyptians have consigned Morsi and the Brotherhood's yearlong rule to the past. "To the world and to those who hate Egypt, we say we want to get Egypt back on its feet," he said. The Moslem Brotherhood is now officially a terrorist organization in Egypt and Morsi is standing trial for treason. The unprecedented security surrounding the vote follows months of violence blamed on islamic militants, including an assassination attempt on the interior minister and deadly attacks on key security officers, soldiers, policemen and provincial security and military intelligence headquarters. Morsi's supporters promised massive demonstrations and labeled the draft constitution a "constitution of blood," but protests in several parts of the country drew only several hundred supporters. Most Egyptian political parties support the new constitution - the Salafist Nour Party, the liberal Dustour Party, Wafd Party and Free Egyptians Party, and the Popular Current and Tamarod (Revolt) movements. But others - the Strong Egypt Party, 6 April Youth Movement (which led protests against Hosni Mubarak and Mohammed Morsi), Revolutionary Socialists movement, and No To Military Trials movement - are against articles that preserve some of the military's wide-ranging powers. Some groups say they cannot participate in a process set up by what they call the "coup authorities" - a reference to Morsi's ouster. The pro-Moslem Brotherhood National Alliance to Support Legitimacy (NASL) plans to boycott the referendum. NASL is a coalition of islamist parties who say they want to "protect the revolution" and "defend the legitimacy" of the Morsi constitution. As expected, most of Egypt's minority Coptic Christians, who make up about 10% of the population, have backed the removal of Morsi and the new constitution in hopes of winning religious freedoms. Nassif, a 70-year old Christian from Assuit, a stronghold of Islamists and home to a large Christian community south of Cairo said : "Anyone born and raised in Egypt will vote for this constitution." ~~~~~ And that, dear readers, sums up this odd but popular constitutional referendum. Despite the media doomsayers, we must remember, we who have become blaisé in the face of hundreds of years of uneventful elections, that all democracies begin in revolt, chaos, warring factions and an unpredictable transition period. Popularly supported self-government is a human right, but it is a right that must be won. And it does not come cheap. We can't expect perfection, but we can support Egypt's effort and the popular Egyptian military, which, despite its tough tactics, has kept Egypt out of the hands of islamic extremists and on track for constitutional self-rule. And in another good sign, Iraq will hold parliamentary elections in April. Shi'ite Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds, the main Iraqi groups, will field slates : Shi'ite Arabs will be split between prime minister al-Maliki's faction and one other. The secular/sunni Iraqiya coalition will be split between former prime minister Allawi's faction and one other. Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission approved 276 political entities to run in the elections. They will appear on the ballot as part of a "coalition" (kutla) and under the Iraq constitution, the head of the largest coalition has the first call to become prime minister. So, even in Iraq, tentative democratic tendencies are visible. Let's not despair just yet.

Bob Gates Discusses the Need for Presidential Conviction to Support Troops in Time of War

We didn't have to wait long to get former Defense Secretary Robert Gates' first comments on his new book. Gates said on CBS News Sunday that he doesn't regret anything he wrote in his controversial book and calls the memoir "an honest account." In the Sunday interview, he offered a new and harsher criticism of President Obama's wartime leadership, saying that Obama didn't reach out to American troops and make them believe he supported their sacrifice. When asked by CBS presenter Rita Braver about his statement that President Obama never really had a passion for pursuing the war in Afghanistan, Gates answered : "It's one thing to tell the troops that you support them. It's another to work at making them believe that you believe as president that their sacrifice is worth it, that the cause is just, that what they are doing was important for the country, and that they must succeed,....President (George W.) Bush did that with the troops when I was Secretary. I did not see President Obama do that. As I write in the book, it was this absence of passion, this absence of a conviction of the importance of success that disturbed me." In "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War," the former Defense Secretary not only raises questions about Obama's war leadership, he also harshly criticizes Vice President Joe Biden. Gates told CBS that people credited him with being blunt and candid while he was in the Cabinet and that "I could hardly be any less in writing a book." Gates said that the different ways people look at the book reflects the country's polarized political process. He says he didn't think that waiting until after the next presidential election to discuss important issues "made any sense." Gates remains very critical of the President, saying Obama was at skeptical of his own strategy in Afghanistan. Gates' disagreements with Vice President Joe Biden were deep, but he said, "Actually I think I am in some areas complimentary of him,..but where I had a particular problem with the vice president was in his encouragement of suspicion of the military and the senior military with the president: 'You can't trust these guys. They're gonna try and jam you. They're gonna try and box you in,' and so on. And that did disturb me a lot." But Gates said he did occasionally agree with Biden. "One time when I agreed with him on something -- often Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and I would ride back to the Pentagon together from the White House -- and Mullen turned to me at one point [and] said, 'You know that you agreed with the vice president this morning.' And I said, 'Yeah, that's why I'm rethinking my position.'" ~~~~~ Dear readers, I watched a report on CNN today that brought home to me what Robert Gates is saying about a President needing to make his troops believe that their sacrifice is worthwhile. US veterans of the 2004 Fallujah battle talked about the hand-to-hand street-to-street nature of the battle to drive out the anti-government insurgents. They also remembered the people of Fallujah, some who had become friends, and said they wished them well in their current battle against terrorists. The veterans talked about their feelings concerning what's happening now in Iraq. They said that they had left the country with the capability to create its own future but that what is happening now seemed inevitable when the US troops left Iraq. The veterans were sombre when they recounted the friends dead and disabled in the battle for Fallujah, saying, however, that it was for the "cause of self-determination and that's always a worthy fight." They finally said that they were sure in 2004 that they were fighting and sacrificing themselves in a good cause - but now they aren't sure many still believe that. There was no mention of the pullout or of President Obama's hasty retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan, but his presence hung over the veterans' conversation and memories of battle and evaluation of sacrifice. Soldiers never make policy. They seldom create a winning atmosphere except in their local units. But, every young person sent to fight in any army anywhere in the world needs to know he is needed and that his sacrifice is valuable. It is the very least that political leaders - commanders in chief - must offer to the young men and women whom they put in harm's way. Without a profound conviction in the value and necessity of sacrifice in their souls, wartime political leaders become simple killing machines.

Has Israel Become the New America?

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." President George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796. Washington was leaving the office of President after two terms, despite pleas that he remain to guide the new nation. He was firm in his decision and left to begin what he called a retirement "in which I promise myself to realize without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers." One can read in Washington's Farewell Address, written 218 years ago, warnings against every political and governmental vice that attacks America today. And like every Founder, Washington insisted on religion, for them religion was Christianity, as the foundation of political virtue and on education as the means of preserving that virtue. What is most disheartening is the extent to which America has strayed from the path set out for her peace, prosperity and preservation by Washington and the Founders. They all believed that religious virtue and an educated and politically active citizenry would preserve America from harm. They were right, and they expected the Cobstitution to be the map. But that map has been drawn over and scribbled upon by many successive waves of less than religiously virtuous plaintiffs, lawyers and judges torturing the sacred document in the effort to support the succeeding waves of social unrest, caused largely by a lack of religious virtue and an educated active citizenry. So, today we are faced with an America that has driven religion, certainly Christianity, out of its national blood and muscle. Today, we see a government that cannot distinguish evil from virtue because it is managed by people whose lives are more in tune with the Terminator and Rap lyrics than Christian principles of social justice and personal ethical integrity. There are those calling for a Constitutional Convention to clean up the Constitution's defaced map and restart the nation. But, without a citizenry educated under Christian principles, the Constitution is just one more piece of paper whose words mean whatever current fads want them to mean. ~~~~~ That is why, two years ago when the Arab Spring was underway, I wrote that the ideals of the American Constitution must be adapted to the religious values and social compact of each country's people. The Constitution does not demand Christianity to work. But it does demand religious virtue - a set of guiding moral principles that pre-supposes a commonly accepted view of a virtuous and loving deity - and an educated and active citizenry. Thus far, the Arab Spring has failed to bring such a constitution to life. And today, those prerequisites for virtuous government have been driven out of American public life. ~~~~~ Dear readers, perhaps this explains why, despite being battered by those in the world who despise her integrity, Israel resonates as a country and a people bound together by a common view of God and a vision of how the nation should reflect that God's religious virtues. We are remembering Ariel Sharon today, as an uncommonly gifted military general. But Ariel Sharon was a fierce defender of Israel and the Jewish people. "Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no-one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial," he said. Yet, that said, Sharon also recognized that Israel had to improve relations with its Arab neighbors. "If we are to reach a situation of true peace, real peace, peace for generations, we will have to make painful concessions. Not in exchange for promises, but rather in exchange for peace," he said in 2003. "If it turns out that we have someone to talk to, that they understand that peace is neither terrorism nor subversion against Israel, then I would definitely say that we will have to take steps that are painful for every Jew and painful for me personally," Sharon said. Those words, for all the negative comments turning around the dead leader, are the words of a moral person guided by his religion's love of peace and brotherhood. And perhaps, just maybe, Israel has become the New America for all those who, like Israel, want the future of mankind to be peaceful and virtuous.

The World Is Bidding Farewell to Ariel Sharon, "the Lion of God"

Ariel Sharon lies near death tonight in the Sheba Medical Center. The 85-year-old former Israeli prime minister is facing his "final hours" according to a Medical Center spokesman. His condition remains mostly unchanged since the Center announced on Thursday a dramatic deterioration in his medical status. The Center at Tel Hashomer downgraded Sharon’s status to very critical on Thursday. Hospital officials said he was in immediate danger of death and that others in his condition would not have lasted as long as he has. Sharon's family gathered at the hospital to be with him in his final hours. His sons Omri and Gilad have been at his side since his condition deteriorated on January 1. “He is fighting and we are here with him all the time,” Omri Sharon told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday afternoon. Sharon’s vital organs have failed, including his kidneys and his lungs. His blood pressure and heartbeat, which returned to normal on Monday, deteriorated again on Thursday. Media from around the world have gathered at the hospital. Police distanced photographers and prevented them from taking pictures of the Sharon family. Roni Sehayek, who was raised in the Sharon household, came out to the media and said, “The situation is not good” but would not elaborate. “It is surreal,” said Dalia, a 65-year-old patient at the hospital in Tel Hashomer. “I am used to seeing crowds here awaiting a birth. I am not used to seeing so many people waiting for a death. But an era is ending and this is part of history.” Sharon’s career ended in January 2006 when he suffered a debilitating stroke, his second in under a month. Since then, he has been in a coma on life-support systems. Sheba director Ze’ev Rotstein said on Monday that only a miracle could save Sharon’s life. A day earlier, Rotstein said that Sharon, whose first name means lion in Hebrew, was “fighting like a lion.” When Sharon dies, the Prime Minister’s Office will organize a state funeral. Current and former world leaders are expected to come to Israel to attend it. His body will lie in state at the Knesset before the funeral at his Negev ranch, where he will be buried beside his wife, Lily, who died in 2000. ~~~~~ Dear readers, with the death of Ariel Sharon, the world will have lost the last great Israeli founder-soldier. Only Shimon Perez, the 90-year-old President of Israel, will remain of that herioc cadre of Jewish patriots who fought so gloriously to establish a homeland for the Jewish community that had been decimated a decade earlier in Hitler's holocaust. Sharon was a commander in the Israel Army from its inception in 1948. As a paratrooper and officer, he participated prominently in the 1948 War of Independence, becoming a platoon commander in the Alexandroni Brigade and taking part in many battles, including Operation Ben Nun Alef. He was an instrumental figure in the creation of Unit 101, and the Retribution operations, as well as in the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War of 1967, the War of Attrition, and the Yom-Kippur War of 1973. As Minister of Defense, he directed the 1982 Lebanon War. During his military career, Ariel Sharon was considered the greatest field commander in Israel's history, and one of the country's greatest ever military strategists. After his assault of the Sinai in the Six-Day War and his encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army in the Yom Kippur War, the Israel public nicknamed him "The King of Israel" and "The Lion of God." After retiring from the army, Sharon joined the Likud party, and served in a number of ministerial posts in Likud-led governments n 1977–92 and 1996–99. He became the leader of the Likud in 2000, and served as Israel's Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006. There are few generations in the history of any country that can equal the commitment, determination and success of the Israel Founders. And Ariel Sharon will be remembered as one of the handful of military commanders who made Israel happen. In 2005, he was voted the 8th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israel news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis. A $250 million park named for him is under construction outside Tel Aviv. When complete, the Ariel Sharon Park will be three times the size of New York's Central Park and introduce many new ecological technologies. A 50,000-seat amphitheatre is also planned as a national concert center. Our thoughts and prayers are with Ariel Sharon's family - and with all the Israeli people as they prepare to bid farewell to one of the greatest of their beloved heroes.