They only pay me for original stuff, so there is no point
in noting that Obama is the Moses of our time. Everyone knows that.
He said “Let my people go!” and the heads of American corporations
immediately started letting people go in all directions.
Now he is taking his imitation a step further, trying to
get today’s leader of Egypt to destroy his own regime in an orgy of
drowning chariots. And this fool might actually get his way!
Although the situation in Egypt appears to be confusing, the one
aspect of it which should have been clear was the range of possible
American responses. Perhaps counterintuitively, the United States
was in a fairly good position when this began, because most of the
options had some upside. Sure enough, Obama picked the one wrong
way to go.
Not just wrong. Bloody-minded, short-sighted,
ill-conceived, mean-spirited and self-destructive. Just about every
pejorative you can cobble together with a hyphen will cover the
situation amply.
Let us review. Egypt was the de facto leader of the Arab
coalition which attacked the fledgling State of Israel shortly
after it declared independence in 1948. It was seen as the leader
of the 1956 force fighting Israel, although it worked very closely
with Syria during that period. Between 1958 and 1961 Egypt and
Syria merged into the United Arab Republic. After they split, Egypt
under Gamal Abdel Nasser was again the leader of the Arab world in
its bellicosity against Israel.
In 1967, a blockade instituted by Nasser in the Gulf of
Aqaba triggered the Six-Day War, with Egypt again the prime
opponent. The Yom Kippur War in 1973 was a direct invasion of
Israel by Egypt under Anwar Sadat. It is fair to say that the
Arab-Israeli conflict was mainly in those days the friction between
Egypt and Israel.
This means that when Sadat made peace with Israel in a
shocking turnabout, the idea of full-scale war between Israel and
its neighbors, as had occurred four times in the prior
quarter-century, was no longer a clear and present danger.
Thirty-three years later, that impression has not been materially
altered. All military engagement involving Israel since that time
has been limited geographically; no sovereign country has directly
been at war with Israel since. The only sort-of exception was when
Syria allowed its Air Force to duel Israel’s over Lebanon in 1982,
resulting in a humiliating rout. Also, Iraq shot 39 Scud missiles
at Israel in 1991 while being spanked by George H. W.
Bush.
A great deal of time and effort is invested into trying to
smooth the feathers of the Palestinians, all this goes under the
heading of the Mideast peace process. But in the real world those
are very small potatoes. With Egypt on the sidelines, the danger of
a real conflagration in that region is limited to the possibility
of Iran making up the geographical gap between itself and Israel by
virtue, or vice, of nuclear technology.
Which brings us to Mubarak. Since the assassination of
Sadat, he has managed his country fairly well and managed the peace
exceedingly well. The alliance between the United States and Egypt
is by far the single most valuable asset we have bought in the
entire world. Israel is a great asset, too, but they are peaceable
people in their own right and would support our interests even if
we showed them no favor at all.
Egypt is not democratic with some repressive elements
involved. Still, there are no Iraq meat-grinders on the security
front, nor are there leprous gangrenous scabrous limbless orphans
in tatters begging in the streets like Calcutta. Tourists are
permitted to roam quite freely there and they find a country with
some prosperity and a lot of lower-middle-class people in
mismatched clothes, a sort of Central-America-on-the-Nile. Mubarak
is not Gandhi, but neither is he Ahmadinejad or Castro.
To treat the democracy demonstrators there better than
those in Iran requires a degree of lunacy. And as this column’s
honorary South American correspondent — Miss Latin America 2005
Claudia Monteverdi — has pointed out, it is beyond absurd to
regard Mubarak as less legitimate than Manuel Zelaya was in
Honduras in 2009.
We could have handled the situation by praising Hosni
Mubarak’s benevolent leadership while pointing out that it is in
the interest of Egypt and its neighbors for greater democratic
participation. Much, in fact, as Condoleezza Rice did. However,
mass anarchic demonstrations paralyzing the economy are
counterproductive. As Abraham Lincoln said in 1838, “There is no
grievance that is a fit object for redress by mob law.” We could
have promised the good offices of the United States in working with
our loyal ally to negotiate gradual improvements in the
system.
Instead Obama chose to say: “The people are right. Get
out, Mubarak. Now.”
Number one, stupid: we are now at the mercy of street
thugs in the most sensitive country in a volatile region. Number
two, heartless: taking Mubarak out is certain to visit horrific
dislocation on the entire population. Whoever takes over will not
be able to prevent Iraq-style suicide bombings all over the place,
destroying the quality of life. Number three, morally obtuse:
Mubarak is not a bad guy and should not be treated like Hu in
China, who sticks electric cattle prods in people’s rectums to make
them talk. Come to think of it, how did we treat creepy sadist
torturer Hu when he dropped by the other week? Number four,
ineffective, because Mubarak has no incentive anymore to play
ball.
Here, then, is the climax of my argument. The money and
the cover fire we gave him until now acted as a brake on his
behavior, not an accelerator. By telling him now we were dumping
him, we gave him the one trump card which could save him,
anti-Americanism. He can now slam us while he fights to save
himself, thus winning over some of the America-haters who can’t
bring themselves to back any friend of ours.
Until Obama opened his mouth I thought Mubarak was gone.
Now I think he will survive. Once his goons get the protesters out
of the streets, good luck enforcing his Larry-Craig-style
resignation effective in September. The Pharaoh of old saw cows in
his dream, but today’s leader of Egypt is done with mooing for
Barack.
