There’s one unqualified success story in the Middle East that Arab countries could use as a template to improve their societies. The problem? It’s Israel.
Mary Steyn: “For the last three weeks, the superpower has sent the consistent message to the world that (as Bernard Lewis feared some years ago) America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.”
“Last week, for the second time in his presidency, Barack Obama heard those footsteps, jumped up to grasp a historic opportunity … and missed it completely….This failure was not the result of bad luck. It was the predictable consequence of the Obama administration’s lack of any kind of coherent grand strategy, a deficit about which more than a few veterans of U.S. foreign policy making have long worried….The defining characteristic of Obama’s foreign policy has been not just a failure to prioritize, but also a failure to recognize the need to do so. A succession of speeches saying, in essence, ‘I am not George W. Bush’ is no substitute for a strategy.”
Michael A. Walsh in the New York Post: “No matter how things shake out in Egypt, one thing has become depressingly clear: Something is very wrong with the American intelligence services.”
“As our once-stable ally Egypt hurtles down a path leading into the dark unknown, the U.S. can blame itself. The White House apparently did little after our intelligence agencies warned late last year that President Hosni Mubarak’s government was wobbly. Like Jimmy Carter’s handling of Central America, the U.S. backed a revolution, hoping it would make the revolutionaries our friends.”
Victor Davis Hanson in National Review: “For nearly three weeks, the Biden/Clinton/Obama policy concerning the tottering Mubarak regime was contradictory, incoherent, and predicated entirely on the perceived pulse of the demonstrations.”
Like Julie Taymor’s production (which I have not seen, but I have seen enough of Ms. Taymor’s previous work to trust the reviews of it I’ve read), Obama’s foreign policy is far more concerned with flash and spectacle than the boring matter of actual substance. Unfortunately, there’s no chance that Obama’s foreign policy will fold in previews, and we can’t make things better by getting Bono and The Edge to write us a few new tunes…
Geert Wilders: “All over Europe multicultural elites are waging total war against their populations. Their goal is to continue the strategy of mass-immigration, which will ultimately result in an Islamic Europe – a Europe without freedom: Eurabia.”
In email, Stratfor is saying that Rather than letting protesters storm the Presidential Palace, or firing on them to prevent same, the Egyptian military will replace Mubarak in a coup. I remain skeptical; except for a couple of signs early in the crises, they has been no hard evidence that the army has ever wavered in its support of Mubarak.
It is hard to tell at this remove how effective the calls for a general strike have been. Those claiming the strike is widespread have tended to be left-leaning publications that celebrate just about any strike.
The Magic 8-Ball has the same answer it’s been giving since unrest began: ANSWER CLOUDY, ASK AGAIN LATER.
So goes the rumor de jour. Of course, since Obama’s CIA director Leon Panetta is one of the sources of information, I would take that with a huge grain of salt…
The current unrest in Egypt makes makes things look pretty grim for the Copts: “I’ve pored over every news report I can find, and have seen no sign that local Christians are involved in this uprising against Mubarak. This tells me all I need to know about the calls for ‘democracy’ and ‘reform’ in Egypt. They know that Mubarak’s fall would mean to them what Hussein’s fall meant to Iraqi Christians: the end.”
More from JihadWatch’s indefatigable Robert Spencer on the Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement in the unrest in Egypt. The amount of writing and analysis keeps up on the topic of jihad is positively dizzying. It’s hard to keep up just summarizing him…
Tell a Muslim their food smells bad and lose your house in Canada. This decision was overturned, but it proves Mark Steyn’s point that all Canadian “Human Rights Tribunals” need to be eliminated as threats to free speech…
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has said he would like to resign immediately but fears the country would descend into chaos if he did so.
In his first interview since anti-government protests began, he told ABC News he was “fed up” with power.
It came as Cairo saw another day of violence with clashes between the president’s opponents and supporters.
Mr Mubarak warned that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood party would fill any power vacuum if he stepped down.
Mubarak is lying. Dictators almost never want to give up power, except to pass it on to their heirs. (There are exceptions, such as Turkey or Chile, where a military dictator stepped in to prevent a radical regime from inflicting further damage, only to step back and restore control once the danger (and the lives of some political opponents) had passed, but these are the exception rather than the rule.) If Mubarak was really tired of power, he could have stepped down any time in the last 30 years.
However, his statement that that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood party would fill the power vacuum are, sadly, probably true.
Good question. Wish I knew. Or, more accurately, wish I knew more than what I can glean from various reports, which is that anti-Mubarak forces are getting a smackdown from pro-Mubarak forces, including (reportedly) police (secret and otherwise) in disguise. Beyond those clashes, its hard to tell what is going on. Maybe Mubarak waited until popular rage had run its course, and delayed the crackdown until fears of disorder and looting drove the majority of non-hardcore protesters off the street before beginning the crackdown.
The more I’ve read the past few days, the more I think that Mubarak survives until his promised stepping down in the September elections. What I’ve seen is lots of anti-Mubarak forces saying he has to step down now, he can’t survive, etc., as well as similar noises from various international governments, but no reports of Egyptian generals or colonels saying the same thing.
A few other interesting articles on the situation:
A summary of events as they have unfolded so far. It talks about Gamal Mubarak’s technocrat friends working economic miracles but their takeover of the ruling ruling NDP party alienated the army, which saw the NDP as a rival power.
Hosni Mubarak seems to have adopted an interesting strategy to deal with the unrest gripping his country: Let the worst of it rage with a minimum of reprisals and crackdowns, and then slowly but surely reassert his control using the police and the military. Such a strategy walks the fine line between appearing weak enough to let the revolution push him out of power, and a Tienanmen-type crackdown that leaves thousands dead. So far it seems to be working: Despite some blips and waivers, the army still appears to be following Mubarak’s orders. If they continue to do so, it’s hard to see how the called-for general strike can be total enough to paralyze the nation. And if gas and food continue to make it through, it’s hard to see the general masses being radicalized enough to join the call to oust Mubarak.