Egypt Awakes

Not to be overlooked is the huge challenge these Mideast protests pose to the US government. Mubarak’s Egypt has been one of our strongest allies in the region. Now the Obama admin is faced with supporting a dictator that is brutalizing his own people in a manner typically condemned by America. The reputation and relevancy of the US in Egypt and the region is on the line…
http://www.sunstateactivist.org/ssablog

“In a stunning turn of events, one pitched battle in that city ended with protesters and police shaking hands and sharing water bottles on the same street corner where minutes before they were exchanging hails of stones and tear-gas canisters were arcing through the sky. Thousands stood on the six-lane coastal road then sank to their knees and prayed.”

I agree. That is a stunning turn of events. If that means that there is a shared commonality between the protesters and the police, Mubarak has to be thinking of what the future holds in regard to his control. It makes me wonder if some of the police are going to be joining the protesters and if Mubarak is going to turn to the military for a violent crackdown.

Pardon the pun, but we seem to be between Mubarak and a hard place.

http://instantrimshot.com/classic/?sound=rimshot

It’s really tough to tell what’s going on, though. It looked on AJE like they calmed down for prayers, but then afterwards, the police were bursting into the building from which Al Jazeera was broadcasting, chasing protesters. Earlier, it appeared that an army armored car drove up to the protesters in solidarity. And now, the HQ of Mubarek’s party in Cairo, is on fire.
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If you’re interested in this story and you’re not watching Al Jazeera, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice.

Elvis, thank you for the suggestion. I will give it a look later on today. The times they are a-changin’.

I don’t think the US should get involved at all at this point, there is a real risk that US intervention, even just statements of support, can backfire depending on who comes out of this on top.
The best course would probably be to just sit it out and let the Egyptians figure out the details. We can then come in afterwards to help rebuild.

http://english.aljazeera.net/
To start with

“In any case, I’m not sure that the Obama Administration’s continuing support for the Egyptian regime is exactly the best signal right now; at the very least, a statement of protest over the house arrest of Mohammed el Baradei would seem to be in order.”

It is all a part of his clever plan to entrap the Right. Now the centrists are complaining about Obama being a centrist, or pragmatist, as they flatter themselves as being.

There is no question that Mubarak has been useful to us over the years, more or less honoring the Camp David accords and ensuring that Israel does not have to worry about an attack from the east along with its other many problems. But that time is rapidly coming to an end, it seems, and we need to look to the future. And the best future for Egypt would probably be El-Baradai (whose words, of course, it would have been useful to have heeded back in 2002, but that another story).

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We should not be “engineering” anything overtly, but we should protest the house arrest of El-Baradai, and (sigh) call for elections to held as soon as possible. The Wikileaks dump, as I understand it, have actually shown our diplomats as working more forcefully behind the scenes in urging Egypt to liberalize than our wet noodle public stance would indicate; now is the time to let our public and private positions merge into one. This wave of unrest sweeping through the Arab world may be a bit nerve wracking, but ought to be good for everyone in the long run, far better than the strategy of sitting on a series of powder kegs, which has more or less been our approach for the past three decades.

These things have a way of ending badly. I am not hopeful.

Sometimes the “powder kegs” have been of our own making, covertly backing (and arming) one group’s suppression against another, then having to deal with the fallout when group A loses power and group B “remembers” and starts to settle scores.

.. nice ..

afguy, -thought this was a post about Egypt, not Iraq.

Sorry. Just responding to pelhamite’s comment about a series of “powder kegs” – and I guess the Iraq (or Taliaban in Afghanistan) comparisons would apply too.
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A question might be: while we were supporting Mubarak in Egypt, exactly WHAT did we give the citizens of Egypt the impression that we were supporting during that time? How much did we know about and turn a blind eye to during that time, in order to have a “loyal ally”?
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Is he another Shah that was waiting to happen under our watch? I’m hearing a lot of the same types of complaints… and our loyalty to him appears to have some of the same foundations (e.g. relative friendliness toward Israel.)

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/quote-for-the-day-7.html
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Quote For The Day
28 Jan 2011 01:52 pm

“The Egyptian people will take care of themselves. The Egyptian people will be the ones who will make the change. We are not waiting for help or assistance from the outside world, but what I expect from the outside world is to practice what you preach, is to defend the rights of the Egyptian to their universal values,” – Mohamed ElBaradei, currently under house arrest.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/egypt-erupting-ctd-5.html
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Stunning video.

Neither am I. Our policies only disenfranchised the moderates on the Arab side. The other moderates (Saudi, et al) have, under our umbrella, robbed their people blind.
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It’s not very hard to guess just what the people think of us and Israel right now, regardless of whether the right considers it correct or not.
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What will happen is that these nations will move even farther away from us and Israel, and Israel is already a hotbed of right wing paranoia and self-induced superiority complexes…