The ‘Cairo 19? Got What They Deserve
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Walking along
a Moscow street, in
2006, a man picks up a rock and carries it away: nothing about
that is suspicious in itself, now is it? Except that the rock was
fake, a hollowed out simulation that contained electronic equipment:
it was the equivalent of a “drop box” in which Russian agents of
British intelligence were able to download information from a hand-held
device – likely a mobile phone – and provide it to their British
handlers operating out of Her Majesty's Embassy. One of the individuals
secretly filmed by the Russian security bureau retrieving messages
was the British official responsible for making disbursements to
Russian “human rights” organizations. When the Russians examined
the contents of the fake rock, they found it contained information
on illegal payments made to Russian individuals working for “human
rights” NGOs. Although the Brits denied
it at the time, Jonathan Powell, a former chief of staff to
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, admitted
to the scheme in a recent four-part BBC series on Putin's Russia.
The admission
came at an inconvenient time: during Russia's tumultuous presidential
election, in which the Russian opposition was accusing Vladimir
Putin of stealing
the vote, and Putin, in turn, was characterizing the opposition
as paid
tools of Washington. The Americans did nothing to disabuse Russians
of this charge: indeed, when the new US Ambassador to the Kremlin,
Michael McFaul, arrived in Moscow, he met with leaders of the Russian
opposition on his second
day in town. As Eric Kraus, a Moscow-based fund manager, put
it:
“One should
first ask what the reaction would have been in the United States
if the British ambassador to Washington began his mandate by throwing
an open house for ‘Occupy Wall Street' – it would have been
considered a hostile act. Why is Russia any different? Russia is
a sovereign state, not a protectorate, and the job of any ambassador
is to facilitate state-to-state relations, not to become a player
in domestic politics.”
But of course
the US is indeed involved in the domestic politics of practically
every nation on earth, and it even has an official agency in charge
of such meddling. The National
Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a “public-private” institution
that receives direct grants of US tax dollars, which it then funnels
abroad via its four
main constituent parts: the National Democratic Institute (NDI),
affiliated with the Democratic party, the International Republican
Institute (IRI), a division of the GOP, the American Center for
International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), sponsored and partially
funded by the AFL-CIO, and the Center for International Private
Enterprise, affiliated with the US Chamber of Commerce. Founded
in 1984, NED played a key
role in undermining the Nicaraguan government at a time when
the US government was illegally funding the so-called “contras,”
who were carrying out a terrorist campaign against the authorities
in Managua.
In 1985, it
was revealed the NED
had been financing two groups in France, of all places: the National
Inter-University Union (UNI), and Force Ouvriere (FO), a labor organization.
UNI was an offshoot of the Service for Civic Action, an extremist
right-wing terrorist group that had killed several people in the
south of France and engaged in drug smuggling. UNI scored $575,000
from NED. FO was in a pitched battle with left-wing unions for supremacy
in the French labor movement, and the US funding via NED – to the
tune of $830,000 – was seen as an attempt to undermine Francois
Mitterand's socialist government.
In 1989, when
Nicaragua's Sandinista government was being challenged by the opposition
– led by newspaper publisher Violeta Chamorro, and her United Nicaraguan
Opposition (UNO) – Congress passed a $9
million appropriation for the NED to get involved in the Nicaraguan
election. It passed with one restriction, however: none of the money
was to be used to help one particular party. In reality, however,
almost all the funding went to the UNO. In tandem with the flood
of millions of dollars into the opposition, the US unleashed the
contras, inflicting unprecedented
violence on civilians and wrecking the economy.
The Endowment
has been a vital instrument in the deployment of “soft power” to
further US interests, acting as a conduit for funding the “color
revolutions” that were sparked by US-funded activists in Serbia,
Ukraine, Georgia, and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
It is, in short, a weapon in the US arsenal designed to effect “regime
change” in countries deemed insufficiently enthusiastic about becoming
– or staying – a US protectorate.
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Although the
“Arab Spring” looks to have taken the US by surprise, Washington
moved quickly – via the NED and USAID – to coopt the movement. It
appears, though, that the Egyptian government – which has just elected
a majority Muslim
Brotherhood parliament – is having none of it: Cairo recently
put NED activists, including the son of the US Secretary of Transportation,
on a “no fly” list, and announced it will prosecute a number of
individuals, including 19 Americans, for engaging in illegal activities.
Washington is outraged, and its amen corner is already mobilizing
in support of the “Cairo
19.”
Egypt, like
the US, has strict
controls on foreign interference in its internal politics: foreign-funded
organizations must register with the government, and give a complete
accounting of their activities. The US has even stricter controls:
foreign contributions to electoral activities on American soil are
forbidden by US law, and, in addition, groups receiving
funding from foreign governments must register as foreign agents.
The penalty
for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) is five
years in prison and a $10,000 fine – roughly equivalent (except
for the fine) to the penalty faced by the “Cairo 19.”
Neither IRI
nor NDI ever registered with the authorities in Egypt: the
claim is that they didn't do so because “the laws required licenses
that were almost never granted” and “exerted government control
over foreign contributions.” Of course, the New York Times
reporter who wrote this neglected to inform his readers that the
US absolutely bans any foreign intervention in the electoral process
on its own soil. That's the Americans' signature
stance in the world: one standard for me, and another for thee….
It's hard to
believe anyone with the least bit of objectivity would blame the
Egyptians for reacting to interference in their politics the way
they have, but Harper's Scott Horton has stepped into the
breach with a
polemic that is as unconvincing as it is arrogant.
Horton blames
the Muslim Brotherhood for “coddling the military,” and seeking
to cement its power by refusing to investigate corruption in the
barracks. He writes that the Brotherhood's pact with the military
brought on the prosecution:
“Under
attack are the National Democratic Institute and the International
Republican Institute – two venerable, congressionally funded organizations
linked to America's two political parties, each with a solid record
of accomplishment in the global struggle for democracy.”
From funding
the French extreme right to overthrowing the Sandinistas by means
of terrorism – that's a “solid record of accomplishment,” alright,
except it has nothing to do with “the global struggle for democracy”
and everything to do with advancing Washington's global ambitions.
For Horton, naturally, there is no difference between these two
goals – but the inhabitants of the countries whose politics we are
meddling in may see it differently.
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While speculating
the Egyptians could actually “believe that organizations dedicated
to promoting democracy are actually working to overthrow the Egyptian
state in the interests of some foreign power,” he dismisses this
out of hand because “placing the blame for domestic problems on
the unseen hand of a foreign foe is an ancient and sometimes effective
strategy for a government in extremis.”
Given the NED's
long
record of manipulating the internal politics of nations we've
targeted for “regime change,” is it really all that unreasonable
for the Egyptians to suspect something is amiss? Oh, but no, according
to Horton:
“Whether
they occur in Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Hungary, or Israel, attacks
on NGOs, especially those focused on democracy advocacy and human
rights, are the hallmark of illiberalism. In Egypt, they demonstrate
how the revolution has run off course. And they show the country's
deep-seated suspicion of the United States. The Obama Administration
is right to treat these developments with alarm. So should the Egyptians
still protesting at Tahrir Square.”
If it's “illiberal”
to resent and oppose foreign interference in domestic politics,
then one looks forward to Horton's call for the abolition of the
Foreign Agents Registration Act, and similar legislation.
Apart from that, however, a far more important point is Horton's definition of illiberalism as a refusal to allow such interference: implicit here is the idea that the US government is the agency of a “liberal” ideology which it is duty bound to export abroad. Washington, in this view, is the embodiment of “liberalism,” just as Moscow embodied Leninism in the cold war era. To oppose the activities of the NED and its international affiliates is “illiberal” in the same sense opposing Communist subversion in, say, the Americas, was considered “reactionary” by the Kremlin and its American apologists. The NED is the American version of the old Third International: the obedient instrument of US foreign policy. To question its right to intervene anywhere is to align oneself with the forces of darkness.
February 14, 2012
Justin Raimondo [send him mail] is editorial director of Antiwar.com and is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
Copyright © 2012 Antiwar.com