It's tough to talk sensibly about the situation in Egypt, but it's a snap to talk nonsense

At least I don't kid myself that my opinion of Nobel peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei's suitability as a possible leader for Egypt is either here or there.

by Ken

Egypt is another of those situations I've been keeping my head down on, for the simple reason that I understand that the situation is way too complicated for my understanding, and also far too little under our control anyway. Do I need to note how narrowly such scruples are shared?

Nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the place of [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak. Now more than ever, we need strength and sound of mind there in the White House. We need to know what it is that America stands for so we know who it is that America will stand with. And we do not have all of that information yet.

This is crass imbecility. Oh, that and the very cheapest form of political theater. The woman knows nothing about Egypt, has nothing to contribute to any discussion of the situation there, but by God she sees an opportunity for yet another cretinous broadside against the president.

Now I don't doubt the president knows more than he's let on publicly about the most likely scenarios for the next government of Egypt, but of course there's not much he can say publicly: (a) because we have so little power to influence the outcome, (b) anything we do publicly is likely to produce the opposite effect, and (c) I doubt that he's prepared to make a public statement as to how far the U.S. is prepared to go to perpetuate the present military dictatorship.

And make no mistake, a military dictatorship is what Egypt has been for decades, and the Egyptian military has been tightening the screws. (Not, though, that the military is a monolithic force, as that lost link I mentioned sketched.)

I certainly don't claim to be an expert, which is why I've kept my mouth shut, and while the following deals with only one of the "player" elements I alluded to above, it's so important that it deserves notice. This is Fareed Zakaria in his WaPo column yesterday, "Egypt's real parallel to Iran's revolution":

Egypt is not a personality-based regime, centered on Mubarak, despite reports of his wealth and efforts to establish his son as his successor. Since the officers' coup in 1952, Egypt has been a dictatorship of, by and for the military. The few presidents since then have emerged from the officer corps; the armed forces have huge budgets and total independence, and are deeply involved in every aspect of society, including owning vast tracts of land and hundreds of companies.

Right now, the military is consolidating its power. Mubarak's efforts since 2004 to bring civilians and business leaders into the cabinet have been reversed over the past week - in fact, the businessmen have been turned into scapegoats, sacrificed so that the generals can continue to rule. The three people running Egypt - the vice president, prime minister and defense chief - come from the army. Half of the cabinet are military men, and about 80 percent of the powerful governors are drawn from the armed forces. The military seems to have decided to sacrifice Mubarak but is trying to manage the process of change, to ensure that it remains all-powerful. Egypt, remember, is still ruled by martial law and military courts.

Now I don't mean to minimize the doleful role Mubarak has played at the top of this dreadful regime since he slid into place following the assassination of the previous military dictator, Anwar Sadat. I think it would be especially lovely if some way were found to shake that $70 billion or however much it is that his family has stolen from their country. But Mubarak himself seems hardly an issue anymore. The question is: Can the military retain its control?

Of course much of the American Right, unlike Princess Sarah, who's still waiting for information to strike her (though she does insist that we shouldn't "stand for" a government led by the Muslim Brotherhood, about which, like everything else, she knows nothing -- and of course nobody is imagining the Brotherhood commanding enough support to wind up somehow in control of the government), has made up its mind. Those great champions of international "democracy" and "freedom" in places like Iraq and Afghanistan are all for . . . propping up the military dictatorship in Egypt.

Realistically -- though I don't think this is the information the princess is waiting to hear -- the overwhelming likelihood is that we're not going to like whatever government replaces the present one, the likely question being just how much we're going to hate it, though the reality is that, unless we're really prepared to invest heavily in propping up the military dictatorship, we have next to no influence over what form that next government will take.

For once where a Middle Eastern country is concerned, we actually do have leverage, because of the amount of money we pour into Egypt, to exert some pressure on the present government to do something. But what that something is? Have we really learned nothing from out decades' worth of misadventures in the Muslim Middle East? (Answer: I wouldn't be at all surprised.)

For example, while I find the prospect of Mohamed ElBaradei as Egyptian leader, distinctly intriguing, I have no reason to believe that he commands any sizable support among the Egyptian people, or for that matter that he would be effective at dealing with the country's large problems. Far more important, though, my feelings about him are totally irrelevant to the ones that matter, which is to say those of the various political, social, and religious factions within the country.

And remember, the American Right hates ElBaradei almost as much as it hates the Muslim Brotherhood -- for having done his job as the U.N.'s nuclear-weapons-inspection chief, which meant that (a) he didn't knuckle under to the we're-agoin'-ta-war plans of the Bush regime warmongers, and (b) he was right about Iraqi WMDs. Logically, the right-wing doodyheads should be on their knees apologizing to him for having been so wrong, but logic hardly ever comes into play in right-wing behavior. So rather than own up to their own combination of stupidity, dishonesty, and outright corruption, they vilify the guy who was honest, courageous, and (worst of all) right -- the [expletive deleted] son of a bitch. You'd think the Righties would be used to being proved wrong by now, since they're always wrong. Nevertheless, their wrath against the people who prove it only grows wilder.

I think the final paragraph of Fareed Zakaria's above-cited piece is worth attending:

It's worth remembering what has led to the rise of Islamic extremism and anti-American rage in the Middle East. Arabs see Washington as having supported brutal dictatorships that suppress their people. They believe that it ignored this suppression as long as the regimes toed the line on American foreign policy. If Washington is now perceived as brokering a deal that keeps a military dictatorship in power in Egypt, de jure or de facto, the result will be deep disappointment and frustration on the streets of Cairo. Over time, it will make opposition to the regime and to the United States more hard-line, more religious and more violent. That might be the real parallel to the forces that led to the Iranian revolution.

I just wish Mr. Zakaria had taken his case the obvious and necessary one step farther in terms of a link between the end of the Shah's regime in Iran and the imminent end of Mubarak's in Egypt. The Shah too was a "valued ally," and given the nature of the U.S. relationship with him, there was clearly potential to influence the way he took his leave of a country that was clearly growing increasingly weary of him, even as he himself was suffering the ravages of age and illness. Of course there doesn't seem to have been any strong faction within U.S. politics thinking ahead to the shape of the post-Shah era in Iran.

As far as I know, the U.S. government quietly allowed and possibly even encouraged the Shah to unleash on his people the absolutely most brutal and repressive regime his amply brutal imagination could conjure up in order to hold onto power as his own powers slipped away. The result was that when the regime finally imploded, there was no imaginable alternative to the radical Shiite clerics. Even though at present there's no force in Egypt remotely comparable to Iran's Shiite clerics, could something along those lines wind up being the lesson of Iran?

You know, when the right-wing doodyheads start trying to draw blood screaming about "who lost Egypt"?

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