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I am greatly encouraged to see the ideals of democracy being proclaimed by hundreds of thousands in Egypt. The moment of revolution, the idea that torture can be stopped forever, that people will have a new and better life is intoxicating, even when breathed from this great distance. Of course, there is a HOWEVER, and it revolves around, as your column did, what America should do.
We should not be in the business of working to overthrow governments, right? Well, wait. What if those governments have lost any thin thread of legitimacy? What if those governments don't allow free expression in a time of tension and cut-off cell phone traffic and the Internet? (And now, train service to prevent people from gathering in protest.) There is no freedom of speech if the speech is limited to what you can say in the privacy of your living room.
What if that government has, in recent days, shot down civilians in the streets and deployed hired thugs, many of whom are known to be drug addicts, to beat and stomp people just because they are against the government? As a nation born in revolution and sustained by unwavering belief in the right of the individual over the rights of the state, should we not, verbally at the minimum, come to the aid of those cries for freedom and justice?
One view of \"government\" in many places around the world is that the biggest thug wins, the one who can seize and hold power is the one the United States winds up supporting, so long as the \"leader\" doesn't oppose or otherwise offend our interests. This is the naked truth behind the slow response of American officials to what is one of the most exciting and, perhaps, encouraging movements for freedom to appear in the world in many years. Plus, of course, we owe Mubarak and we, as always, must look out for Israel.
It is no doubt true that the fate of the entire middle-east could hang in the balance, but how long, how very long, can we let our concern for order and safety stifle our duty to support people who want no more than the measure of freedom we have and that we proclaim for ourselves with great clattering and proud noise?
As the leading power in middle-eastern affairs, why have we not previously forced Mubarak to moderate his thugism? Why did the American public, including myself, not know that we had made a deal with this devil for 30 years, the same kind of dirty deal that you might make with someone who wants to rob your neighbor but agrees to leave you alone? Why, in the world of practical politics, have we abandoned our fealty to the causes and purposes which propelled America into nationhood 235 years ago? Mubarak bought us off and we have spent precious days propping him up with thin reeds instead of stating the obvious: time to go.
The idea of restraint in terms of the rights of other nations has certainly not bothered the U.S. government much when our interests were thought to be at stake. Take Panama. Take Grenada. Take Iraq. Oh, yeah, Vietnam during the other years there. You name it, we’ve been there, doing whatever the government thought was best, even if it meant that only another thug leader would replace the one we wanted gone.
I suspect that one reason the people in Egypt are disappointed with the U.S. is they believe we are more powerful than we really are. Many believe we need only speak and the government will fall (at this point, that might actually be true, but we cannot know that). It is not a happy circumstance to dump someone with whom you have worked closely for decades, to be sure. It is also possible that words have already been spoken much more frankly in private than the, face it, mealy mouthed pronouncements so far.
We have a team at the top in international affairs who are largely untested in a matters this large and inexperienced to boot. It would be wrong, however, to gin-up those facts into an indictment of their performance. Only time will tell if that is the true measure of the situation. Let the far right Republicans scream all they want to before they actually know the facts. The lack of proven facts has not bothered them, or their radio and cable news mouthpieces, to date, of course, so why should they wait now?
As a general, historical policy, when you support a change of government you rush to recognize the new government immediately. Governments, ruled by thugs, sly Supreme Court rulings, or through huge electoral victories, do not engage in the business of pushing each other out as a rule. The trouble here, however, is that we are up to our Adam's apples in the affairs of the middle-east. If we didn't want to muck in the business of other nations, we should have stayed home.
The people of Egypt rightly see us as one of the players who have kept Mubarak in power all these years. We have supplied military aid and, most likely, helped to train his police forces and thugs. Do we have the courage to change? Do we have the courage to embrace the risk of the new, to stand alongside brave young men who have risked, and lost, their lives, to try to bring a better day to an impoverished and mistreated people yearning to breathe the sweet air of freedom? So far, no. Or, to be generous, so far, only maybe. This is not good enough.
Doug Terry 2.1.11
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