…says Andrew Roberts, writing about Obama’s Dangerous Game in Egypt (h/t Roger Kimball)
For when President Obama visited what he called “the timeless city of Cairo” to give his famous speech of June 4, 2009, and went through all the diplomatic pleasantries and greetings with Mubarak, exchanging presents and so on, it turns out that his administration was actively undermining his host and ally. WikiLeaks has revealed that only three weeks before Obama’s inauguration, on December 30, 2008, Margaret Scobey, the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, warned the State Department that opposition groups had drawn up secret plans for “regime change” before the September 2010 elections. The embassy’s source was an anti-Mubarak campaigner whom the State Department had helped to attend an activists’ summit in New York. This secret support for anti-Mubarak campaigners continued after the change of administrations, and up to the outbreak of the present attempted revolution.
Should Mubarak survive, he will understandably abhor American double-dealing in this matter, and the alliance between Egypt and the United States will hereafter be characterized by suspicion and deep distrust.
Should he fall, and his place be taken at any stage by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Republican narrative for the next presidential election will be obvious. Truman lost us China; Johnson lost us Vietnam; Carter lost us Iran, and now Obama has lost us Egypt. You can’t trust the Democrats in foreign policy. Argue over the historical minutiae if you like—was LBJ more or less to blame than JFK or Nixon, for example—but if Cairo goes Islamist the overall narrative will be compelling.
…
History shows how small, extremist, determined, and, above all, well-organized revolutionary cadres tend to succeed out of all proportion to their numbers against amorphous, well-meaning, middle-class liberals.
Lenin usurped the Russian revolution only eight months after Alexander Kerensky toppled the Czar. ElBaradei might well be fated to play the role in Egypt that was played by Shapour Bakhtiar in Iran or Bishop Abel Muzorewa in Zimbabwe, of the stopgap figure who is acceptable to the West but soon swept away by the far more extreme Khomeini and Mugabe, respectively. Timeless Cairo itself provides the example of Mohammed Naguib, who lasted only 17 months as president of Egypt after the revolution that toppled King Farouk, before being ousted and placed under house arrest for 18 years by Nasser. Those who unleash the tiger very rarely ride it for long.
Ralph Peters, on the other hand, comments on Denial On The Nile
We Can’t Dictate Egypt’s Future and sees zero chance of a short-term Muslim fundamentalist takeover.
Mark Levin interviewed Frank Gaffney last night; The Right Scoop has the interview, where Gaffney sees the Muslim Brotherhood behind the revolution.
At the LA Times, the headline reads, U.S. open to a role for Islamists in new Egypt government; if that’s the case, this represents a momentous shift in American foreign policy. The LA Times article says,
The organization must reject violence and recognize democratic goals
which strikes me as a particularly naive attitude when dealing with taqiyya.
Carolyn Glick Washington’s reaction as clueless.
Over in Jordan,
Jordan’s King Dismisses Government Amid Protests
Jordan’s King Abdullah II dismissed his government and named a new prime minister tasked with introducing “true political reforms,” following weeks of street protests calling for economic and political change.
Follow the link for a timeline of the uprisings in the Middle East.
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