Egypt Envy

Like many others, I’ve been riveted by Egypt in recent days.  The incredible, impossible, triumphant first step by the Egyptian people has been something that no American liberal could resist.  What made the unfolding story so much more immediate to American liberals (or this one, at least) was the official American reaction to the stirrings of actual Egyptian democracy.  After years of cheerleading a comfortably theoretical concept of democracy in the Middle East (and killing hundreds of thousands in the process), Americans witnessed an administration that displayed every appearance of confusion, internal conflict, incoherence.  A series of high-level statements from Obama and Clinton said only one thing with any clarity: “We’re all for democracy,” they said.  “but whatever democratic changes are needed to get a lid back in place on this country, we want the dictator to make them.”

Friday of Departure, Tahrir Square.  Photo my Mona sosh.  Wikimedia Commons.

And so the US administration supported Egyptian democracy with the vaguest of rhetoric, while doing everything possible to uphold their man Mubarak over the Egyptian people.  And they continued doing so until Mubarak’s rejection became so obvious that even the US media saw it.  With Mubarak exposed and broken, Obama suggested Suleiman, a trusted US partner and infamous torturer.  It only took a few hours for it to become obvious that that pathetic dog wouldn’t hunt, with the result that the US administration had only one place left to go--the Egyptian Army.  Thus ended a truly embarrassing display of ineffective, reactive and incoherent moves by this administration in which it tried to simultaneously identify with the Egyptian people while also asserting that the dictatorship oppressing them was legitimate.