“Where’s my favorite dictator?” So said President Trump, when he was looking for Egypt’s Sisi in Biarritz last month. At least Trump got the nomenclature right. But Putin or Kim might have felt slighted.
Here is a piece by Declan Walsh. He is the New York Times’s bureau chief in Cairo, and he has been reporting from around the world for many years. I quoted him in my 2015 book Children of Monsters — in my chapter on Mobutu (dictator of Zaire) (as Mobutu renamed the country).
In 2017, Walsh wrote about Giulio Regeni, the Italian Ph.D. student at Cambridge who was tortured to death in Egypt. Walsh cited American officials who linked the murder to Egyptian police agents. This did not sit well with the dictatorship. A U.S. official tipped off the Times that Walsh ought to get out of Dodge.
But the official had not been authorized to do so. In fact, he was risking his career, to deliver the warning. His superiors were not about to intervene.
Which is new and disturbing, as Walsh outlines in his piece.
He also says that the troubles of people like him “pale” next to those of Egyptian journalists, “who have been imprisoned, exiled or killed in great numbers.” Journalists under dictatorship are some of the bravest people I know — recklessly brave, you might say.
At the U.N. on Monday, Trump was sitting with Sisi. “It’s an honor to be with my friend,” said Trump. “And he is a real leader. He’s done some things that are absolutely amazing in a short period of time. When he took over not so long ago, it was in turmoil. And it’s not in turmoil now.”
I was reminded of what Trump said about Putin, when he was running for president — when Trump was, I should specify! Joe Scarborough pointed out that Putin is someone who kills journalists and political opponents, and who invades foreign countries. Candidate Trump replied, “He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.”
Scarborough said, “But again, he kills journalists that don’t agree with him.” Trump’s answer? “Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also, Joe.”
At the U.N. on Monday, a reporter asked Trump, “Are you worried about demonstrators in Egypt who have been calling for President el-Sisi to go?” Trump replied, “No, I guess everybody has demonstrations. Even your best friend in the whole world, President Obama, he had a lot of demonstrations. No, I’m not concerned with it. Egypt has a great leader.”
In this wicked world, you sometimes have to hold your nose and get along with bad actors. That certainly applies to foreign policy. But the United States is a country with certain principles, values, and ideals. We are not just “another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe,” in the words of Bush 41.
Or are we?