For some reason he seems upset by the US’s Libyan campaign:
The history of CIA and other semi-secret Western support for the Muslim Brotherhood and similar Islamist factions — as allies against a common Soviet enemy — goes back to the early years of the Eisenhower administration. It was even understandable in the context of the Cold War. The enemy of my enemy is my friend; and after all, we once supported Stalin, against Hitler.
But now we are doing something more profoundly senseless. In the name of a “humanitarianism” that is not thought through, we are subtly joining forces with so-called “moderate” Islamists against isolated secular tyrants. We have foreign services sending feelers out to Islamist opponents of every Arab regime, in the name of “democracy” and “inclusivity.”
From Obama down through the liberal intelligentsia we have blather about how the Muslim Brotherhood is “evolving” — as it embraces the tactical devices of modern Western political parties, from women’s groups and youth clubs to electronic media and studied efforts by spokesmen to appear “cool.” Yet all this remains in the service of a political ideology that is unambiguously committed to the spread of Shariah, and the destruction of us.
It couldn’t be that the Libyan war serves the interests of our enemies, and is incompetently waged as well. That couldn’t be, could it?
Nicholas Burns, a former US Under Secreatary of State, supports the decision to make war on Libya:
We have to recognize this situation for what it really is — the first time in American history when we have used our military power to prop up and possibly put in power a group of people we literally do not know.
George Will: “the media call Moammar Khadafy’s foes ‘freedom fighters,’ and perhaps they are — but no one calling them that really knows how the insurgents regard one another, or understand freedom, or if freedom (however understood) is their priority.” Question: which countries are next in line for this novel US policy?
What happened to (a) those demands for civility at the beginning of the year? (b) the twitter revolutions? (c) the tsunami? and, coming next month (d) Libya? Answer: something happens, the media arrive, mess things up and take a lot of pictures, then leave when they see something they view as new, exciting, and (usually) ideologically useful. There’ll be a new meltdown, war, or flower revolution somewhere next month.
But in the case of the Middle East, it’s not just or even especially the US media. As Marc Lynch noted in January, Al Jazeera is “by far the most watched and most influential single media outlet in the Arab world. It has also embraced the new media environment, creatively and rapidly adopting user generated content to overcome official crackdowns on its coverage of various countries — a practice perfected in Iraq, where it had to rely on locally-generated content after its office was closed down in 2004.” So YouTube videos and such are apparently an important part of its content.
The US media have well-known policy preferences, and they are not shy about sharing them, consciously or not. Much of their ability to shape narratives derives from the emotional power of visual images. This is true the world over. As an observer wrote in February in the HuffPo, the “Arab revolution is without a doubt the poster child of Al Jazeera.” Yes, but what is the agenda of Al Jazeera? What sorts of new governments would its owners, management and newspeople like to see emerge in a transformed Middle East?
Young people with smartphones and the media can certainly start some things, but they are not well-positioned to end them. The young are know-nothings and powerless, and the media move on to the next adrenaline jolt. Into the void come the long-organized and ruthless. This may not be a 100% case, but it is certainly a majority. We agree with those who say that some degree of chaos, and rule by the nastier elements are the likely outcomes in most instances.
Serious countries develop and practice national policies that come from pursuing national interests. It’s bad enough when US policy seems to resemble the fashion of the day on TV. Much worse when the TV station isn’t even American. One of the most disturbing elements of the US’s recent foreign policy pronouncements and actions, particularly the Libyan military action, is that government officials routinely make wildly contradictory statements, and the ultimate (?) policy often seems improvised and scattershot.
Here’s a suggestion (and we’re only joking a little bit): at the beginning of each new media crisis or twitter uprising, a senior government official of sober mien and sound judgement should be required to not watch TV, and forego the internet. His counsel should be sought and particularly valued before any US government pronouncement or action. A major power cannot long endure as such if it looks like it makes its policy by following cable TV, tweets and postings on Facebook.
a peaceful transition to Western-style democracy in the Arab world is, of all the scenarios, the least probable. The more likely outcomes are (a) 1848-style restorations of the old regimes; (b) a descent into protracted civil wars; (c) Islamist takeovers; (d) a regionwide Sunni-Shiite conflict. By the way, (b), (c), and (d) are not necessarily mutually exclusive. They may be a sequence of events.
There are reasons not to be surprised if Ferguson is correct, and BTW you can expect all sorts of silly explanations of same if chaos occurs.
Melanie Phillips got into trouble for insulting some gentlemen who disciplined a four year old and his younger sibling, among others. Sometimes gentlemen need to mete out harsh punishments, especially if they are being deprived of a nation state. And some other gentlemen are being cruelly persecuted for much less. Gentlemen know how to behave and they know the difference between right and wrong (here and here, for example). Perhaps it’s partially why certain societies have the success that they do. So lock Phillips up and throw away the key and we shall all return to the age of Jonathan Swift.
Think back a year. What probability would you have given to the prediction that in one year the US would be waging war against Libya, and the Chairman of the JCS would be saying this on TV:
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mullen was asked whether it was possible that the mission’s goals could be achieved while leaving Gadhafi in power. “That’s certainly potentially one outcome,” he replied.
A very odd kind of war indeed. The Libyan adventure has also raised the profile of one Samantha Powers, who has been singled out for some criticism from voices both on the left and the right.
Finally, in response to our question of who could have predicted this, the answer is Walter Russell Mead. He wrote a piece last year on the President’s post-Westphalian world view. It was written about Iran, but much of what it says seems relevant to the Libyan situation.
the biggest problem with Bush was sending the military into an Arab Muslim country that hadn’t even attacked us. Among the several things that made that offensive were
* the rush to war — it was only several months after the possibility of military involvement was raised that combat operations began
* lack of United Nations sanction — only 17 relevant resolutions were ever passed before they were enforced
* lack of Congressional oversight — the President authorized the use of military force based on the flimsy pretext of a bill passed by Congress titled “Authorization of the Use of Military Force”, rather than seeking a document that had the words “declaration of war” in it; that’s every bit as bad as getting no Congressional approval at all
* obvious financial motives — clearly no one approved of the murderous dictator or sought a normal working relationship with him besides the French; at the same time, one couldn’t help but be suspicious of the fact that the population we were ostensibly protecting was located conveniently near the oil fields
* stretching our military — we were overburdened as it was, and our brave military despite its courage lacked the resources for yet another operation
* inflating our military — the only way to keep the bloodthirsty Pentagon beast fed was to give it the hordes of jobless young men who had no prospects in an economy that saw unemployment skyrocket above 4% in most states
* ignoring our generals — the decision to go to war was made by political hacks who had never worn a uniform
* inflaming the Arab Street — despite some touchy-feely talk about Islam, it was impossible for the Muslim world not to notice how the President made repeated, insistent proclamations of his Christianity, how he only ever used the military against Muslim targets, and how at the time the war started he’d kept the concentration camp at Guantanamo open for over a year
* wasting money — it was completely irresponsible to commit the military to an expensive mission when the President’s fiscal mismanagement had resulted in a budget deficit of over $150 billion in 2002
But anyway, what I really like about Obama is that he’s gone 29-3 in his bracket picks over the first two days. You have to spend a lot of time watching college basketball to be that good.
The news from Manama, the capital of the small island state of Bahrain, is that the Fifth Fleet HQ has gone on maneuvers to Oman for an indefinite time frame. In sum, bug-out from the proxy war in Bahrain between Riyadh and Tehran. Am told that the IRGC has staffed and funded the so-called protesters. The social media messaging that now floods the web, #bahrain, is suspect of being an IRGC disinformation campaign.
Of most significance, am told the Bahrain confrontation marks the breakdown of the 65-year-long alliance between Washington and Riyadh. The Kingdom has now turned away. China through the Pakistan connection looks like the choice to replace the US…
What has caused this break between Washington and its allies in the Middle East? Am told that the White House is deaf to experienced diplomats in the region. That the White House is piously ideological in supporting so-called democratic-leaning youth protesters despite the evidence that the “yuppie bloggers” are either naive ideologues themselves, without experience in governance or diplomacy, or else they are tools of the anarchists, Islamists and Twelvers.
Saudi Arabia is a problematic ally of the United States (and a compelling reason for the US to “drill, baby, drill” domestically — we must have greater energy independence). Still, it is an important ally, as has been Egypt. The single most troubling aspect of the last three months of US foreign policy is that we have not swiftly and unequivocally backed our allies.
It may well have been long past time for Mubarak to go, but if being an ally means anything at all, it means you don’t switch sides at the first sign of controversy and unrest. Maybe that means the US was on the wrong side, but so what? The greater principle at stake is the very idea of “ally.” No country can practice effective diplomacy if its friends, and especially its enemies, think its alliances can be overturned by tweets, facebook messages, and unpleasant TV pictures of the police doing nasty things to control crowds.
Con Coughlin gives us some background on the longstanding conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran that has a current nexus in Bahrain. Telegraph:
An estimated 30 per cent of Bahraini Shia are of Persian descent, and maintain contact with relatives in Iran. In the past, this has enabled Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to establish terrorist cells in the kingdom, aimed at destabilising the monarch. In 1981, a Tehran-organised plot to overthrow the government was uncovered. Bahraini security officials are constantly on the alert for signs of Iranian meddling, and have accused some members of the opposition Shia movement of being funded by Tehran.
The issue is further complicated by Iran’s long-standing insistence that it has a legitimate territorial claim over Bahrain. A recent Iranian newspaper editorial claimed that the kingdom was in fact a province of Iran. It is because of these simmering tensions between the states that the royal family’s decision this week to call for Saudi reinforcements is fraught with danger.
Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, the ayatollahs have assumed a protective role over the world’s Shia. They will not have taken kindly to the sight of 1,000 Saudi troops driving across the 15-mile causeway that links their country to Bahrain, in support of their fellow Sunni royalists.
Iran’s relations with the fundamentalist Wahhabi Sunni sect that dominates Saudi Arabia is strained at the best of times. Iran was accused of planning a truck bomb attack that destroyed the US military base at Dharhran in 1996, and in 2003 the Revolutionary Guards were implicated in a series of similar bombings in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
Saudi also accuses the Revolutionary Guards of trying to foment unrest among its own Shia, who constitute around 5 per cent of its 19 million population. The majority live in the Eastern Province, which is also the location of Saudi’s vast oil wealth. Last week, when Saudi anti-government demonstrators attempted to stage a “day of rage”, most of the disturbances took place in the Shia towns, where the security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets.
Iran has responded to the Saudi intervention by cutting diplomatic ties with Bahrain and denouncing the reinforcements as “unacceptable”. There is considerable concern within British security circles that the situation could spread into a wider conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia
Whether you think intervention in Libya is wise or not, it is a sideshow compared to a confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia. If the report of the US Navy leaving Bahrain is true, that may imply that US support for the Saudi position in Bahrain is less than robust. Not supporting Saudi Arabia and showing weakness in the face of Iran’s actions (or those of its proxies) could be nothing short of disastrous for US interests. And this may well be US policy.
Niall Ferguson has a disquieting piece on surplus men and war:
In China today, according to American Enterprise Institute demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, there are about 123 male children for every 100 females up to the age of 4, a far higher imbalance than 50 years ago, when the figure was 106. In Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, and Anhui provinces, baby boys outnumber baby girls by 30 percent or more. This means that by the time today’s Chinese newborns reach adulthood, there will be a chronic shortage of potential spouses. According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, one in five young men will be brideless. Within the age group 20 to 39, there will be 22 million more men than women. Imagine 10 cities the size of Houston populated exclusively by young males.
The question left open by economists is what the consequences will be of such a large surplus of young men. History offers a disquieting answer. According to the German scholar Gunnar Heinsohn, European imperial expansion after 1500 was the result of a male “youth bulge.” Japan’s imperial expansion after 1914 was the result of a similar youth bulge, Heinsohn argues. During the Cold War, it was youth-bulge countries — Algeria, El Salvador, and Lebanon — that saw the worst civil wars and revolutions. Heinsohn has also linked the recent rise of Islamist extremism in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan to an Islamic youth bulge.
An excess of military age males seems to create problems. Polygamous societies have these problems as we have seen all too often. And the secundones of suddenly-populous 16th century Spain became the conquistadors.
Add to these elements the fact that there hasn’t been a major regional war in a long time, and that the chief military men in many countries are personally inexperienced in the horrors and risks of war. Finally, with respect to China, this is a country that hasn’t had a recession in three decades, a situation virtually unprecedented in economic history. Who knows what unrest could happen when their economic fortunes turn down, and what outlet political leaders will try to channel that unrest to maintain domestic order. All in all, there are plenty of reasons to believe that some really awful things could happen in the not too distant future.
In Wisconsin, push is coming to shove in public sector budget battles, and it seems that it could get really ugly. At the UN, the US agreed to condemn the expansion of Israeli settlements, and the Palestinians immediately snubbed the offer, probably sensing weakness where there is weakness, and thus holding out for more.
In Egypt, it seems that protesters departed from the MSM’s gauzy romanticizing of them, and demonstrated why fundamental cultural and religious reform are the sine qua non of peaceful democracies in that region. (They also demonstrated the perils of making the media a participant in and enabler of the underlying story.) In Bahrain, Sunnis and Shiites are battling, the majority apparently opposing a minority that holds power.
In the US — oh, we forgot to mention that the US is broke and the nation’s leadership is in denial or playing a political game to call their opponents mean and heartless for doing what needs to be done.
Push is coming to shove, and most everyone who is intellectually engaged by these matters knows which side he is on. We don’t recall such intense, unstable, and dangerous structural issues as these in recent history. What happens next?
Herbert Meyer was in the Reagan Administration as Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council:
Our operating system is Western civilization: We put the individual at the center of life, while separating church and state. We believe in property rights and the rule of law. Western civilization unleashes the entrepreneurial talents of its people, and it encourages intellectual curiosity. It’s an endless struggle for equality among the races and the sexes. Is Western civilization perfect? Of course not; it’s designed and operated by human beings, and we make horrific mistakes from time to time. But when all is said and done, Western civilization is history’s most extraordinary accomplishment; it’s the modern world.
In just the last century, there were two efforts by other operating systems to knock us off. The first of these was fascism, which led to World War II. The second was communism, which led to the Cold War…
there’s another operating system that’s been with us for a long time: Islam. In this operating system, church and state are often combined, and the individual is subservient to this church-state combination — without the option to opt out. Islam doesn’t unleash the entrepreneurial talents of its people, and it discourages intellectual curiosity — which is why there hasn’t been a major scientific breakthrough from the Islamic world in a thousand years. There’s one other striking feature of this operating system: it treats women as though they were property rather than people. Simply put, this operating system is incompatible with the modern world — and that’s the glitch. Why is this a problem? Because the most radical and determined leaders of Islam, like their fascist and communist predecessors, wish to impose their operating system on the entire world — including us…
We have no wish to impose our operating system on anyone else, and we won’t allow anyone else to impose their operating system on us. This means that to avoid war, the world’s various operating systems need not be the same as ours — but they must be compatible with our operating system so we can live together peacefully.
Spengler and others have discussed the conflict between traditional societies and the modern world many times, and only the most obtuse among us fail to understand that Reformation is the solution. The Modern World isn’t going away (not if China, Japan and India have anything to say about it), so in all likelihood one of these days the unreformed are going to have to get with the program or become isolated and irrelevant.
It is wrongheaded for the US to abandon allies on a whim, because then what is being a US ally worth? Nonetheless, we apparently see some of that going on. Tom Friedman joins his colleague Nick Kristoff (they are both wondering what Hu is thinking) in celebrating the 2011 media phenomenon of Twitter revolutions:
to be in Tahrir Square tonight, to feel the energy and pride of a people taking back the keys to their country and their future from a tired old dictator, was a privilege. As a group of men who had commandeered a horse and buggy bellowed as they crossed the Nile Bridge: “Hold your head up high. You are Egyptians.’’
My guess right now is that there are a lot of worried kings and autocrats tonight -– from North Africa to Myanmar to Beijing. And it is not simply because a dictator has been brought down by his people. That has happened before. It is because the way it was done is so easy to emulate. What made this Egyptian democracy movement so powerful is its legitimacy.
It was started by youth and enabled by Facebook and Twitter. It was completely non-violent and only resorted to stone-throwing when faced with attacks by regime thugs. It drew on every segment of the Egyptian population. There was a huge flag in Tahrir Square today with a Muslim crescent moon and a Christian cross inside it. And most of all, it had no outside help.
We’re hard-pressed to understand this enthusiasm. The military has run Egypt for over half a century (Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak). It still does. What, after all, has changed, except there was a big, wild party telling the old guy to leave town, and a bigger, wilder one when he left? If the city folk don’t like the new guy, or the next new guy, or the one after that, what then? Saying no is trivial. In a country like Egypt, there’s no hard-won democratic tradition to say yes to, and ample reason to believe that democracy would be highly problematic, as Andrew McCarthy has discussed.
Egypt is a country where over 40% of the people are illiterate and a majority lives on less than $5 a day. It is a country where barbaric mutilations are commonplace and its greatest art has been condemned by the highest religious authorities. It is a land of crazy superstitions. It is a country where “84 percent say that apostates, or those who forsake Islam, should face the death penalty.”
The media’s coverage of Egypt reveals yet once again how little anyone should pay attention to the media’s framing of an issue like this. They project themselves into a story by interviewing people just like they once were: English-speaking, university-educated, tech-savvy secular young people, and make them the story — when in fact in a country like Egypt such people are a small minority. They write a romance of their own youth, one that has virtually nothing to do with the facts of the case.
The difference of course between the media and the people of Egypt is that when the party’s over and the romance has been written, the media get to go home and don’t have to clean up after the mess. What a nice life.
One of these things is funny. Is it the one above or below (this sort of rubbish seems to permeate the administration, as you know):
The director of the Office of National Intelligence James Clapper today told a House Intelligence Committee hearing that the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood…is “a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.”
This isn’t the first of Clapper’s capers, by the way. This isn’t funny anymore, if it ever was. Question: how did this man get, and how does he keep, his job? HT:PL
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., went the furthest, arguing that limiting the EPA would empower Al-Qaida by keeping the U.S. dependent on foreign oil. “The Republicans have offered us a unilateral disarmament policy that Al-Qaida and other groups around the world will be able to exploit”
America’s most famous Amtrak rider, Vice President Joe Biden, issued a stern warning about U.S. competitiveness in the high-speed rail game: “If we don’t get a grip, folks, they’ll not only be teaching us, they’re gonna own our kids.” The “they” Biden is talking about are all the other countries in the world who are developing or expanding high-speed rail systems, including China, Japan, Spain and France.
Some ideas are merely bad; some ideas are spectacularly bad. Occasionally you can distinguish those that are spectacularly bad by the over-the-top way they are defended. Alas, there’s no way to change the minds of some people. The Copernicans didn’t change older minds as much as they waited for the believers in Ptolemy to fade from the scene.
the Muslim Brotherhood has a parallel role here with the Tea Party, they’re the ones who keep you honest and decide whether you’ve stayed too long? Whether you’ve got a Sell By date looming?
As the Roman Catholic Church includes both those who practice leftist liberation theology and conservative anti-abortion advocates, so the Brotherhood includes both practical reformers and firebrand ideologues.
So the Brothers are just like Tea Partiers and Catholics, eh? Think again.
The increasing dependence of the United States on borrowing from foreign countries is alarming, and the speed with which it has accelerated during the last three years is an even greater red flag. To understand the nature and depth of the problem, we need to do a little arithmetic.
So foreigners have gone from owning $1.3 trillion at the beginning of the decade to now owning $3.3 trillion of such securities — a $2 trillion increase. More important and interesting than that, of the $2.8 trillion in net new issuances of Treasury securities during this decade, foreigners have bought $2.0 of the $2.8 trillion, a stunning 71%. (China alone appears to have bought over one third of the total of foreign purchases.) Who will purchase the debt to fund the upcoming $10 trillion in deficits is anyone’s guess, as the bond market seems to have figured out.
Foreigners increased their purchases of Treasuries by only $2 trillion during this decade — and yet we expect them to purchase perhaps as much as $7 trillion of new deficit debt over the next decade? That seems impossible.
Put it another way. The US government is grossly negligent in creating the conditions that necessitate America’s importing up to 70% of its oil, making the country dependent on countries that are strategic adversaries. Now we also import 70% of the financing of the US government’s budget deficits, again making America dependent on potential adversaries or enemies. This can’t end well. Where are the serious men to address these strategic vulnerabilities?
Jeffrey Anderson points out just how bad things are going to get if we stay on this course:
Obama is responsible for $4.4 trillion in actual or projected deficit spending in just three years in office..At the end of 2008, just before President Obama took office, the national debt was $9.986 trillion and 69 percent of GDP. Under his projections, eight years later it will be $20.825 trillion and 104 percent of GDP. That’s right: Our debt will soon exceed our national economic output for an entire year. And that’s even if you believe the president’s rosy projections of 4 percent real GDP growth over the next four years, considerably higher than the 2.7 percent achieved over the past quarter-century and the 3.2 percent over the past half-century…
interest payments on the debt are on course to triple from 2010 (his first budgetary year) to 2018, climbing from $196 billion to $685 billion annually. Under his projections for 2018, interest payments on the debt will exceed all defense spending, including wartime spending. Think about that: In the first budgetary year after the next presidential term, our creditors are projected to get more money than our military.
It’s amazing, when you think about, that America could be facing this level of catastrophe and most of the media simply ignore the issue.
We haven’t had very much to say about Egypt. We haven’t watched TV news on the subject. We’ve read a lot of course, including accounts from educated and goodhearted Egyptian participants in the demonstrations (here and here, for example), and some Americans watching Egyptians and getting the vapors. We’ve read realpolitik views of the situation, and people who blame Israel or the US itself for the situation.
We don’t have answers, but we have a few questions. Chief among them: if Mubarak has been a US ally for 30 years, why did the US ditch him after a week of street protests? Is US foreign policy that feckless? America has few enough allies in the Middle East. If US foreign policy can be turned on its head by TV coverage of a week or two of protests, why would anyone want to be an ally of the US? It seems that we are not the only ones asking this question.
UPDATE
From a report on NPR about unrest in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere:
In the past six months, the price of wheat and corn has nearly doubled in many parts of the world. And in areas where people spend as much as half their income on food, that’s making it very hard for people to feed their families…on corn, we’ve seen those commodity prices increase about 75 to 80 percent, wheat has increased about 75 to 80 percent in the last six months, and rice has gone up about 50 percent
Last month the NYT reported that in 2007 and 2008 there were food riots in Egypt. And things have apparently gotten much worse now for the many Egyptians who live on less than $2 a day. Did you know that the State Department says that over 40% of adult Egyptians are illiterate? There are plenty of reasons for disquiet and unrest besides those based on the TV interviews of young, urban, university-educated Egyptians who speak English. But perhaps that would overly complicate the storyline.
A monk’s living quarters are called a cell. In Bhutan, monks can trade one type of cell for another. Reuters:
A Buddhist monk could face five years in prison after becoming the first casualty of a stringent anti-smoking law in the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan…The monk has been charged with consuming and smuggling contraband tobacco under a law that came into force this month…having been caught in possession of 72 packets of chewing tobacco. Bhutan, where smoking is considered bad for one’s karma, banned the sale of tobacco in 2005.
Fouad Ajami reviews violence and revolts in Egypt’s past and comments on the troubles today. WSJ:
It is hard to know with precision when Hosni Mubarak, the son of middle peasantry, lost the warrant of his people. It had started out well for this most cautious of men. He had been there on the reviewing stand on Oct. 6, 1981 when a small band of young men from the army struck down Sadat as the flamboyant ruler was reviewing his troops and celebrating the eighth anniversary of the October War of 1973.
The new man had risen by grace of his predecessor’s will. He had had no political past. The people of Egypt had not known of him. He was the antidote to two great and ambitious figures — Nasser and Sadat. His promise was modesty…But the appetite grew with the eating…
In the annals of Muslim dynasties and kingdoms, wives and children have figured prominently in the undoing of rulers. An ambitious wife, Suzanne, with haughty manners, and a taste for wealth and power (a variation on the hairdresser Leila Trabelsi, the wife of the deposed Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali) and a favored son who, by all indications, was preparing to inherit his father’s power, deepened the estrangement between Mr. Mubarak and his people.
Egypt had been the trendsetter in Arab politics, in its self-image the place where all things modern in Arab life — the cinema, radio, women’s emancipation, parliamentary life, mass politics, forced industrialization — had begun. The sight of Tunisians, hitherto a marginal people in the Arab consciousness, taking to the streets and deposing their tyrant, both shamed and emboldened the Egyptians.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph reports that in December 2008 the State Department was aware of a claim that “the Wafd, Nasserite, Karama and Tagammu parties, and the Muslim Brotherhood, Kifaya, and Revolutionary Socialist movements — have agreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition to a parliamentary democracy, involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections.”
The occasion of Egypt’s troubles reminds us of a 2004 interview of the Vice President, who was a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden said: “We ought to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with an old friend, and he is a friend who occasionally calls me at home — I always know it’s him when he says, “Joe, it’s Mubarak. What are you doing?”
