The curse of the new and the decline of Egypt.

The Chinese are said to take the long view in matters of statecraft and what other view can there be, given the truth of what Marcus Aurelius said over 1,800 years ago:

Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgment. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion.

Meditations.

One black lady from Barbados was interviewed on National Public Radio several years ago. She lived on the wild and beautiful east coast of the island and owned property there. She thought it ironic that slavery, which had brought her people to the island, had ended up being the cause of so many blessings in her life. The same can be said for American blacks. Whatever the ordeal of their ancestors was, they are still blessed a thousand times over to be here rather than where their ancestors came from. (The Colonel is amused by demands for reparations.)

So historical developments are not necessarily clear about the benefits that may result from events. Yet mankind yearns to believe that some new and felicitous dispensation will be ushered in by:

• a change of skin color,
• assurances of fidelity to the will of the people,
• grand revolutionary plans,
• maxed out piety, and/or
• the dispatch of venal and sybarritic kings and ministers to the afterlife (or the Riviera).

Such is a consummation devoutly to be wished, if we quote the great poet accurately, but, alas, it rarely is. Consummated, we mean. And Lord knows we are in favor of consummation.

A case in point is the following evocative assessment by Michael Totten of the sad history of Egypt since the glory days of Nasser's ascendancy.

We remember knowledgeable friends' speaking with reverent tones of Nasser and assorted nationalists elsewhere in the Middle East, thanks to whom there would now be dignity for "the People," respect from former colonial masters, and an end to arbitrary government.

One story was told that a British officer in a British club in the olden times was served a whiskey and soda by an Egyptian waiter that, or who, was not to his liking and he thereupon shot the man with his revolver there and then.

No more. Aux le dustbin d'Histoire.

Whether this sort of thing did evaporate in Egypt we do not know, though we strongly doubt it. This will have to await further study by the Colonel, if we can get around to it. (Just going to the grocery store and to pick up our laundry requires a two-hour nap minimum.)

However, if we shift our attention to Iran, that the Shah and Savak, the secret police, were replaced by an Islamic fundamentalist regime of unparalleled savagery is well documented. Most recently we have witnessed the hanging of a young woman by an Iranian judge suspected of himself making the sexual advances on her that he accused her of having made on or welcomed from her boyfriend.

There we have also seen the death of a young woman after 30 lashes of her 60-lash punishment for swimming in her pool at home and causing a "state of arousal" in a neighbor man. (Not that!) A literal stonings to death for adultery (carried out contrary to the provisions of the sharia supposedly permitting this barbarism). Surgical removal of an eye in obedience to the sharia. And more.

What is this but the behavior of savages?

Here is a short account of recent history in Egypt:

Mubarak's regime doesn't fail merely in politics. It spectacularly fails in every way a state can possibly fail. [Moribund economy, vast slums in garbage dumps and cemeteries, illiteracy, rule by mafiosi, stifling control, corruption, Cairo a huge North African slum] . . . .

It has been this way for some time in Egypt. But before Gamal Abdel Nasser and his Arab Nationalist revolution in the 1950s, things were different.

Fifty years ago Cairo was a relatively wealthy, liberal, cosmopolitan jewel of North Africa and the Middle East. . . . [Photos of the slums conceal] the backwardness, the gloom, and the depressed condition of the place since Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and Mubarak took out their blunt instruments and went to work on it.

In the 1950s Nasser purged Egypt of its tolerance, its riches, its openness, and its variety. He brought in Soviet advisers, ramped up the secret police, and ruthlessly smashed everyone who opposed him. Nearly all the Greeks, Jews, and other minorities were expelled in his attempt to make Egypt into a monolithically Arab country. His nationalization of industry and private property turned the economy into an incompetently micromanaged catastrophe.

In short, when the long wave of colonialism finally receded it was followed by successive waves of arbitrary and ignorant rule far worse than what preceded. Tainted, as always, by the stink of socialism. Always, oh always, let there be the wise men and women who will know the needs of the masses better than they do themselves.

But . . . they still are celebrating the recent election of Hamas in the P.A.

And exciting changes are in the offing . . . .

"The Slow Rot of Hosni Mubarak." By Michael Totten, TCSDaily, 1/5/06.