If you really want to get a sense of the dark side of neoconservatism, look no further than Michael Rubin’s thoughts on Egypt. He writes today, as the streets continue to flow with blood:
The notion that the United States should castigate or abandon the Egyptian army because it caused more deaths than the Muslim Brotherhood is short-sighted and based on the corrosive notion that the stronger side has a responsibility for restraint.
Too many in the media and the State Department suffer from the David and Goliath syndrome in which they bestow sympathy and perhaps even a sense of justice on the weakest side, regardless of its beliefs and goals.
In other words, have no sympathy for the hundreds of civilians that have been mowed down by the military. War between two militaries is a tragedy that should never occur, but at least you’re comparing apples to apples. In Egypt, the military has attacked its own civilians. Sparing civilians is a “corrosive notion”?
Rubin keeps going:
…in recent days, the Muslim Brotherhood has suffered the brunt of the violence, but that does not exculpate it: The Brotherhood is frenzied enough that if it had access to greater weaponry, it would simply kill more.
Talk about using your imagination! If the civilians had tanks and military weapons, then more troops would have died? That’s the argument?
They’re civilians! Of course they don’t have tanks!
So what should the United States do? So long as the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to turn back the clock, impose its hateful and intolerant ideology upon Egyptians of all religiosities and religions, and refuses to abide by the pathway to transitional elections, and so long as it continues to fight in the streets, then it should suffer the consequences of its actions. And if those consequences result in exponentially higher Brotherhood casualties than army casualties, then so be it.
The Muslim Brotherhood was democratically elected and were forced out by a military coup. To expect them to roll over without protest is naive. But mowing down civilians by using the military should not even be an option. But since that option has been taken, Rubin gives his thumbs up, and sides with the military.
The irony of it all is Rubin’s very next sentence, which ends his hard to read article:
That is the truest path to peace.
