Feigned Ignorance

"Nothing is easier than saying the words: I don’t know", my father used to say. Although his observation is very true, perhaps it also has an implicit passive dimension that employs ignorance to achieve hidden agendas.

Egyptian President Adbel Fatah Al Sisi made his first state visit to the USA on 9 April 2019 after being re-elected President in June 2018. The timing can’t be more opportune, considering that in a week or so, a referendum is set to take place to vote on the constitutional amendments that were passed in Parliament last February. The constitutional changes  would essentially allow the incumbent president to remain in power until 2034. The amendments will also give more prominence to the armed forces and hand the president the power to appoint judges.

Donald Trump welcomed Al Sisi and commended the improved relations between the USA and Egypt, and the enhanced efforts to combat terrorism in Egypt. However, when asked about the constitutional amendments in Egypt, the US President – who has an army of analysts and political aides to follow up on hot files – answered with a: I don’t know that there are any….or that there is a referendum. But what I know is that Al Sisi is doing a great job in Egypt.

One can blame his team of foreign policy experts who might have been selective in their reporting on Egyptian developments. Yes people are jailed, Muslim Brotherhood guys are hanged, censorship is in place, people are impoverished but de-politicized, human rights are breached but terrorism is curbed…all is well. Who cares about the level of democracy? Why mind that the Constitution would be amended for no purposeful reason? Let him rule until 2034…or until 2094. Let us balance national security interests and our rhetoric about democracy.

The fact remains that protecting national interests, at whatever expense it comes, is not ideal, but is somehow justifiable. What is not justifiable however is the double standards employed by the US government. Raising slogans of democracy and protection of human rights one side, and allowing an autocratic regime to remain in power on the other is not fine.  Threatening to bar politicians from entering the country over the murder of a journalists, and then sending more weapons that have proven to be used to killed innocent and defenceless children, is also unacceptable. Bashing an unpopular president for suggesting constitutional amendments, but supporting the same act that was executed by a favoured president should not be accepted. 

Not only has hypocrisy taken on a few form that embraces blatant favouritism and a ‘do what I say, and not what I do’ style, but now it is not necessary to even justify such double moral. Say you don’t know, that easy.

The only thing that worries me, really worries me, is whether this is in fact feigned ignorance.  If Trump is sincere about his lack of knowledge, rather than being intentionally disingenuous, then we have much bigger problems.