The Rule of Law in the Middle East: A Perspective
America's Moral Imperative: Standing for Democracy in Egypt and Beyond
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."
This was said by the great American and social revolutionary Martin Luther King Jr.
In Pittsburgh, people all over the country stand with the Egyptian people today. People are protesting in the nation's capital today in front of the White House and the Egyptian Embassy.
Our country has waged many wars that have ended in the deaths of our own troops in the name of democracy, but our administration, for some reason, seems to have a selective permeability when it comes to allowing dictators to remain in power
If a political regime is hiring fake protestors to create the illusion of constituents supporting the government, it is impossible, in good conscience, to continue supporting such an authoritarian regime.
But America has yet to stand up for the Egyptian people, but continues to stand up for its government. Doesn't it then become duplicity of the politicians who say the Middle East is incapable of democracy, while they are funding a regime with 1.3 billion dollars in aid annually to maintain El Sisi's oppressive dictatorship?
Though this country, the blessed United States of America, sometimes veers from the rational ideology it was founded upon (remembering the Tea Party antics in Boston, of course, both from the revolutionary days of yore and more modern Instagram pages), I cannot help but look to its core foundations for inspiration. In the Declaration of Independence, it is proffered that "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government".
Similarly, it could be said that now, that such has been the patient sufferance of the Egyptians and Israelis, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. In his State of the Union, President Trump also reiterated that the idea of America endures and that our destiny remains our choice, to which I cannot help but agree.
The idea of America endures today. Today, we choose our destiny. We choose to support freedom as Americans, and we choose to support democracy, both at home and abroad.
