On Sunday 5 October, the New York Times ran a particularly scathing editorial about Egypt, one that did little more than recap articles and editorials that had previously appeared in this usually reputable US publication. The list of charges against Egypt was by now familiar: the government's dispersal of the Rabaa gathering last year was a Chinese-style massacre, and the current regime is just as authoritarian — if not more so — than that of former president Hosni Mubarak. The authors of the Times editorial then proceeded to urge the US government to discontinue military aid to Egypt until the latter had proved “worthy” of such generosity. The editorial was quite typical, taken almost verbatim from earlier ones in the same paper. This in itself is curious. One expects a newspaper that has made its name on the premise that it offers its readership, whether laymen or decision-makers, something fresh to read to not publish warmed-up odds and ends. Even more surprising was the fact that the editorial seemed outdated, as if it had just been retrieved from a drawer belonging to a member of the editorial board. In fact, much has changed since the Times and its like-minded peers used to describe Egypt in such terms. One of the things that has changed is that President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi met recently with US President Barack Obama in New York, thus putting to rest the notion that Egypt had staged a coup in the summer of last year. During their meeting the two men reviewed matters of common concern to both America and Egypt. The second thing that has changed is that President Al-Sisi has addressed the UN, calling attention to the fact that Egypt, under the new regime, is a partner in the war on terror, a war that both Cairo and Washington are currently conducting together. A third change has been that Egypt's relations with the international community have recently taken a new course as a result of the international and regional alliance against the Islamic State (IS), a campaign which many people believe is likely to be a long one.
From Cairo's point of view, this is a war as it covers all forms of terror in the region, whether in Syria, Iraq, Libya or Egypt. It therefore makes complete sense for Washington to resume its political and military relations with Egypt, whether the New York Times approves of this or not. A fourth and even more crucial change has been that the conditions in Egypt are not as they once were. The Muslim Brotherhood-led “Alliance for the Support of Legitimacy” has disintegrated. Even Qatar has asked Brotherhood leaders to leave its soil.
With Egypt's security situation and economy steadily improving, the June 2013 Revolution has gained more ground, and the country's roadmap has proceeded according to schedule, with preparations under way for legislative elections before the end of this year. Important steps have been taken in the direction of economic reform, with impressive and unshakable support from the Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In the light of all these developments, casting aspersions on Egypt's elected president or hinting that the Brotherhood will move away from moderation to extremism is pointless. And bringing the views of Human Rights Watch, the US-based nongovernmental organisation (NGO), into the discussion doesn't lead us anywhere.
In sum, when the New York Times publishes such editorials, it squanders its reputation for fresh vision and analysis, neither of which were detectable in this case. Those of us who hold this liberal publication in generally high regard may not be aware of other relevant developments, one of which was that this particular editorial was published only a few days after a major workshop on the Egyptian media tackled the same issues. The workshop in question was organised by the School for Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, Gallup, and the Egyptian-US Dialogue Initiative. It was attended by nearly 30 Egyptian experts, including myself, and a similar number of prominent American journalists and academics.
The workshop offered clear evidence that the US political scene is moving away from the perspective of the New York Times and its stereotypical editorials. Among those whom I met at the workshop I detected a new sense of awareness of Middle Eastern affairs, one that is likely to lead experts and groups to think differently about everything that has happened in the region since January 2011.
The people I talked to seemed better informed and shrewder in their views than anything the Times seems to be offering us these days. Many of them work for institutions with branches in Arab countries. Gallup has conducted several opinion polls in Egypt, and the results have offered a picture of the facts that is completely different from what the Times editorial suggests. It seems to me as if the liberal wave that brought Obama to office and kept him there for a second term may be ebbing, as the Republicans seem poised to control the Senate, as well as the House of Representatives. Among US think tanks and NGOs, and in American newspapers and on television, I sense that a shift is taking place in the analysis of Egypt and the developments that are taking place here.
Such a change may explain why Obama, after so much wavering, has now decided to use lethal power against IS in Iraq, a clear shift since for years the US opted for the selective assassinations of terrorist leaders rather than military action against their groups. We need to keep the New York Times editorial in perspective. Dismissing the paper's views as irrelevant may be unwise, but attributing too much weight to them, or blaming ourselves for failing to get our point across to the American media and public, would be just as foolish.
