Tunisia-Egypt-Qatar Unified Theory Thread

WikiLeaks just released a new batch of US embassy cables that discuss police brutality in Egypt.

I find this both interesting and potentially important.

 

Of corse the US has no reason to hope for a regime change in Egypt. With all the domestic problems Mubarak's dictatorship causes, he is (was?) a stabilizing factor for the region as a whole.
With a revolution in Egypt, all bets are off regarding Egypt-Israel relations.

Still, Biden's comments were extremely dumb IMHO. It once again gives the impression that the US is happy to support "friendly" dictators...

 

The Muslim Brotherhood (which is a pretty good distance from something like the Taliban and AQ to the point of being very mild in comparison) has been caught very off guard and is not anywhere close to driving the protests. Furthermore, MB isn't all that interested in one-party rule. MB is the only organization with enough coherent clout to "take over".

Biden is a complete jackass. He's almost Quayle-like.

 

who cares about israel. i sure dont. let them defend themselves and stop screwing the american taxpayers.

 

It all started this past summer, with those Mossad-controlled sharks off the coast of Egpyt ...

 

I guess that means Libya is 1 decade overdue for its revolution.

 

I am not inspired by the Administration's response. I don't think he should be referred to as a dictator by the VP, I understand that. But we should be voicing 100% support for democratic reforms in the country, starting today.

 

I think everyone in Libya is too amused and titillated by The Colonel's bodyguard corps to do much of anything.

 

MB has far and away the most sophisticated organization in Egypt and is far from cuddly. If it chooses to join the protets, as it plans to today, it has a good chance of becoming the pillar around which other protesters will gather.

 

I do not really find the Administration's response all that unexpected. If the president has any ideology (and to be truthful, I am not sure he does past the general leftism fashionable in the faculty lounge) I think he has a belief in the state, stability, the family of nations and all that. The state needs stability. I won't really attack him on it though, though my response if I was president would have been different. He is the one who will have to deal with a coup in Egypt, not me.

I also think that too many in our foreign policy elite still see the world in a Cold War prisim. He is our bastard made some sense in 1975, when the other choice was someone who claimed to be a communist and would let the Soviets in.

I do worry about the Mslem Brotherhood, but I think that we make too much of it. How many times do you hear the line "at least he is secular" when refering to some Arab dictator. Enough of that.

Granted, I thought we needed to stay out of the iranian situation and I still think that was the right thing for the president to do. But Egypt is different in that we support the government with aid and need Egypt if we wish to see peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Which is why 6 years ago I thought we should have brought pressure on Mubarak to retire at the end of his tem, and have his son find a job in Europe. Mubarak could have spent the last 6 years doing the elder statesman game, Davos, the Bilderburgers, and wherever else the self important hold court on high pronouncing how to save the world while the rest of us ignore them. He would be an honored guest at Davos now, instead of hunkering down in Cairo.

Oh well, stability uber alles. We are all grizzled foreign policy realists now, not idealistic neocons, right?

 

There are alternatives to the grizzled practitioners of real politik and neocon conceptions. I think it used to be called human rights.

 

Not sure where everyone is getting their updates on the crisis in Egypt, but I'm finding Andrew Sullivan's blog to be incredibly informative.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/

 

Wouldn't be the first time a group got around to the front of a protest and took charge. With no organized oppostion within Egypt, I agree that the MB is the only organization large enough to replace the regime, should it fall. Some may be wary of its general policy of non-aggression, especially with some more recent pronouncements. With many new regimes, the commitment to non-violence & permitting opposition ends when they experience actual power.

 

I don't disagree at all and I certainly don't think MB is "cuddly", but I think far too much is being made of them as a bogeyman-in-waiting. Egypt is huge and diverse.

 

I just read the wiki entry for muslim brotherhood and it, in my opinion, paints a far more peaceful organization that it actually is and has been. I don't know what sources you are relying on for your opinion, but if it is wikipedia, you may want to do a little more research.

 

MB also part of protests in Jordan.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/2011128125157509196.html

 

Not Wiki. They're not "cuddly", but neither are they vicious theocrats.

 

I don't think you really get it. Here's a link to one of Lawrence Wright's writings, and you should also check out his book, which in my opinion is the standard on violent islamic fundamentalism.

http://www.lawrencewright.com/art-zawahiri.html

 

I'm not a fan of neoconservatism either....but Zionists/pan-Arabists are not racists. Zionism is simply the belief that a Jewish state is legitimate in Israel. That simple. There was militant Zionism but that no longer exists...and pan-Arabism lost a significant amount of its legitimacy with Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.

 

Borussia, the Iranian Revolution DID change the world. IMO, it was the second most significant revolution in the 20th century (the first being the Soviet revolution in 1917). For one, declassified documents indicate that the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan was partly due to the revolution in Iran..without the shah, the Soviet Union didn't have a bulwark against it. The revolutionary regime's mantra was neither America, neither Soviet Union. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan resulted in the rise of al-Qaeda... the IRGC trained and recruited Hezbollah, which has been Israel's most potent enemy. The ayatollahs also gave emotional inspirtation to many budding radical Islamic groups. Organizations need a spiritual haven and Khoemini provided them that inspiration. In addition, the Iran-Iraq war was partly the result of two competing governments who wanted to upend the status-quo. One revolutionary leader seeking to overturn the status quo (in pre-1979, this was Saddam)...but then post-1979, Saddam had an enemy in Khoemini.

 

Mani. Great analysis..and which I completely agree.

 

Interesting. Thanks for the link.