Backing the dictator is what we do...until we don’t back him anymore, of course.
Given his record in foreign affairs—this means something else I think in the Obama administration than it did in the Clinton administration—it’s not so surprising that he made another stupid mistake.
Obama turned on Mubarak immediately!
The smart move would have been to do NOTHING. Quietly backing Mubarak with food aid, which is what these riots were about. Instead, The Mombasa Moonbeam jumped in bed with the rioters. This will not lead to more democracy in Egypt. The jerk threw gasoline on a fundamentalist Muslim fire.
Mubarak falls and it will lead to a tyrannical Sharia Muslim Brotherhood government whose ideology is that of the Taliban. This is nothing more or less than a repeat of Jimmy Carter cutting the Shah loose and letting the Islamic fundamentalists take over an allied nation.
Obama has just begun the beginning of the de-Westernization of Egypt. What is the fool trying to do, recreate the Ottoman Empire?
This maybe gives Obama an out. He screwed the pooch, but just maybe he won't get burned here if we can weather the transition to a non-Mubarak and non-Muslim government. chances? O, slim to almost none.
Wrong. Standing by a dictator-ally who had safeguarded peace along the Egypt/Israel border and presided over a relatively stable moderate muslim country for 30 years instead of the radical Muslim Brotherhood was the right course.
For yet another headline that deserves a “well, duh!”!
Wouldn’t it be far easier to make a list of things Obama is right on or has been)?
Let me begin - feel free to add to the list:
1. _____________ uh....hmmm.... I’m trying to think of something...
Ok, maybe someone else can start this list.
I’m still waiting for the ‘freedom loving citizens’(sounds like a phrase out of Pravda, btw).
Where are they at?
What needs to be thought of is what the protesters want anyways. As we all know, they threw out the Shah, they simply got themselves a new, more fundamentalist, more totalitarian regime. For all we know, the protesting Egyptians may want a more fundamentalist regime at the moment to replace Mubarak. There just needs to be more information.
Barry,
if we protest you (again), will you promise not to run again?
Frankly, once things reached this point in Egypt, there was no “right” move. Support the “democracy” protestors, who if they win will wittingly or unwittingly usher in an islamic theocracy? Or support a secular dictator? Lose-lose.
Where odummo screwed this up is in setting the stage for this to even happen by being consistently weak, appeasing, and feckless in foreign affairs.