CAIRO: John McCain, war hero, legendry upholder of freedom and justice — your mission senator, should you decide to accept it, is to rescue Egypt from a venomous viper's nest. You wear the scars of excruciating torture. Five years of incarceration in the infamous Hanoi Hilton's dungeons seared your soul. You have known the captors of the NGO workers in Egypt for 25 years. Should you or any of your congressional colleagues fail, the President will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, John. McCain is familiar with the territory. This week's visit to Cairo is his fourth since the Arab Spring sprung. Less than nine months ago he led a delegation of American businessmen representing companies including General Electric, Coca-Cola, Boeing, Dow, Marriott International and Exxon Mobil. McCain rang the opening bell at the Egyptian Stock Exchange. He said Americans want Egypt's revolution to succeed so that the world would be more secure. That was then. Now the senator with more knowledge than any other on earth of the perilous path being trod, says unless the NGO workers are released, Congress may cut off all aid to Egypt. McCain's the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, a position that humbles US presidents with trillion-dollar budgets. Egypt's economic woes and military spending are small change in McCain's world. On the face of it, McCain's mission may, as he says, be focused on resolving the crisis over the prosecution of American NGO workers in Cairo. Far more important, however, is the realignment of the region. Probably the easiest to read is Tunisia. Their large secular middle class is being incorporated into the coalition the Islamists who won their election formed to write a new constitution. Libya's a nightmare. Lawless Tripoli. Armed gangs holding Qaddafi loyalists in torture chambers pose all manner of threats. Syria's Assad is the embodiment of evil, a prince of darkness so deep in a cave he's unaware of reality. Egypt's problems? Minor by comparison, by Washington's standards. NGO hostages? If McCain twitched his pinky a posse of navy seals would hoist them out faster than green grass through a goose. When you're in it as deep as McCain you're focused on wars not spats. He's trying to navigate a non-violent policy through treacherous waters to tame the rages in Syria and Iran. Just at the moment it seems that is Mission Improbable. The implications for the region of a nuclear-armed Iran and a collapsed Syria are unimaginable. America has a perfectly capable ambassador in Cairo. The embassy has protected accommodation all over town to take care of 19 Americans the Egyptians might like to arraign. If Egypt thinks the American administration will allow itself to be humiliated with Sam LaHood the son of the US Transportation Secretary appearing in white overalls in a cage in a Cairo courthouse next Sunday it's confirmation Egypt's puppet government is in cloud cuckoo land. Here's how McCain might see things. Egypt has charged 44 people with spending money from organizations that were operating in Egypt without a license. That's comparable to running a red light in Talaat Harb Street at four in the morning. What about the US presenting charges to the International Court of Justice with clear evidence of 1,000 cases of murder, torture, rape, arson and theft by the leaders of Egypt since the Arab Spring? What does that mean in practice? Every politician that's cooperating with the military junta and every general in SCAF will be restricted from travelling out of Egypt. They'd be arrested when they landed. No more shopping trips to Paris and London. No more facelifts in Switzerland. No more summer holidays in Florida retreats. No more EU meetings. Isolation. The latest word is McCain has no intention of demanding the NGO workers' immediate release or negotiating with the Egyptian government directly. That would be demeaning for a real-life military hero. McCain spent five and a half years in various prison camps in North Vietnam, three-and-a-half of those in solitary confinement. He was beaten and tortured repeatedly before he was released, along with other American POWs. He refused an offer of early release, saying there were plenty of other captured soldiers before his turn to be freed. He says he plans to express the seriousness of the issue to Egyptian military leaders. He says the NGOs are not sowing unrest but rather helping Egypt develop civic institutions. He will also try to explain the congressional politics of the moment and the real possibility that Congress will cut off US aid to Egypt over the crisis. McCain said he realizes that the generals may not be in control of the situation and may not be able to solve the NGO crisis even if they wanted to. McCain says the Minister of International Cooperation, Fayza Abul-Naga is behind the kerfuffle. Ms. Abul-Naga won't know what hit her if she is confronted by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Cuban-American born chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. At a hearing on the issue last week, she said Abul-Naga should not be exempt from punitive actions. This is not about sovereignty, she said, but about patronage and corruption. She said no further US assistance should be provided to any ministry that is controlled by the minister of international cooperation. Or, as the Commander-in-Chief might have said to his top agent: Senator, this isn't Mission Impossible. It's Mission Difficult, which should be a walk in the park for you. Philip Whitfield is a Cairo commentator.
