Rich Lowry: The Brotherhood delusion

BY RICH LOWRY Published: December 3, 2012

“He sensed,” the paper continued, in a gushing tone, “an engineer's precision with surprisingly little ideology.”


Obama famously disdained Mitt Romney. But the devotee of an Islamist organization about to stage a self-coup? Now, that's a man he can work with.

The business about an engineer's precision is priceless. What did the president expect? Morsi to try to convert him to Islam and harangue him about Malia and Sasha not wearing headscarves?

Morsi didn't get where he is today without rationally calculating his interests. He probably has many crisply precise conversations every day; that doesn't make his ultimate goal any less unreasonable.

A more personal fantasy

The administration's reaction to Morsi's decree has been, “Well, golly, we hope everyone can talk things through.” In its mealy mouthed noncondemnations, the Obama administration does no favors to the real moderates in the streets of Egypt pushing to get Morsi to back down.

But delusion is hard to give up. We always want to believe that other people are just like us and have, at bottom, the same practical concerns. It's simply not true of fanatics.

Obama is subject to a more personal fantasy, which is the belief that he is uniquely suited to convince people hostile to us that we want to be their friends. This might make for nice phone calls, but it won't change the convictions of a Mohamed Morsi.

If our leverage in Egypt is limited, we should still be using every bit of it to resist Morsi's power grab. The first step is to let go of delusions — and perhaps read more Ambrose Bierce.


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