A man is walking home late one night when he happens upon another man, on his hands and knees, peering intently at the ground right under a street lamp.
The first man asked "Did you lose something?"
The man on his knees replied: "Yes, I've lost the key to my house."
The first man looks under the lamppost. Clearly the key is not there. "Did you lose it here?"
The man on his knees peered up at the first man: "No, I lost it in front of my house, but it's dark there, so I decided to look where I could see."
And it seems that we do this in our political discussions: We look only where there is light. Each side likes pointing to situations where they feel there is a clear moral imperative.
What neither side likes to do is look at situations that are morally dark and complex.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you exhibit A: Egypt.
Egypt presents a situation that fairly screams to Americans: "What are your values?" The history of American relations with Egypt for the past century shows an American foreign policy that, despite statement of principles, usually sides with pragmatic self interest.
Woodrow Wilson trumpeted democracy and self-determination for subjugated peoples prior to the Paris Peace Conference. The Treaty of Versailles simply substituted British and French colonialism over much of the newly defunct Ottoman Empire. (Which directly led to the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928.) For decades we supported brutal autocrats who allowed virtually no dissent, imprisoning and torturing political dissidents. The Egyptian military switched from the Soviet Union to the United States as their benefactor. We supplied their military. They made peace with Israel.
Then in 2011, a revolution. There would be democratic elections! But like the man says, "I've got some good news and some bad news." The good news was that true democratic elections (Mubarak had won the last election with 88% of the vote) were finally held. The bad news was the result: Mohammed Morsi, Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, was the winner.
Morsi's first year in power was a disaster. Morsi decreed he was free from judicial oversight, and put through a constitution which opponents feared (legitimately, I think) legalized an erosion of minority and secular rights.
So here we are, right back where we started from, with a military coup. The United States Government is forbidden by law from giving military aid to a government that has taken power in a coup. (Watching State Department spokespersons dance around the definition of 'coup' took me back to the State Department in '94 dancing around the word 'genocide' in Rwanda.)
So America, what'll it be? Do we dismiss the results of a legitimate election? Do we only approve of democracy when election results coincide with our own ambitions? Should we follow out own law and cut off military aid to the post-coup government of Egypt?
Egypt has over 22% of the Arab world's population. What happens there is critical for the future of the Middle East. But, like the man in the Sufi legend that began this post, there is no light in our debate about Egypt, no clear delineation of right and wrong, so it remains a dark place that we don't like to visit.