Category: Politics

protester and riot policeman, Cairo, Friday, January 28, 2011*

protesters and soldiers, Cairo, Saturday, January 29, 2011

NOTE: This post was composed just after 6 pm today, Wednesday; since then (it’s now 11 pm in New York) its thesis has become reality.

So what is the story? Will it be kisses and handshakes?
The police, uniformed or plainclothes, have largely been discounted as a significant factor in how the events in Egypt will unfold, although that story is still to be told, but the position of the army is definitely not yet resolved. To me it’s looking more and more like the army is working toward the same end, although not to identical purpose, as what passes for the Mubarak regime right now: Every president of Egypt since King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 (by generals) has been a high-ranking army officer. Whatever their relationship may have been before last week, the upper echelon of the military is presumably no longer fully vested in Mubarak. Yet it’s unlikely that it would want to see their general-in-a-striped-suit completely disgraced; an orderly departure of an old comrade would almost certainly be preferred.
Here’s my further argument:
The officers are more likely to prefer Suleiman to the unknown that’s represented by what surely looks to them as a still-leaderless mob, and in fact they may themselves have created his new vice-presidential office as a transition device, although not a transition to democracy.
The fact that the army is not fighting the protesters in Tahrir or elsewhere should not be taken as clear evidence of its indifference to the outcome; in fact it may be part of a cynical plan shared with the Mubarak administration (and possibly Obama’s as well): Extended, and even increasing, chaos in the streets just may look to them like an opportunity for the restoration of order, under the authority of more or less the same interests which made up the old regime (and those of Washington).
Even the army rank and file, conscripts said to be unlikely to want to fire at the protesters, might come around to an accommodation with some kind of crackdown. This would especially be likely if they and other Egyptians come to look upon the revolutionaries, their numbers reduced by fear and attrition, as the enemies of Egypt.
Win-win: Everyone saves face; everyone saves power. The people? They never had it, and look what they would do with it if they did.
Last week I watched spellbound as Egyptians did what no one thought possible. I thought removing Mubarak was a done deal, and that the world, or the best of the world, wished them well.
I think I was mistaken. It now seems that the revolution is alone.
Today I realize how very much more will still be demanded of the heroic defenders of Egypt’s ancient honor, and future greatness. I wish them well; I wish us all well.

*
For a discussion of this image, see Garance Franke-Ruta in The Atlantic, “Why the Kiss Picture Is So Radical.”

[first image from Greenerblog (Lefteris Pitarakis / AP); the second image from CNBC]

The shameful U.S. role in the 2011 Egyptian revolution will never be forgotten, above all in the Middle East.
The Mubarak regime (and the army?) has clearly planned and executed today’s violent confrontations in Tahrir Square and in Alexandria in order to retain power. It hopes to create a situation where it will be able to depend upon the loyalty of the lower military ranks when it orders the army to do its duty to protect the nation from those the regime portrays as its enemies, and it has to attract support from those, including some people who have supported the protests so far, who have become frightened by the violence initiated by its paid thugs and mustered civil servants.
Part of the plan is to silence the foreign journalists, who are the only source of information for people both within and outside Egypt (obviously the state monopolization of broadcast news and the continued shutdown of internet and cellphone service wasn’t enough).
The execution of this plan began today.
But Mubarak has help. The Obama administration, like governments around the world, remains complicit in the crimes of an Egyptian government which had already lost its legitimacy, but today joins the ranks of regimes which will be forever associated for their iniquity.
In addition, Obama’s neglect of the Mubarak regime’s assault on the press and communication systems has not gone unnoticed (note: many have suggested that our own government is working on a “kill switch” which would allow the White House to disconnect the Internet and all electronic communications at its will, “for security purposes”). “Many people make the very important point: Obama made NO mention of internet and mobile phones. The silence is deafening.,” tweeted Evan Hill (yesterday evening, New York time), responding to the President’s statement earlier. Even if Obama wanted to argue that what happens in Egypt is up to the Egyptians, silence is not a neutral act: The government’s monopoly of all means of communication is a huge advantage for reaction and repression.
None of this was necessary; none of this would have happened had our democratically-elected President done something more than ask “both sides” to avoid violence.
The MSM seems obsessed about the fact that the Egyptians in the streets have no leader; why isn’t it interested in the fact that neither do the Americans?

Mark LeVine has a very, very wise and beautifully-articulated piece on the Opinion page of the Al Jazeera site, “It’s time for Obama to say Kefaya!,” answering the question of why we persist in a disastrous foreign policy. I hadn’t read it yet when I borrowed the image at the top for my own post. Now I’m totally depressed: It seems only a revolution could alter our posture in the world. This is LeVine:

Such a position [supporting the status quo in the Middle East] is as tragic as it is stupid, as the president has been offered an unprecedented and until a few weeks ago unimaginable opportunity to back radical but peaceful change that is not stained by Western intervention in a region that everyone believes must undergo such change in order to prevent it becoming even more of a hotbed for terrorism and anti-Western sentiments.
. . . .
So the question really needs to be asked – whose interests is President Obama serving by remaining silently supportive of the status quo when he could, and by any measure, should, be lending vocal, public support for the peoples of the Arab world as they finally rise up against their leaders?
Is it companies like Lockheed Martin, the massive defence contractor whose tentacles reach deep into every part of the fabric of governance (as revealed by William Hartung’s powerful new book, Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military Industrial Complex)?
Is it the superbanks who continue to rake in profits from an economy that is barely sputtering along, and who have joined with the military industrial complex’s two principal axes-the arms and the oil industries-to form an impregnable triangle of corrupt economic and political power?
It’s hard to think of any other candidates at the present time.

[image of President Obama during the 2011 State of the Union speech from Al Jazeera (GALLO/GETTY)]

It’s now pretty clear that the Egyptian people are going to succeed in freeing themselves entirely without the help of the U.S. Today I’m not worrying as much about whether their courage and nobility will enable them to defend their magnificent, popular revolution as I am about the consequences of its brilliant success for the U.S. Their achievement is one which I fully expect to be repeated elsewhere in the Middle East – and beyond – one in which my government, it will be remembered, had no part, offered no help or encouragement, and in fact was only a hindrance.
Is Obama nuts? Who’s the terrorist now?
It’s as if the U. S. government was not satisfied with the degree of disgust with which much of the world holds its imperial presence, military adventures and reactionary foreign policy, and now President Obama has decided to further inflame the hatred by giving people in the Arab and Muslim world, and elsewhere, even more reason for their distrust, confirming the worst suspicions of some and making new enemies of others.
For us in the U.S., and for the world, the danger of this policy, whether authored by stupidity or narrow national calculation, should be obvious. Not only will we be hated and reviled, but the threats, both real and perceived, which since 9/11 have torn our political economic and social fabric apart, may now prove fatal to everything we ever thought we stood for. The nation which once appeared as a beacon of freedom for people around the world is now on the losing end of history, and those who have inherited so much from its founders can expect to find themselves in history’s dustbin.
Read Nicholas Kristof, writing now from the streets of Cairo:

Yet one thing nags at me. These pro-democracy protesters say overwhelmingly that America is on the side of President Mubarak and not with them. They feel that way partly because American policy statements seem so nervous, so carefully calculated — and partly because these protesters were attacked with tear gas shells marked “made in U.S.A.”
The upshot is that this pro-democracy movement, full of courage and idealism and speaking the language of 1776, wasn’t inspired by us. No, the Egyptians said they feel inspired by Tunisia — and a bit stymied by America.
Everywhere I go, Egyptians insist to me that Americans shouldn’t perceive their movement as a threat. And I find it sad that Egyptians are lecturing Americans on the virtues of democracy.
“We need your support,” pleaded Dr. Mahmood Hussein, a physiology professor. “We need freedom.”
Ahmed Muhammad, a medical student, told me: “Egyptian people will not forget what Obama does today. If he supports the Egyptian dictator, the Egyptian people will never forget that. Not for 30 years.”

I don’t think Americans can be reminded enough that the events in Egypt are not about them, but we’ve been so invested in the dictatorial regime now being leveled by a popular, nonpartisan national revolt that we cannot claim we had nothing to do with it in the past, cannot pretend we’re not involved in what’s happening now, and cannot expect to be isolated from its consequences.

More from Kristof, in a post done today:

I also fear that this choreography – sending former diplomat Frank Wisner (whom I admire) to get Mubarak to say he won’t run for reelection — will further harm America’s image. This will come across in Egypt as collusion between Obama and Mubarak to distract the public with a half step; it will be interpreted as dissing the democracy movement once again. This will feed the narrative that it’s the United States that calls the shots in the Mubarak regime, and that it’s the United States that is trying to outmaneuver the democracy movement. In effect, we have confirmed to a suspicious Egyptian public that we are in bed with Mubarak and trying to perpetuate his regime (even without him at the top) in defiance of a popular democratic movement.

[image from Al Jazeera (EPA)]