Mubarak isn't as bad as he's painted. He indeed resisted his wife Suzanne's relentless drive to have their son Gamel installed as his successor. Omar Suleiman has his faults, but he also has more sense of what's going on than anyone else in Egypt. Whether he can manage the turmoil is another question. El Baradei is a figurehead and comes with baggage. I'd like to see the Kifaya people and Saad Eddin Ibrahim have some say in the new government.
I agree in the main, and only quibble that the US doesn't have to tell the Army not to shoot. The Shah got in deep and irretrievable difficulty when his thugs opened up on students with live ammo and killed 400, igniting the events which led to the toppling of the Shah. [To be fair, a witless Asst. Sec. of State, Patricia Derian, nixed the DoD sales of rubber bullets to the Shah, giving an idea of how the naive idealism of the Carter State Dept's incompetence functioned at many levels.] The true stories of how these catastrophes occur can only be told by people using code, as the hoi polloi simply wouldn't believe the feckless carelessness of functionaries like Derian. Frank Wisner, whom I worked with in the State Dept, is the opposite of Derian, a real FSO wizard with a grasp of how things happen on the ground. Holbrooke had the same gift, but was not the nicest guy to do business with.
Food prices have skyrocketed after floods and other natural disasters cut back on wheat, barley, rice, and corn production in the US and around the world. Also, if tiny Tunisia, an outlier country with a very active intellectual class and relatively well-educated middle class [the self-immolater who started the riots burned himself alive although he had a B.A.] could overthrow its dictatorial regime, this did tend to shame the proud Egyptians into action. Ditto for Yemen, which is being completely overlooked by the MSM.
Libya and the Far Maghreb are also tinder boxes and the expat workforce in the UAE is simmering. Jordan also has unrest. So in reality, a lot of different contingent variables are in play.
The Everest-sized obstacle to the US & Mubarak remains the MB’s rejection to this day of the Camp David Accords. Other long-standing MB positions based on religious rather than political beliefs are significant speed bumps, as in MB’s policy toward the Coptic Christians, women’s rights, the application of shari’a in a constitutional context and which school of shari’a thought applies.
What about international conventions Egypt has signed concerning racial discrimination [1967], discrimination against women [1981], civil and political rights [1982], economic, social and cultural rights [1982], elimination of torture and other cruel and degrading treatment [1986], rights of the child [1990]. Of course, the current Mubarak regime often fails to observe many of these conventions, but the MB would be examined much more closely, perhaps, for infractions than Mubarak. The strict application of Sharia punishments, for instance, would be in direct conflict with the 1986 convention, just to cite one example. And the comebacker isn't that Mubarak may have tortured some political prisoners, but that MB is in favor of systematic application of medieval punishments.
And I'm interested in how some of the commenters here are so sure of what the Egyptian people want. Is it what a crowd yells and signage or perhaps is it more profoundly a search for order with a more democratic way of reaching a consensus. Condi Rice's muck-up with the Palestinian elections in 2006 serves as a warning to a lot of educated Egyptians, as Hamas is a branch of the MB.
I am an Arabist and have an MA in Modern European History from the U of Michigan. I've served as an FSO in three Arab countries and then, as an Amoco executive, worked in Egypt as a Pol Risk and Entry Strategy specialist. I have been to Saad Eddin Ibrahim's home in Maadi many times and am now retired, but sympathize with him and his plight, as a modern Egyptian seeking democracy.
The conundrum remains. Can the Ikhwan be trusted, because once in charge of the commanding heights in Egypt, my guess is that the present senescent leadership will be tossed like used Kleenex? I have very little respect for Mubarak's regime, but in this case is the half-loaf still part of a meal that can be expanded, without being tossed for being "no loaf at all," to paraphrase Lenin.
My guess is that Mubarak's genius for muddling through might prevail, and that the woman you quote at the end of the article is 'whistling Dixie.' Not that I agree that M should stay, but think the Ikhwan would be the greater of two evils.
I'll rejoice for five minutes and then hope that Damascus is the next venue for the liberation of Arabs from tyranny.
Mubarak isn't as bad as he's painted. He indeed resisted his wife Suzanne's relentless drive to have their son Gamel installed as his successor. Omar Suleiman has his faults, but he also has more sense of what's going on than anyone else in Egypt. Whether he can manage the turmoil is another question. El Baradei is a figurehead and comes with baggage. I'd like to see the Kifaya people and Saad Eddin Ibrahim have some say in the new government.
I agree in the main, and only quibble that the US doesn't have to tell the Army not to shoot. The Shah got in deep and irretrievable difficulty when his thugs opened up on students with live ammo and killed 400, igniting the events which led to the toppling of the Shah. [To be fair, a witless Asst. Sec. of State, Patricia Derian, nixed the DoD sales of rubber bullets to the Shah, giving an idea of how the naive idealism of the Carter State Dept's incompetence functioned at many levels.] The true stories of how these catastrophes occur can only be told by people using code, as the hoi polloi simply wouldn't believe the feckless carelessness of functionaries like Derian. Frank Wisner, whom I worked with in the State Dept, is the opposite of Derian, a real FSO wizard with a grasp of how things happen on the ground. Holbrooke had the same gift, but was not the nicest guy to do business with.
Food prices have skyrocketed after floods and other natural disasters cut back on wheat, barley, rice, and corn production in the US and around the world. Also, if tiny Tunisia, an outlier country with a very active intellectual class and relatively well-educated middle class [the self-immolater who started the riots burned himself alive although he had a B.A.] could overthrow its dictatorial regime, this did tend to shame the proud Egyptians into action. Ditto for Yemen, which is being completely overlooked by the MSM.
Libya and the Far Maghreb are also tinder boxes and the expat workforce in the UAE is simmering. Jordan also has unrest. So in reality, a lot of different contingent variables are in play.
The Everest-sized obstacle to the US & Mubarak remains the MB’s rejection to this day of the Camp David Accords. Other long-standing MB positions based on religious rather than political beliefs are significant speed bumps, as in MB’s policy toward the Coptic Christians, women’s rights, the application of shari’a in a constitutional context and which school of shari’a thought applies.
What about international conventions Egypt has signed concerning racial discrimination [1967], discrimination against women [1981], civil and political rights [1982], economic, social and cultural rights [1982], elimination of torture and other cruel and degrading treatment [1986], rights of the child [1990]. Of course, the current Mubarak regime often fails to observe many of these conventions, but the MB would be examined much more closely, perhaps, for infractions than Mubarak. The strict application of Sharia punishments, for instance, would be in direct conflict with the 1986 convention, just to cite one example. And the comebacker isn't that Mubarak may have tortured some political prisoners, but that MB is in favor of systematic application of medieval punishments.
And I'm interested in how some of the commenters here are so sure of what the Egyptian people want. Is it what a crowd yells and signage or perhaps is it more profoundly a search for order with a more democratic way of reaching a consensus. Condi Rice's muck-up with the Palestinian elections in 2006 serves as a warning to a lot of educated Egyptians, as Hamas is a branch of the MB.
I am an Arabist and have an MA in Modern European History from the U of Michigan. I've served as an FSO in three Arab countries and then, as an Amoco executive, worked in Egypt as a Pol Risk and Entry Strategy specialist. I have been to Saad Eddin Ibrahim's home in Maadi many times and am now retired, but sympathize with him and his plight, as a modern Egyptian seeking democracy.
The conundrum remains. Can the Ikhwan be trusted, because once in charge of the commanding heights in Egypt, my guess is that the present senescent leadership will be tossed like used Kleenex? I have very little respect for Mubarak's regime, but in this case is the half-loaf still part of a meal that can be expanded, without being tossed for being "no loaf at all," to paraphrase Lenin.
My guess is that Mubarak's genius for muddling through might prevail, and that the woman you quote at the end of the article is 'whistling Dixie.' Not that I agree that M should stay, but think the Ikhwan would be the greater of two evils.
I guess ClimateGate didn't exist because the NYT judged it had been hacked, just like WikiLeaks...
Oops, the NYT DID print WikiLeaks, my bad.