Open Mouth, Insert Foot
Yesterday, President Obama seemed to do what George W Bush always did. That is, speak first, think later.
The hottest story on the 7/24 news cycle is the unrest in Egypt. The popular uprising is threatening to topple the Mubarak government. The usual actors are present. Corruption, poverty, high unemployment, and repressive government tactics. To complete this picture, we need to add there are no attractive alternatives.
There are alternative dreams, however. For instance, a democratic, freedom loving, capitalist inclined insurgency could replace Mubarak. And pigs could fly too.
But holding onto Mubarak is not going to bring much change to the Egyptian’s daily life. Mubarak is not going to change his ways of meddling (read rigging) elections. His friends, supporters, and family are still going to get lion share of government spending.
So what should President Obama do or say?
Publicly there is nothing the President can say or should say. This is an internal Egyptian issue. For better or worse, they must resolve it.
Behind the scenes, the US government can offer to insure the uprising is home grown and not part of foreign powers efforts. Many experts see the hidden hand of Iran pouring money into organizing opposition to Mubarak. The Iranian dream outcome is the overthrow of Mubarak and his replacement by a secular, Shiite friendly government. Thwarting Iran or any other foreign power is something the President could and should do.
Speaking publicly, however, on allowing more US style freedoms is patently foolish. US style freedoms are only possible in a country where the gulf between the rich and poor is filled with a middle class. US style freedoms require a working separation of church and state. None of this exists in Egypt.
Rather than waste time speaking publicly, President Obama would do well to revisit his entire Middle East and Islamic countries policies. If it is the will of people living in those lands to experiment with secular governments, then like the tides, it is time to step back.
Strangely enough the good life we enjoy does not need or depend on a democratic Middle East or Afghanistan/Pakistan. For sure these countries can ferment a lot of radicals. Israel will need to get serious about finding peace terms with the Palestinians.
But economically, it is unlikely any of these countries will suddenly thrive.
President Obama is looking at one of those “lose-lose” problems. Let’s hope he has the wisdom to pick the “least worst” option.
This entry was posted on January 29, 2011 at 11:23 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Politics, Republican Party. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: arabs, egypt, islam, Israel, Middle East, secular government
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January 29, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Good post and analysis.
My views, although parallel to yours, don’t agree with the cliche of “..many experts think..”
These unnamed experts are what our media and government always throw at us to make us believe that their analysis or reports are credible.
The chance that Iranian hands are meddling in Egypt’s affairs and/or installing a Shia friendly regime are between zero and minus infinity. According to the CIA World Factbook, approximately 91% of the population is Muslim and 9% is Christian (8% Coptic Orthodox, 1% other Christian). Shia’s represent less than 1%.
Yes, we need to step back and allow democracy to return to the Middle East. Israel needs to get serious about peace else it will itself surrounded by the United States of Arabia instead of a bunch of dictatorships it can manipulate with US defunct foreign policy and interests.
Now, if you are familiar with Middle Eastern and Islamic history, you would know that the Islamic Empire as it’s referred to, extended from the Arabian peninsula and all the way to Morocco, and across the Mediterranean to present day Spain. That was a democratic free (“United States of Arabia”) country where Christians and Jews lived in peace and harmony with the Muslims. Prosperity, algebra, chemistry, geology, spherical trigonometry, medicine, literature, etc. sprung from such a “country” and all contributed to such prosperity.
As you may know, even after the Spanish Inquisition, Jews escaped to Muslim countries for protection from the militant Christians/ crusaders.
My conclusion is that a democratic non-secular government is possible. It existed once. It can exist again.
ATW
January 29, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. The history and accomplishments of Islam were once tremendous.
I also do not know who these “unnamed experts” are, and they could be wrong. What is inescapable, however, is that third party money and support is at work all over the middle east. Syria is often tagged with meddling in Lebanon and the Palestinians. When it is weapons, however, Iran has been the source of much of the money that actually pays for the munitions.
At the end of the day, the points I was trying to make is that there is outside support and privately the US might rightly interfere depending upon the source. Regardless, the chance of Egypt returning to a democracy, no matter how good that could be, is nil.