Good speech from Obama.
- Fake promises to opposition not gonna cut it.
- Gestures toward the opposition while trying to suppress them not gonna cut it.
- Anything violent and not honest not gonna cut it, etc etc.

He wants to see results, real results and wants to see them now.
He didn't say he wants to see Mubarak resign but he did say that he hopes Mubarak listens to egyptian people and makes the right decision.
Strongest talk from Obama so far.

Looks like Mubarak is definitely done, all world waits for the stuborn ego-maniac psychopat to crack and announce his departure.

Mubarak or Obama?

It is only surprising if you view conservatives as some sort of satanic cult. Krauthammer is an enormously logical and reasonable man, a product of science and philosophy.

I cannot speak for all conservatives, but I would guess most would wish for the best out come for the Egyptian people and for an out come that maximizes their individual liberty.

Many conservatives fear that a transition to a figure like ElBaradei would be a repeat of the Iranian transition to Banisadr, where a secular intellectual was elected the first president if Iran, but subsequently ran out of the country by the mullahs and their minions.

In reality, we have very little influence on the reality on the ground, other than offering Mubarak and his guys safe passage out of the country should he decide that is is best course.

The future of Egypt belongs to the Egyptians. Should they chose a democracy or a theocracy, it isn't any of our business. Our only business would be to try to insure they don't acquire nuclear weapons which would likely destabilize the region.

I don't agree with the gushing praise for Krauthammer, but my point wasn't that omg conservatives aren't all the devil. My point has been a very specific one - neo-conservatives (real neo-cons, not the fake, garden-variety conservatives called neo-cons by the misinformed) are actually taking the side of the people of Egypt here. I don't say it because it particularly surprises me, I'm saying it because it doesn'f fit with the image popular among many that neo-conservatives do not care in the slightest about democracy and all the rhetoric surrounding it was completely empty and hypocritical. I just want to show that neo-cons, no matter what else you think of them, do have some genuine attachment to spreading democracy in the region, and are not just in favour of continuting the status quo of helping to prop up pro-American dictatorships in the region at all costs.

Maybe. I think a lot of conservatives wouldn't care for Egyptian democracy if it hurt American interests though. I feel as though a lot of conservatives aren't willing to risk any possible change to the status quo, for fear of Islamists taking power. There obviously is a risk there, but it seems as though many conservatives are not willing to allow any risk in the slightest, even if it means keeping the Egyptians permenantly under Mubarak's jackboot.

Democracy in the Middle East is completely subordinated to American interests and small risks become certainties in this line of thinking.

Many conservatives don't know **** about the actual situation, and paint worst-case scenarios as inevitable, and come to the conclusion that we must keep Mubarak on as pharoah. It's the scaremongering I loathe. Scaremongering which is not grounded in reality and which could have the effect of destroying any chance of Egyptian democracy if it actually came to influence the power-centres in the United States.

There's nothing wrong with being sceptical and realistic. Many conservatives are acting like chicekn licken.

We have a lot of influence on the army, given our connections to them, our aid, our training and so on. We could have a lot of influence there, for good or for ill. We could also do a lot to help

Shouldn't we try to help them become a functioning democracy? Shouldn't we have a preference for one over the other for very, very good reasons?

We took this "**** it, let the people decide" attitude to Afghanistan in the 1990s. Look where it got the country. The United States can be a force for good and democracy and liberty. When it chooses to be. It can also be an extremely repressive, reactionary force. We should really be trying to use the massive power and influence that US wields to help the Egyptian people obtain a better system of government. There are about a zillion reasons to want to do this. A simple compassion and solidarity would be a pretty obvious one tbh.

We have a whole litany of other very important interests in the country, from help with the war on terror, to the Suez Canal, to not seeing another war with Israel break out, to containing Hamas and other radical Islamist and jihadist groups, to US-backing for dictators being a key "grievance" of Al Qaeda and their sympathizers, to not looking like hypocrits when we talk about human rights, democracy and liberty, to tourism, to business interests and so on and so on. Clearly we have much more interest in Egypt becoming democratic than just not wanting to see them with nukes.

It hopefully won't even cost the US all that much to help foster a more pluralistic democracy there anyway.

Edit: Also, doesn't the point you're making in the last two sections I quoted directly contradict the point you made in the second section I quoted. In the section quote you're saying that conservatives obviously want the best for the Egyptian people and want them to have liberty, but in the last two quotes you're saying it's none of our business unless they get nukes. The former is a compassionate internationalism, the latter is an amoral (and even immoral imo) near-complete isolationism.

I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the "Arabs aren't ready for/don't want/can't handle democracy" and "It's not in their culture" memes that get trotted out by elements of both right and left when it suits their policical agenda. There are definitely legitimate issues to be explored around it, but its gets used in an inconsistent and opportunistic manner by those who are only seeking to score political points against their opponents. That's the point I, and I believe ikes, are making.

Except that geology can't really 'make' anything anything. People make democracy hard, not rock formations.

Dutch news reports the first journalist death in Egypt.
Egyptian journalist, Ahmad Mohamed Mahmoud that was shot by a sniper at 28 jan, died today.

Why are ElBaradei and George Soros on the board of trustees for the International Crisis Group? Why does this not suprise me


Obama pals provoked Egypt chaos

too much Beck, perhaps?

What about terror fundraiser and part Fox Investor Imam Rouf? Is he on the board or is he too busy funding terror and Fox?

Pretty sure you're thinking of Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, not Imam Rauf.

Or do all AY-Rab names sound the same to you? Huh? Huh!

US can blame itself for anger in the Middle East, and start making peace

Really good article from CSM.

Egyptian Mob Burns Al Jazeera's Cairo Office

From the article:

This struck me as odd. It's not like American interests are served only by actually obtaining the oil for consumption. How many US oil companies would kill for contracts in the ME, or better yet, ownership of some production capacity? Friendly and malleable regimes in the ME certainly facilitate these things and imo that is the crux of the oil issue, not that Debbie Soccer Mom needs to run the kids to practice.

Would you be okay with another country trying to help the U.S. in a similar fashion?

If the US was an impoverished dictatorship, and had a chance to become more democratic with the support of a much more powerful democratic country, yes. That's not the case though, so it's an absurd question.

Let me ask you a question though - should the US not have tried to facilitate the democratization of Germany and Japan and the security and prosperity of Western Europe as a whole at the end of WWII? Was that unnecessary and possible hurtful meddling? Should West Germany and Japan have just been "left alone" after the war? Do you think the South Koreans would rather the US "left them alone" and didn't protect them from the crazy North, and help them democratize when the time came. Do you think the Iraqi Kurds want the Americans to stop providing them with support and assistance in democratization and security, and wished they had stayed out of their affairs after the Gulf War, regardless of what happened before it? Yes, there are plenty of examples of the US supressing democracy, but my point is the US can, does, and will play an important and desirable role in fostering democracies around the world, when it chooses to. I'm arguging that the US should choose to in Egypt and that it will make an important difference if it does.

Degraded realists gonna be act like degraded realists.

McCain called the spread of democracy in the Middle East a "cancer' on TV today.
(think it was today, as I just saw the clip).

Fair enough. As you mentioned below, though, U.S. involvement in the affairs of other countries is not limited to such restrictive conditions, and I was just trying to make a point about the sovereignty of nations.


Good points. I couldn't tell you how people feel in those countries. I know people in Japan, Korea and Vietnam- friends, family, in-laws- who wish the U.S. (and other powers) had stayed out and allowed them to determine their own fates, but I'm reluctant to claim any knowledge of what any entire country does or does not think. I suspect that within any country there would be a wide range of opinions on such matters.

Maybe he meant the good kind of cancer.

You don't agree that CK is an enormously logical and reasonable person and a product of science and philosophy? Interesting.

Not a big surprise if anyone had their eyes open the last 10 years or so.

I understand the daily kos readers might have difficulty understanding this, but the neo-cons were the ones taking the side of the Iraqi and Afghan peoples in the previous administration. The neo cons were the guys arguing for freeing the Iraqi and Afghan peoples from Saddam and the Taliban. And the neo cons were the only ones arguing for keeping Iraq whole, unlike the genius VP Biden who wanted to Balkanize Iraq into Sunnistan, Kurdistan and Shiastan, right?



As usual, the popular image/conventional wisdom as portrayed by the msm is quite wrong, as you noted above.




Something tells me "Islamists taking power" and what we would commonly call "democracy" are sort of mutually exclusive terms, no? I have difficulty understanding how islamists in power is consistent with democracy for the Egyptian people. Could you clear that up for me?

Pardon me if I am not enthusiastic about the prospects of exchanging the jackboot of Mubarak with the jackboot of the mullahs. Ask the Iranian people how that has worked out for them and the rest of the world.

But as I said previously, that determination is ultimately in the hands of the Eqyptian people, I hope.[/QUOTE]




I think you give America's influence over the coming events way too much credit in the context of Mubarak's and the Army's ass against the wall.

Conservatives don't generally have a Pollyana-ish view of the world. They understand, in most cases like these, there isn't likely to be a nice neat transition and there is a great likelihood the end result will be a worse out come for everyone involved (except for the next autocrat empowered). But be that as it may, the policy of America should be to do what is within its power to lead to the most positive result. I just believe we are quite limited in that way.


Quite frankly I don't see the inconsistency. I wish the best for the people of Eqypt, but I recognize our influence is limited.

I do find it particularly funny that now the liberals want us to be interventionists. Earlier in this post you chided America in the 1990's for letting the Afghanis decide their own fate, but the huffpo and kos crowd scream bloody murder when we intervene in Afghanistan and depose Saddam and actually put in place real democracies in those 2 countries.

And I'm the one that is inconsistent?

This isn't entirely consistent though. Their calls for democracy were only constrained to the countries were it was beneficial for us to overthrow their goverments. I say this is because Mubarak had an election in 2005 in which he did the same thing he always did. Imprison opposition parties, send thugs to harass, pay people to vote, etc. Egypt and the M.E. had high hopes that G W Bush, being consistent with his advocation of promoting democracy in the ME, would denounce Mubarak's election as a fraud and similarly put pressure on him for free and democratic elections. This was the neocons first open test of their policy.

Instead, Condi Rice gave a press conference announcing the US support for Mubarak's election. That was when the M.E. knew the game was up and the neocon talk for democracy with just code for intervention in countries we don't like while supporting undemocratic dictators in countries that we did like.

Not really. Strikes me as a bit of a wild-eyed, right-wing ranter at times. Worth reading sometimes though.

Well, yeah. My point is a lot of people don't have their eyes open and that the word neo-con is serially misused by the majority of people.

Again, I'm just addressing popular conceptions or misconceptions of neo-cons.

Well, far from "the only ones", but you won't find me disagreeing that Joe Biden is a moron when it's come to Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's not. That's not my point. My point is the chicken licken, sky is falling, scaremongering a number of conservatives are going in for at the moment. There is reason to be worried about an islamist takeover in Egypt, and it is something of a risk, but I believe it is a risk worth running (and not really a risk we can avoid anyway), and I believe that some of the convservative commentators are massively overestimating the possibility of an islamist takeover, and the negative consequences of that takeover in order to scaremonger and be sensationalist.

CK seems to have it about right in that column. Other, especially most of the talking heads on Fox, have just been scaremongers.

I know some Iranian expats here in London, and you probably won't find more anti-regime people around. I know just how ****** the ayatollahs are thanks.

My point, again, is the scaremongering around the Egyptian revolution.

This we can agree on.

America's influence is limited, but still important imo, and worth getting right.

Fair enough. The "conservatives know best and everyone else is a naive fool" stuff is getting pretty old though. I don't need a lecture on the virtues of conservatism, thanks.

Saying "its none of our business" isn't really implying limited influence. It's implying its none of our business whether we have the influence or not. Otherwise you would have just said there's not a lot we can do.

Yes, inconsistent imo, and also someone who seems to think liberals are a mass, kos/huffpo-reading, homogenous bloc. I'm a liberal and an interventionist. There is no inconsistency here. Huffpo and kos don't represent my views on foreign policy, just as I imagine lots of conservatives don't represent your views.

You'll probably understand politics better if you don't think of it as "liberals" vs "conservatives" and realize that the world, issues and peoples' views are far too complicated to lump everyone into one category and make huge assumptions about what they think based on what label you slap onto them.

Aside from being a liberal and an interventionist, I also have other views on lots of things. You'll do better to ask me what my views are on certain topics rather than looking at a huffpo editorial and assuming I agree with that.

I generally agree, but I don't agree that the neo-con commitment to spreading democracy is completely self-serving and selective. There are definitely inconsistencies and hypocrisies there, big ones, and they have too often succumbed to realpolitik and taking the easier course by sticking with the friendly, "stable" dictators, but I think they do have some level of commitment to spreading democracy. Nowhere near as much as they like to make out, but the rubber does meet the track at times, and almost certainly a lot more than the more traditional conservatives and some of the degraded realists on the right (and in a lot of the establishment left in Washington).

Just my $0.02.

I was asked this in the other thread

Beck is 100% correct

1. Groups from the hardcore socialist and Communist left and extreme Islam will work together because they are both a common enemy of Israel and the Jew.

2. Groups from the hardcore socialist and Communist left and extreme Islam will work together because they are the common enemy of capitalism and the western way of life.

3. Groups from the hardcore socialist and Communist left and extreme Islam will work to overturn relatively stable countries, because, in the status quo, they are both ostracized from power."

We have already seen that ElBaradei is in bed with Soros and company. We have seen the radical leftists meddling in the the Mideast with the Flotilla incidents nad Egypt provocation.

Obama and the shadow socialist group behind Egypt's fall?


Obama will let Egypt fall to the Islamists just as Carter let Iran fall

the dark side really has you in its grip now, nick

it's only a matter of time before you're assimilated into the zombie army of conspiratards that haunts the internets

and to think you once said they're the lowest breed of political ideology