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Egypt, act two…(omar)

Clashes rage in Tahrir Square – Middle East – Al Jazeera English.

Well, it looks like the Mubarak kleptocracy is not going to go out smoothly. I see a lot of people blaming America, but I think the Egyptian regime is primarily responsible and was almost certainly egged on by the Saudis and other Arab autocrats. Israel must have played a role but the US less so.

The current American administration is not likely to initiate such advice, In the name of stability (which is actually all about Israeli occupation and not about stability) they are OK with suppression as long as it works. But I think they are smart enough to know that the best option here was not to have thugs smash heads in Tahrir square.

The best option from the US point of view was to have Mubarak kicked out by some other army people and then have an interim (still fully pro-US) govt in place. This violence is not their first choice. Its not a matter of being moral or good. Its simply common sense. Any idiot could see that the best option for Egypt would be a smooth transition to a new Egypt and the US has nothing to gain by having Mubarak reimpose temporary control by force.

Mubarak is not the Chinese communist party, which faced much narrower opposition in Tienanmen and with its large and disciplined organization it could kill thousands and impose order and sustain it for years (though not forever), and in any case, it provides very efficient capitalism to its people. 10% growth keeps many people quiet.

Mubarak and his fellow crooks are in no such position and rely on nothing more than American bribes (paid on behalf of Israeli occupation) to barely survive. They can beat people into temporary silence (even that may not work now) but their future is darker after these acts. So, its bad for Egypt, it's bad for the poor people of Egypt, but its not even in the interests of the US and I dont think the US has instigated this….

 

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6 responses to “Egypt, act two…(omar)”

  1. Ruchira

    You are right. Joe Biden may be foolish enough to have gone along with Mubarak’s thuggish suppression of the protests. He claimed that Mubarak is “not a dictator” the day after the Egyptians took to the streets. But Biden probably has duct tape on his mouth now. Obama and Hillary are too smart to get into the middle of this one and back yet another failed autocrat whose next address is somewhere in Riyadh. Whoever may be the interested parties advising Mubarak to take this disastrous route, this time the US is probably not one of them.

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  2. omar

    Though I should add that Admiral Mike Mullen (who runs his own foreign policy, from Pakistan to Egypt) has talked to the Egyptian army chief and expressed “confidence in the army’s ability to maintain order”. http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=62665
    Obama should take some initiative to reign in the Pentagon, otherwise things will go from bad to worse in this country too. I dont really think the pentagon is entirely evil (some of them probably are, but that is true in most institutions), I think their biggest negative is that they are stupid AND they dont know how stupid they are. That is a very bad combination, unfortunately its commonplace in militaries….The US military is actually better than average in this matter (before anyone jumps on me, I am comparing armies to armies, not to vegan support groups in San Francisco) because the US army is not totally isolated from normal society and many officers are remarkably well educated. But still, they cannot resist the sight of a smartly turned out officer and in third world countries their leaders tend to see “disciplined army” and the “out-of-control rabble” and nothing in between.

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  3. Ruchira

    Actually, I believe that Hillary would have shown a bit more spinal fortitude than Obama is doing to get the civilian administration and the military on the same page of the US foreign policy playbook. But I am getting the impression that whether or not our elected officials like what is going on in Egypt, the US this times sees the writing on the wall a bit more clearly. Let us see how this all plays out.
    There is a tendency among the military the world over to look kindly upon each other, except at those times that they are killing each other. The military, of necessity and mutual interest, ought to keep a bit of a distance from civilian culture. It does work mostly well in open democracies like the US and India, both with large armed forces. So, there is no doubt that the brass is often tone deaf to the buzz in the streets. One of Pentagon’s best and brightest put it succinctly during a military briefing – it was almost poetry!

    As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know..
    — Donal Rumsfeld

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  4. Sujatha

    This article would have us believe that all is unfolding as planned.Do you think this rings as a possibly true sequence of events or is it ‘reporting’ after the fact?
    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/02/how-the-white-house-approached-egyptian-turmoil/70646

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  5. Cyrus Hall

    Omar-
    The U.S. military is far from stupid. Stubborn to a fault, yes, often naive, sure, but stupid, no. They have no interest in seeing billions of dollars of U.S. military equipment, donated at the rate 1.5 billion a year, in the hands of a government with a less supine position toward U.S. and Israeli military posture. They will play whatever game they feel will maximize the likelihood of a government friendly to their goals. Any government where the military maintains its current amount of power would be a good outcome for them. That’s not stupid, just amoral.

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  6. omar

    cyrus, my contention would be that in order to have a cooperative Egyptian regime from this point forward, the US military should be working overtime to get rid of Mubarak…

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