Saturday, January 29, 2011

Revolt in Egypt: It's Freedom, Stupid

Following up from earlier (and my comments on alternatives to Mubarak), here's the take at The Daily Caller: "Muslim Brotherhood Takeover Feared."

Yeah, Islamist fundamentalists could come to power. But considering
Caroline Glick's analysis cited previous, beyond outward impressions its six in one hand and half a dozen in the other.

In any case, see Sherif Mansour's comments at Foreign Policy, "
Pharaoh's End: A Roundtable":

There's only one lesson that American foreign policymakers should take from recent events in Tunisia and Egypt: freedom matters. The United States has continually supported Mubarak and other oppressive regimes in the region, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. The Obama administration it finds itself between a rock and a hard place, forced to choose whether to support the ideals of freedom and democracy it espouses and run the risk that in the aftermath, the United States will have lost its allies in the region, or stick with the devil it knows.

If the administration is smart, it will see the writing on the wall and realize that the old order in Egypt, and conceivably the rest of the Middle East, is gone forever. When the smoke clears, Washington will want to be on the right side of history. The United States must now withdraw its support, both financial and symbolic, from the Mubarak regime and avoid any further ties to its oppression.
More at the link, as well as commentary from four other experts.

BONUS: Robert Stacy McCain engages the debate as well, "Whose Bright Idea Was It to Send Joe Biden Out to Talk About Egypt?’"

2 comments:

Opus #6 said...

I hope for the best for all world people. I worry about thugs seizing power, but some outcomes are not in our hands.

Dennis said...

Notice how quickly the "underground" for information was created when Egypt shut down the Internet. It should cause a number of individuals to re-evaluate their ideas on government control of the Internet and the concept of allowing a "president," et al to have a "kill switch."
Interesting how quickly the attacks by the Left on Bush and others about who the US recognizes around the world comes back to "bite" them. Talk is cheap, but leadership is hard though in this case "punting the football" may work for Obama.
We need to stay out of it and allow the Egyptians to determine where this ultimately winds up. The Muslim Brotherhood, if it gains any power at all, will have the same problem when it comes to leading in a country as diverse as Egypt as Obama does in the US.
I don't think, from what I've read, that the average Egyptian is all that enamored by the radicals.