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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com
on February 1, 2011
President Obama better hope that the crowds clamoring for an overthrow of
the Mubarak regime really do achieve a functioning liberal democracy rather
than an Iranian-style theocracy. His reelection hopes could be doomed if
Iran takes over.
Just as Nixon helped to discredit Harry Truman and defeat Democratic
presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson in 1952 by trumpeting the question, "
Who lost China?," Obama may well have to explain how and why he lost Egypt.
If he permits Egypt to slip through our fingers and go over to the Iranian
sphere of influence, he will pay for it politically in 2012. Imagine if this
president, whose domestic policy initiatives are coming apart at the seams,
loses office over a foreign-policy blunder.
The Muslim Brotherhood is allied closely with Hamas. To the extent that it
masquerades as a peaceful body, it is a wolf in sheep's clothing. Any
coalition with the Brotherhood is as likely to remain secular as Hitler's
early coalition with von Hindenburg in Germany was likely to stay non-Nazi.
The Muslim Brotherhood will take over if it gets its foot in the door.
By failing to back Mubarak, Obama is committing the same sin that Eisenhower
did in Cuba and Carter did in Iran. He needs to understand that the radical
Islamists mean us ill, and any effort to appease them is bound to fail.
If Egypt falls, Obama will have permanently damaged America's vital
interests. Look at what Carter's abandonment of the shah has already cost
the world and is likely to cost it in the future. We now face the
possibility that a radicalized Egypt could be Obama's gift to the globe.
Until now, Americans have regarded Obama's flirtation with the Arab street
with a mild concern that he may be too naïve in his understanding of
that part of the world. But his policy of appeasement toward radical Islam
has yet to have any bad consequence. We have had some terror attacks, to be
sure, but none has risen to the level of a cataclysm. But losing Egypt to
the grip of
Islamic fundamentalism would be a huge blow to the United
States, Israel and to the entire Western world.
It would, literally, open the door to a theocratic Iranian-style empire
stretching from Morocco to Iran. Inspired by an Islamic takeover in Egypt,
Obama could find himself confronted with a Middle Eastern version of the old
domino theory, where one nation after another falls to Islamism, with each
new theocratic conquest destabilizing its neighbor.
Remember that Iran has a population of 79 million and Egypt has 75 million.
Together, their 154 million almost equal the combined population of all the
other nations in North Africa and the Middle East. If Egypt and Iran were to
work in tandem, they could control the region.
By failing to back Mubarak and telling the Egyptian military to pull its
punches and let the demonstrators take over the streets, the Obama
administration has come to own responsibility for the outcome of the
Egyptian revolution. If it goes south and leads to a disastrous outcome, it
will be his foreign policy that will rightly shoulder the blame.
Obama should be backing Mubarak. Remember that Egypt was the first Arab
nation to sign a peace deal with Israel and the only one to work with the
Jewish state. It was in pursuit of peace that Anwar Sadat, Mubarak's
predecessor, gave his life.
With the United States supplying $1.3 billion in annual aid to the Egyptian
military -- in addition to $700 million in other assistance -- we have great
leverage, particularly over the military. Our demands that they behave
gently toward the demonstrators may doom their efforts to preserve the
regime.
How much damage can one misguided American president do? We are about to
find out. |
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