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Egyptian Tea & Kool-Aid

By Aaron Goldstein on 2.10.11 @ 3:09PM

Yesterday, John Guardiano told us criticizing the Egyptian protesters for anti-Semitism was akin to accusing Tea Party activists of racism.

Today, Guardiano claims the origins of the anti-Semitic signs are in doubt:

Indeed, for all we know, these relatively few anti-Semitic signs were produced by pro-Mubarak thugs determined to discredit the protesters in the eyes of the Western media.

Evidence please.

In the meantime, I’m still waiting for Guardiano to answer Jim Antle’s question to how the United States should support liberal democratic principles and modernizing institutions in Egypt.

Butch | 2.10.11 @ 4:07PM

Well, I read Mr. Guardiano's piece linking back to your previous one, and now this one. I am as apprehensive as the commenters to his piece. I believe it was Andrew McCarthy in the past few days over at NRO who pointed out there are a lot of different players among the Egyptian "people." What matters is who will wind up in control in the end. If American support is critical to that, I fear the outcome. We were passive to pro-democracy forces in Iran and supported the Chavez wannabe in Honduras. I have no faith in the American response.

Thom| 2.10.11 @ 7:08PM

To this point I’ve stayed out of this cat fight over who thinks they know how things are going to turn out in the Middle East, including Egypt for a host of reason, two of which are that everything we see on the big screen and is reported to us is brought to us by a group of people we universally don’t trust in our own country, have an well known self serving agenda and we have a lot of data points on how these kinds of events brought about by MOBs usually turns out in the Middle East.

Mr. Guardiano presents himself as being some kind of Oracle on the subject of what is going on there while simultaneously confusing human emotions (pessimism and optimism) for simple good old common sense skepticism backed up with a lot of known history here that simply can’t be ignored in a 21st century world. He is either dangerously naïve or hopelessly attracted to a romantic ideal about “democracy” that hasn’t played out in the Muslin world for going back as far as there are records. You don’t have to be an expert on Islam to grasp that the teachings of Islam and our concept of “democracy” are about 180 degrees out. Where some sense of secular Muslin democracy sort of, kind of exist it has tended to be delivered out of the barrel of a gun, a lot of guns and most recently our guns.

The trending for places like Turkey have been against our interest since they voted to be more Islamic and their stiffing us in 2003 and their recent actions against Israel may not make them our enemy in the short order but their indifference is enough to further the causes of the alphabet soup of terrorist entities in the region, not the least of which have control of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria to some degree.

The current Regime in Washington DC as many have pointed out has a solid track record of backing the same people the Joker would. It is in King Obama’s interest to have Egypt “burn” in Joker terms. Chaos and anarchy in Egypt serves his long term interest against to isolate Israel. Hoping that our own Joker will do the right thing here is truly naïve and assuming we really have much play in this matter at this point.

Far too many people, including Mr. Guardiano see what they want to happen here not what is really going on under the covers where it really matters to the outcome. Simply put we don’t know enough information to have an informed opinion about the total scope of this matter. The devil lives in the details and those details are blazingly missing from any authentic and reliable source at this point. Whatever Mubarak is in the scheme of things, it is beyond silly and amateurish to simply labor him a “dictator” which elevates him to the Saddam and Hitler league and there simply isn’t any evidence to support that charge. At worst he is in the same league as all the other autocratic rulers in Islamic world and no worse than the last US friendly ruler of Iran before he was replaced in a MOB oriented revolution. Iran was a lot more secular before 1979 than it is today and there is a lot of discontent there just as in Egypt today but in Iran the ruling minority with the guns won’t hesitate to use them in mass if necessary. They have “democratic” elections there too just like some are calling for in Egypt. We condemn those elections as fraud partly because we don’t like the results but where so called home grown MOB oriented “democracy” has taken hold in the Middle East (Gaza, Lebanon, West Bank) it is decidedly anti-US, anti-Western and Islamic. Someone with a little common sense and healthily skepticism for the facts that we know would grasp that our “wishes” with our own regime in Washington DC is probably on par with spitting in the wind and hoping to not suffer for that.

No one knows how this is going to turn out even in the short run and beyond that much of what is being said about the situation is just wishful thinking at this point.

I have nothing invested in the outcome of this but I’m not naive about the potential downsides given the history of the place. Just as our very own Joker can’t deliver prosperity by fiat those that put their faith in some kind of grand awakening in Egyptian society are going to find those that follow Mubarak can’t either, just as has been the case in Gaza, Lebanon, West Bank, Iran, Syria, etc. We know what usually follows grand illusions by MOB.

John Guardiano | 2.10.11 @ 8:50PM

Thom,
I have to question whether you know how to read -- or if you do, whether you comprehend what you read!

I never claimed to know how events in Egypt and the Middle East will turn out. Quite the contrary: I have consistently said that events there are in flux.

Which is why it is crucial that the United States act to shape events there: so that they develop in a more peaceable and democratic direction.

You, by contrast, seem to want U.S. policymakers to sit on the sidelines and to hope for the best.

Hope is not a strategy. The world's greatest nation can and should do much more than that -- especially when the stakes for our own security are so high.

Regards,
John

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