Showing posts with label Egypt. Show all posts
Sunday Quick Links
It's one of those days when I can't pick just one thing to write about, but don't have time to write about everything:
If you were wondering how Michelle Obama's "secret" trip to Target (did she ever go to Target pre-2008? Does Chicago even have a Target within the city limits?) was memorialized on film, well it's because the White House tipped off the AP. Pretty pathetic.
Chris Christie is the man of the hour. Some say that he is the only (GOP) man for the times: a tough talker who can appeal to Reagan Democrats, and face down the public employee unions. Could be, but unions are only a sliver of the left coalition, and Christie has a lot of political sympathy for virtually every other element of the Democrat base. Among other things, he is as dumb on the environment as Joe Biden (or any other green). We can do better.
Paul Ryan reviews Jeffrey Sachs's new book, describing it as having "veneer of economic analysis cannot conceal what is essentially a crusade against the free enterprise ethic of our republic." Nice to see at least one GOP politician try to take on the intellectual heavies on the left.
This guy wants to believe that the present Wall Street protests are "like Egypt." The protesters are more than just the usual hippies, communists, and nose-ringed college students, says he. There are unions and "grannies" there! Very middle class! (pictures at the link). Right, well any union presence is going to be bused-in astro-turf. As for the "grannies," I think we're all hip to the truth, which is that old leftists like to grasp the mantle of respectable seniors, knowing the media will treat them as cuddly old folks, rather than as socialists who hate their country. Anyway, these protests not "like" Egypt; they are like Greece.
On the other hand, the apparently unprovoked pepper spraying of a couple protesters by a normally desk-bound "cop" is just the sort of thing the blame-America-first crowd loves. You'd think every police officer in NYC would be hip the way leftists use this sort of thing for their own propaganda. San Francisco cops sure do. But, as JFK used to say, there's always one dumb son of a bitch who never gets the word.
The al-Awlaki drone strike was a just result. He may have been "American-born," in the words of media style-books, but he left the US as a small child and was not acting in America's best interests. Obama's been getting this 100% right, but his ambivalence has been undermining his strategy.
An inside view of the intimidation of the health insurance industry during the passage of Obamacare. For all the talk of the "right wing noise machine," if a GOP president and his allies had tried something this heavy-handed, there would have been all sorts of "brave" dissidents rushing to the microphones. But, let Democrats do it, and everyone's all STFU. Has to be because they were worried about unflattering stories published by the White House's media allies - meaning the media - right?
Herman Cain's rise is due entirely to his being the only optimistic candidate. People clearly want to hear his message, yet Cain is held to be "unelectable." OK, assuming he's unelectable, that doesn't mean the "electable" candidates can't learn something from him and his methods.
Btw, I thought Cain (or Santorum) would "shock the world" by running strong in Iowa, but it seems Cain's moment is now, and not four months from now. That means the media will be "vetting" him. In other words, they'll be seeking damning quotes from every disgruntled employee, disappointed corporate rival, and bitter stripper ex-girlfriend (I kid, I kid) that they can find. These are never our republic's finest hours. In fact, they are some of our worst as the elites among us broadcast rumors and innuendos as if they were dispatches from the Somme. Hope Cain is ready for it. I also hope he is ready to fight back in the manner of Clarence Thomas, rather than flinch away in the manner of virtually every other GOP politico unfortunate to have gone through this process.
Michael Wilbon asks a damn good question about a new Walter Payton biography: "what is the exact purpose of writing a book, 12 years after Payton's depressing death at 45, that goes to agonizing lengths to tell us essentially that Payton was flawed?" Supposedly, it's because Payton's public persona was that of a solid citizen when in private he cheated on his wife and used, get this, pain killers. It's that darn hypocrisy, again! Really, a professional athlete who sleeps with women not his wife? That's news? What about a look at Mrs. Payton. Maybe she was a pain in the a**? And since when was pain killer use a scandal? What's really galling is knowing that journalists who love to flog this sort of information probably couldn't stand up to a similar level of scrutiny.
The Untold Stories: What You Won't See On the Evening News
Egypt Year Zero, Day One
The Egyptian military, complying with most of the principal demands of the opposition, said Sunday that it had dissolved the country’s parliament, suspended its constitution and called for elections in six months, according to a statement by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces read on state television. It also said it would honor all of Egypt’s international agreements, including the peace treaty with Israel.The military did not address a third major opposition demand to lift emergency rule. In previous statements, the council had promised to take that step once the security situation improved.
The announcement, the first indication of the direction the military intends to take the country, was welcomed by opposition leaders, who distrusted both houses of parliament after elections in the fall that were widely considered rigged. One of them, Ayman Nour, said that the military’s actions should be enough to satisfy the protesters, some of whom nevertheless refused to leave Tahrir Square and resisted soldiers’ attempts to evict them.
The Voice of Progressive Foreign Policy has already come out and declared that America could learn a lot from Egypt. We're going to be hearing a lot about this
The truth is that the United States has been behind the curve not only in Tunisia and Egypt for the last few weeks, but in the entire Middle East for decades. We supported corrupt autocrats as long as they kept oil flowing and weren’t too aggressive toward Israel. Even in the last month, we sometimes seemed as out of touch with the region’s youth as a Ben Ali or a Mubarak. Recognizing that crafting foreign policy is 1,000 times harder than it looks, let me suggest four lessons to draw from our mistakes:
1.) Stop treating Islamic fundamentalism as a bogyman and allowing it to drive American foreign policy. American paranoia about Islamism has done as much damage as Muslim fundamentalism itself.
Back in the day ca. 1950 - 1989 we used to hear this line about the communists, probably from Kristof himself.
2.) We need better intelligence, the kind that is derived not from intercepting a president’s phone calls to his mistress but from hanging out with the powerless.
Agreed we need better intelligence. Our Ivy League educated president and his national security team have managed to be wrong in every possible way throughout the uprising, mostly out of vanity; they want to be seen as somehow controlling events in an alien society thousands of miles from their DC-Area desks.
3.) New technologies have lubricated the mechanisms of revolt. Facebook and Twitter make it easier for dissidents to network.
Facebook, Twitter, and Google, oh my! If you search the Times archives from 1979, are we going to read how word processors and fax machines were "crucial" to overthrowing the Shah?
4.) Let’s live our values. We pursued a Middle East realpolitik that failed us. Condi Rice had it right when she said in Egypt in 2005: “For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.”
After a long wishy-washy stage, President Obama got it pitch-perfect on Friday when he spoke after the fall of Mr. Mubarak. He forthrightly backed people power, while making clear that the future is for Egyptians to decide. Let’s hope that reflects a new start not only for Egypt but also for American policy toward the Arab world. Inshallah.
This is going to be set in stone, isn't it? No matter how awful the Egypt situation becomes - and given history and circumstance, the potential is there for permanent military rule or a Islamist theocracy - there are going to be Smart Power types burbling about "Democracy" and how Americans are just too dumb to understand the Middle East. 20 years from now, we may yet see a wizened John Kerry engaging in shuttle diplomacy, visiting his "old friend" General Hoedihoe or Imam Raufamauf in Cairo to resolve the latest flare-up over the Israeli settlements in the Sinai Desert (which the Little Satan took back in the 18-hour War of 2019). Whether the Egyptian people will be as happy to see Kerry as their oppressors will be remains to be seen.
Look I'm all for the Egyptians setting up a constitutional republic and all that. But, this great desire among the Obami to declare the Egyptian uprising to be "solved" is freakishly wrong footed. Egypt remains in flux, dangerously so. To simply kick back and say, "Ah, democracy and people power prevailed" is a recipe for waking up one morning to find a Hamas-style theocracy taking the reins in Cairo. For Americans, vigilence and humility (about those unknown unknows at work even now) should be, but aren't, the watchword.
United Fruit 2.0: Google's Egyptian Pusch
As the world marveled this week at the remarkable story of Wael Ghonim, the Google manager who helped organize a popular rebellion in Egypt, a great sigh of relief could be heard rising from much of the rest of American business:
"I'm glad," came the exhale, "the guy doesn't work for us."
Who wasn't amazed at the power Mr. Ghonim wielded against the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak? An Internet geek and Google's Mideast regional marketing executive, Mr. Ghonim helped administer a group of Web pages that served as a rallying point for activists long before crowds gathered in Tahrir Square. He was detained by the police, made a martyr in the streets, and then released. A popular hero was born.
A lot of U.S. companies, which now manage millions of employees abroad, watched with trepidation. Many of them now earn more abroad than they do in America. And much of that income comes from the sale of big-ticket items—power systems, infrastructure equipment, aircraft, telecommunications—that only governments can afford to buy.
Companies may not want to be lapdogs to dictators. But they also don't want to tick off their chief customer. It's a balancing act, one that inevitably leads to a policy of corporate discretion: Best to stay off the radar screen.
Blow Up: Mubarak Resigns
Egypt exploded with joy, tears, and relief after President Hosni Mubarak resigned as president, forced out by 18 days of mass protests that culminated in huge marches Friday on his presidential palaces and state television. The military took power after protesters called for it to intervene and oust their leader of three decades.
"The people ousted the regime," rang out chants from crowds of hundreds of thousands massed in Cairo's central Tahrir Square and outside Mubarak's main palace several miles away in a northern district of the capital.
The crowds in Cairo, the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and other cities around the country danced, chanted "goodbye, goodbye," and raised their hands in prayer in an ecstatic pandemonium as fireworks and car horns sounded after Vice President Omar Suleiman made the announcement on national TV just after nightfall.
"Finally we are free," said Safwan Abou Stat, a 60-year-old in the crowd of protesters at the palacer. "From now on anyone who is going to rule will know that these people are great."
Mubarak had sought to cling to power, handing some of his authorities to Suleiman while keeping his title. But an explosion of protests Friday rejecting the move appeared to have pushed the military into forcing him out completely. Hundreds of thousands marched throughout the day in cities across the country as soliders stood by, besieging his palace in Cairo and Alexandria and the state TV building. A governor of a southern province was forced to flee to safety in the face of protests there.
His fall came 32 years to the day after the collapse of the shah's government in Iran.
Wrong Again: Egypt Continues To Elude American Intelligence
The Obama team’s hopes for an “immediate” transition seemed to have been dashed as Mubarak took to the airwaves in Egypt to say he planned to stay as president until September but cede an unspecified degree of authority to his hand-picked vice president, Omar Suleiman.
Responding to the day’s events in a statement that did not mention Mubarak, Obama said that while a “transition of authority” has been promised the Egyptian people, “it is not yet clear that this transition is immediate, meaningful or sufficient.”
The president called for the Egyptian government “to spell out in clear and unambiguous language the step by step process that will lead to democracy and the representative government that the Egyptian people seek.
Mubarak’s muddled message was far from what U.S. officials had expected.
In a speech in Michigan, President Barack Obama seemed to feed the narrative that dramatic change in Egypt was imminent. “What is absolutely clear is that we are witnessing history unfold,” an upbeat Obama said. “It’s a moment of transformation that’s taking place because the people of Egypt are calling for change.”
Radical Sheik: Code Pink in Egypt
Obama fundraiser group Code Pink issued an emergency appeal on Thursday for thousands of dollars to help the group overthrow the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak.
Code Pink, which has a history of working with enemies of the Egyptian government Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, said in the appeal it wanted to raise $5,000 to fund “the next big uprising” against the Egyptian government on Friday.
As we reported previously, Code Pink has been on the ground in Cairo since the beginning of the uprising. The group has made nine trips to Egypt in the past two years as part of a campaign to undermine the Egyptian government and the blockade against Hamas-controlled Gaza.
The headline for the appeal published at the Web site of Code Pink’s fundraising partner Democracy in Action reads:
“Help us raise $5,000 in emergency funds today to support the Egyptian revolution!”
Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin posted on Twitter from Egypt at 3:19 a.m. Cairo time on Friday that more than $10,000 had already been raised.
In the appeal, Code Pink urges supporters to send cute little puppies and kittens to the demonstrators. Not really. They actually urge Code Pink’s dupes to “send flowers and supplies to the demonstrators!”
The Analogy Pathology
Ah, yes! The Guidance! Of the People! We are all knowing and all wise, don't you know. Good luck with that, as voters rejected a similar proposal back in 2009. Supposedly, the plan is that The People will be more willing to trust Jerry Brown because he will "level" with them. Also there seems to be a threat out there that, if we don't raise taxes, then Brown will move towards making deep cuts in K-12 education. I don't know. He might find that voters recognize there's a difference between cutting, say, classroom supplies - which people will hate - and cutting teachers salaries/pension, which I'll bet a lot of voters won't mind seeing go lower.Gov. Jerry Brown said Monday that lawmakers have an obligation to let California voters decide whether to extend taxes to stave off huge budget cuts, taking a forceful stance in his State of the State speech on what is likely to be the biggest debate over how to close the deficit.
...
"In the ordinary course of things, matters of state concern are properly handled in Sacramento. But when the elected representatives find themselves bogged down by deep differences that divide them, the only way forward is to go back to the people and seek their guidance."
Speaking of public sector unions, Brown's speech included one of the most inapt political analogies of the year, warning that if California doesn't act quickly, we could see street riots just like the one in... Tunisia and Egypt??
Brown's 14-minute speech to lawmakers and other state leaders in the Assembly chamber referenced uprisings in Arab nations as he argued that it would be "unconscionable" to make deeper cuts than he has proposed without asking voters to weigh in.
"When democratic ideals and calls for the right to vote are stirring the imagination of young people in Egypt and Tunisia and other parts of the world, we in California can't say now is the time to block a vote of the people," Brown said.
Uh, no. I think the riot-torn country you're thinking of is Greece. You know, unsustainable pensions, overweening public sector unions, too much debt and taxes. I am sure you've seen that on the news. Not sure how Egypt fits in there, unless you think the Nurses Union is "just like" the Muslim Brotherhood.
Ghost Riders in the Media Sky
"The way [Obama has] confronted it, is he went to Cairo and talked about the need, the universal human rights of people. He’s on several occasions directly confronted Pres. Mubarak on it. And pushed him on the need for political reform in his country," Axelrod told ABC's Jake Tapper Friday, on the adviser's last day of work at the White House.
"To get ahead of this?" Tapper asked.
"Exactly. To get ahead of this. This is a project he’s been working on for two years and today the president is working hard to encourage restraint and a cessation of violence against the people of Egypt," said Axelrod.
"Nice myth," said one human rights advocate I asked about Axelrod's description.
There are a couple of problems with Axelrod's account. First, there's little public evidence that Obama "confronted" Mubarak on these issues. White House officials have said the subjects were raised in meetings between the men, but when the two met publicly there was little indication that Obama was pressuring Mubarak on the issue.
During the 25-minute press availability during the pair's Oval Office meeting in August 2009, Obama didn't mention the issue. Mubarak was the one who brought it up, telling the press how "friendly" their exchange on the subject was and suggesting a rather leisurely timeline to make changes.
"We discussed the issue of reform inside Egypt. And I told to President Obama very frankly and very friendly that I have entered into the elections based on a platform that included reforms, and therefore we have started to implement some of it and we still have two more years to implement it," Mubarak said. "Our relations between us and the United States are very good relations and strategic relations. And despite some of the hoops that we had with previous administrations, this did not change the nature of our bilateral relations."
The other sleight-of-hand in Axelrod's comment is his suggestion that Obama's visit to Cairo in June 2009 was intended or perceived as speaking hard truths to Mubarak. To the contrary, many in the region, in other Muslim countries, and the U.S. ( see here and here), saw the choice of Egypt for Obama's first speech to the Muslim world as a huge laurel for Mubarak, not an albatross. Obama's speech made no direct reference to political reform or human rights issues in Egypt, save for a passing reference to Christian Copts there. There were alsoreports that the U.S. eased up on democracy promotion there.
I can understand the impulse to try to catch a little "democracy" fire - we all want to be on the side of the vanguard of "change," right? - but the White House spin here was pretty pitiful. Even if Mubarak was some sort of tyrannical El Supremo, and he's not at least not compared to many of his neighbors, our Smart Power set doesn't seem to realize that when the Man On the Cairo Street starts demanding "reform" or "justice," it is not of the sort that would be recognizable to American progressives who are temperamentally sympathetic to those buzzwords.
What's happening is Egypt is serious business. Maybe the protesters in the streets are on the side of the angels, and just want economic reforms (query whether progressive sophisticates realize Egypt has the sort of neo-socialist economy that Obama has been trying to impose over here) and free elections. But when there is chaos in the streets, history has taught that fortune favors those who are the best positioned and best organized to seize power. That ability lies with the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been waiting for this moment literally for decades. If Obama wants further opportunity to lecture privately an Egyptian president over human rights, then setting up a situation where the incumbent Mubarak is deposed or destabilized in favor of the Brotherhood will give you plenty of opportunities to do so.
Trying to score political points over some unheard attempt to "ride" Hosni Mubarak over human rights would be contemptible, if it were not so laughable.
Fire In Cairo
Drudge is highlighting this story in the UK Telegraph, which claims that the mass street protests in Egypt are the fruition of a "secret" US plan to support a democratic opposition movement that would overthrow the Mubarak regime in 2011. Well, it is 2011...
The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.
On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011.
He has already been arrested by Egyptian security in connection with the demonstrations and his identity is being protected by The Daily Telegraph.
The crisis in Egypt follows the toppling of Tunisian president Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, who fled the country after widespread protests forced him from office.
The disclosures, contained in previously secret US diplomatic dispatches released by the WikiLeaks website, show American officials pressed the Egyptian government to release other dissidents who had been detained by the police.
The source? Why Wiki-leaks, of course!
The US government has previously been a supporter of Mr Mubarak’s regime. But the leaked documents show the extent to which America was offering support to pro-democracy activists in Egypt while publicly praising Mr Mubarak as an important ally in the Middle East.
In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for “regime change” to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year.
The memo, which Ambassador Scobey sent to the US Secretary of State in Washington DC, was marked “confidential” and headed: “April 6 activist on his US visit and regime change in Egypt.”
It said the activist claimed “several opposition forces” had “agreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition to a parliamentary democracy, involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections”. The embassy’s source said the plan was “so sensitive it cannot be written down”.
Ambassador Scobey questioned whether such an “unrealistic” plot could work, or ever even existed. However, the documents showed that the activist had been approached by US diplomats and received extensive support for his pro-democracy campaign from officials in Washington. The embassy helped the campaigner attend a “summit” for youth activists in New York, which was organised by the US State Department.
That's the story, anyway. Do I believe it? Well, I don't know. On the one hand, it's the sort of "Uncle Sam's hidden hand" conspiracy theory much beloved on the Arab Street. It's also the sort of "We can control world-shaking events in the Middle East from our desks at Foggy Bottom/CIA Headquarters" story that America's establishment loves, too. If there are two groups whose worldviews I simply don't find credible, it's the Arab Street and the State Department/CIA. So I think this deserves all of the grains of salt in the world.
Still, if it is true, why in the world would America target Hosni Mubarak for the Shah treatment? Egypt's the most populous country in the Middle East. The obvious successor to Mubarak would be the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group with spiritual ties to al-Qaeda. Egypt also controls access through the Suez Canal, and shares a long border with Israel. A destabilized, or radicalized, Egypt would promptly become a disruptive force to be reckoned with. Mubarak may be a son of a bitch. He may not quite be our son of a bitch. But, he's a predictable son of a bitch. A US plan to get rid of Mubarak, when there are so many others in the Middle East who richly deserve to precede him into exile, would not seem to be a display of "smart power."
