Realpolitik

In 1953, the Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeh, was overthrown by a CIA-backed coup and

replaced by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Mossadeh had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company the previous year, had balked at compensating the British for their losses and then cut off diplomatic relations with the UK while facing a mounting threat from the Tudeh, Iran's Communist party. President Eisenhower understood that if Mossadeh were overthrown by the Communists, the Soviet Union would control Iran's huge oil reserves, threaten commerce through the Persian Gulf, destabilize the Middle East and gain a major strategic advantage, so he authorized an operation that resulted in Mossadeh's ouster and the elevation of the Shah. Dirty and distasteful, yes, but given the circumstances, Ike had little choice: Stand on idealistic principles and suffer a strategic defeat or get his hands dirty and throw a roadblock in front of the Soviets.

Guatemala in 1954 was led by Jacobo Arbenz, a democratically-elected Leftist who had nationalized United Fruit, a US company, the previous year and who had refused to compensate the owners for their losses, and whose political base included a vocal and growing Communist Party. After Arbenz appointed several Communists to positions within his government, President Eisenhower decided that he wouldn't wait for Guatemala to become a Soviet satellite and he authorized a CIA operation to topple Arbenz, Operation PBSUCCESS. With clandestine radio broadcasts and by co-opting an existing anti-Communist guerrilla force, CIA convinced the Guatemalan Army that they faced overwhelming numbers and that the US was about to intervene. The army refused to support Arbenz, the President fled the country and Operation PBSUCCESS was a success, forestalling a Soviet beachhead in Central America.

In 1963, the United States sanctioned a military coup in South Vietnam in which a group of Army and Air Force officers overthrew and executed President Ngo Dinh Diem over his corrupt and autocratic rule, which had included rigging elections and arresting and executing political opponents. Occurring as it did only three weeks before President John F. Kennedy was himself assassinated, this event is tinged with more than a hint of irony given Kennedy's themes of hope and self-determination for post-colonial countries (he did found the Peace Corps, after all), but the United States was locked in a life-or-death struggle in the early 1960's with the international Communist movement. President Eisenhower had involved the United States in Vietnam to prevent a Communist takeover of Indochina based on the "domino theory" - if Vietnam collapsed, then Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma and Indonesia would soon follow - and Kennedy had adopted Eisenhower's policy and the underlying rationale. He held his nose at Diem's corruption but when the opportunity arose to get rid of him and replace him with someone who would hold free elections, respect free speech and the press, release political prisoners and take aggressive action against the Viet Cong, Kennedy didn't hesitate: Diem was killed and US interests were advanced.

The latest crisis in Egypt illustrates once again the Priest-King administration's painful ineptitude in foreign policy. From the 2008 campaign onward, Priest-King has trumpeted a Leftist approach to foreign affairs that included pandering to the Islamic world, the Russians, the Chinese, the Palestinians and the UN, cutting American military power, vacillating during the Arab Spring, retreating from Iraq and Afghanistan, alienating Great Britain and Israel and generally acting as a bystander in global affairs rather than as the world's only true superpower. Leftist dogma holds that an aggressive American foreign policy that gives top priority to American strategic interests is selfish, arrogant, anachronistic and crude, therefore, American interests should be ignored to mollify the bruised egos of other countries, even countries hostile to us. We are the world's oldest and greatest democracy so we must respect the results of democratic elections wherever they are held, even if the results run counter to our long-term interests; to do otherwise is hypocrisy, goes the Leftist fellow-traveler mindset. This approach, as you may have noticed, is characteristic of liberal philosophy on at least three points, namely:

1. America is always to blame
2. A preoccupation with the opinions of other countries
3. Ideology trumps reality

...and has proven wholly inadequate. In January 2006, HAMAS won a majority of seats in the Palestinian parliament in a democratic election. Nouri al-Maliki is the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iraq. However, HAMAS is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and al-Maliki is an Iranian puppet, so the fact they both won free elections is not enough: We want democracies that also support our strategic interests.

Mohamed Morsi was elected President of Egypt in that country's first free election ever last year but is also a hardcore member of the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the oldest and most extreme terrorist groups in the Middle East. (Ayman al-Zawahiri is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, you will recall.) Since his election in June 2012, the Egyptian economy has tanked while Morsi sacked the most senior members of Egypt's military and intelligence structure, seized all executive and legislative power for himself, declared a state of emergency during which he could take any action he deemed necessary to "protect the revolution," cracked down on free speech and free exercise of religion (Christian churches have been attacked and Christians have persecuted to the point of crucifixion), promoted sharia law and pursued an extreme Islamic agenda. He was able, in only one year, to antagonize every segment of Egyptian society except the Muslim fanatics of his base and - notably - the Priest-King administration, who threw their full support behind him. The $1.5 billion in military aid that we give Egypt every year was confirmed and Hillary Clinton and Priest-King himself both publicly declared their support for Morsi's regime, again solely because he was democratically elected. And now he has been ousted by popular demand and Priest-King is flummoxed, unable or unwilling to grasp that he has bet on the wrong horse ..again.

Foreign policy is not for ideologues or the faint of heart. In Egypt's case, Hosni Mubarak was a dictator but a dictator that we could work with: He fought on our side in Desert Storm, he honored his treaties with us and with Israel, he kept a lid on Islamic extremists and he was a solid ally for thirty years. Throwing him under the bus in favor of Mohamed Morsi was a strategic mistake and we will pay for it. The Egyptians who protested and risked their lives to oppose Morsi are angry that we supported him and ignored their grievances, they will remember that we did nothing to help them in their hour of need, that the world's champion of freedom sat on its hands in their crisis, and they will never trust us again. The world is the way the world is, Mr. President, not the way you want it to be.