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Quote for the Morning
From Ryan Lizza's article on the foreign policy of the Obama Administration:
The activists [Sec. Clinton] did meet with were not as organized as she had hoped. “As incredibly emotional and moving and inspiring as it was,” she said, speaking of the demonstrations, “I looked at these twenty young people around the table, and they were complaining about how the elections are going to be held, and the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists are so well organized, and the remnants of the old National Democratic Party are so well organized. I said, ‘So, well, are you organizing? Do you have an umbrella group that is going to represent the youth of Egypt? Do you have a political agenda?’ And they all looked up and said no. It made my heart sink.”
It would have made my heart
It would have made my heart sink, too, if I'd expected something different. Why, though, would we expect something different?
Egypt has had three rulers since the middle of Dwight Eisenhower's administration, almost 30 years under Mubarak alone. We know -- from our experience in Iraq, among other things -- that long habituation to authoritarian rule produces two kinds of organized forces: the ones supportive of the old regime, and the ones committed to its replacement with an equally harsh rule by people repressed by the old regime. Sometimes other forces are able to organize, and sometimes they do it in time not to become victims of the first two. But they're starting at a disadvantage in Egypt, a big one, and American policy had better be made with a clear understanding of that fact.
We all know there is a popular narrative about the so-called Arab Spring, that describes a region long oppressed by rulers who only held power because the American government preferred their rule to instability and propped them up, now turning toward freedom and democracy. It is the kind of narrative fatuous and intellectually adolescent enough to be attractive to someone like George W. Bush, but it has been no less attractive to President Obama, and to Obama administration officials who ought to know better. No sooner had Mubarak folded his hand than the administration committed American forces to attacking Libyan government forces, in the hope that a little military force would push out a ruler who had been in power even longer than Mubarak. Egypt got put on the back burner as far as Washington was concerned, and why not? Hadn't freedom already won?
Well, freedom didn't win in Egypt. It only had a few good days. While the Obama administration is mucking around with Libya, and fretting about a Syrian government responding to internal dissent as Syrian governments always do, all of those younger Egyptians who might support a more civilized, liberal political culture risk being outmaneuvered and rendered impotent by forces in Egyptian politics who would be happy with a somewhat Islamized Mubarak government without Mubarak. And while this is happening, the Obama reelection campaign will start talking about a President who defies traditional categories and ideologies in the practice of foreign policy.
>We all know there is a
>We all know there is a popular narrative about the so-called Arab Spring, that describes a region long oppressed by rulers who only held power because the American government preferred their rule to instability and propped them up, now turning toward freedom and democracy. It is the kind of narrative fatuous and intellectually adolescent enough to be attractive to someone like George W. Bush, but it has been no less attractive to President Obama, and to Obama administration officials who ought to know better.
That's because it's the exact same narrative we all get shovelled down our throat in grade school about the origin of our nation. Even Obama must have gotten it in his Indonesian childhood.
>Well, freedom didn't win in Egypt. It only had a few good days.
A few good days of getting used as a slogan.
"We all know there is a
"We all know there is a popular narrative about the so-called Arab Spring, that describes a region long oppressed by rulers who only held power because the American government preferred their rule to instability and propped them up, now turning toward freedom and democracy. It is the kind of narrative fatuous and intellectually adolescent enough to be attractive to someone like George W. Bush, but it has been no less attractive to President Obama, and to Obama administration officials who ought to know better."
Ha-ha.
Now that's funny.
Almost as if the soft-headed Republicans didn't over the course of the 20th century adopt that way of looking at the world from liberal internationalist democrats.
OEW poll on Egyptian public
OEW poll on Egyptian public opinion just released:
http://pewglobal.org/files/2011/04/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Egypt-Report-FIN...
Late comment, but I think
Late comment, but I think Zathras won the day with the fatuous comment...
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