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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By John Tabin on 1.29.11 @ 1:50PM
Robert Kagan is co-chairman of the bipartisan Working Group on Egypt, and
earlier this week he noted to Laura Rozen of Politico that "one thing I have
been most struck by in meeting with [U.S. officials] at all levels over the
past year is that as of yesterday, they have no plan in any direction."
No kidding. Administration statements this week have been an incoherent mush.
But why is Obama winging it? It didn't have to be this way.
During the Bush years the US embassy in Cairo maintained a small fund to
support groups promoting democratic reforms in Egypt, bypassing the Egyptian
government. As I noted back in July, the Obama administration ended support
for this fund.
The Daily Telegraph -- while failing spectacularly at making this context
clear -- reports that according to a WikiLeaked cable, one of the activists
who has been arrested this week was sent to New York to meet with other pro-
democracy activists. You have to read to the bottom of the story to notice
that the embassy apprently ended regular contact with this dissident after
2009.
The Obama administration is trying to claim they've been pressuring Mubarak
to liberalize all along. This is risible spin; Josh Gerstein takes it apart.
Earlier in the week the protests in Egypt were dominated by activists like
the guy that the Telegraph reported on. The Muslim Brotherhood really only
became a visible part of the protests yesterday, and even then were not the
dominant force in the streets. I have my doubts that the Army will ever
allow the Brotherhood to come out on top in the current crisis, but if they
do, it will be the logical consequence of the Obama administration's
decision to turn away from the Bush-era Freedom Agenda. American support for
an autocrat has a tendency to empower his most anti-American opponents. And
make no mistake: While Obama's statement last night was an attempt to move
away from unequivocal support for Mubarak, what most Egyptians noticed about
it was that he seemed to take Mubarak's promises of reform at face value.
The one thing that is certain now is that Gamal Mubarak, who has fled to
London, will not be taking over for his father. The newly minted Vice
President Omar Suleiman is now the designated heir; it's an open question
whether that arrangement can calm things down (as Jackson Diehl notes,
Suleiman isn't what protesters of any ideological stripe have in mind). The
best hope is, as John Guardiano suggests below, that the Army will embrace a
democratic transition. But it's far from certain, and this administration
has done little to lay the groundwork that would have made it more likely. |
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