Posted on 02/12/2011 1:40:30 PM PST by JLS
If you missed my TV and radio appearances this week, here's a recap of my thoughts on Egypt:
This is not a happy ending but the beginning of something potentially very dark. The end of the Mubarak regime is the biggest shift in the region in 60 years, since Nasser overthrew King Farouk's dissolute monarchy and diminished London's influence in Cairo. We are witnessing the unraveling of the American Middle East - that's to say, of the regimes supported by Washington in the waning of British and French imperial power after the Second World War. The American Middle East was an unlovely place, and perhaps the most obviously repellent illustration of the limitations of "He may be an SOB but he's our SOB" thinking. It's "our" SOBs who are in trouble: After the fall of Mubarak, what remains to hold up the Hashemites in Amman? Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood is more radical than Egypt's, the regime is less ruthless, King Abdullah's Arabic is worse than his English, and pretty westernized Queen Rania, who seems so cute when CNN interviewers are fawning all over her, is openly despised outside the palace gates.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Mark Steyn ping.
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Look at a map of the Middle East and Eastern Africa.
It’s all pretty clear.
The Egyptian strategery is left over from the 50’s, just like Iran with the Shah. It has had quite a long run.
Steyn is succinct, as usual.
“Amidst all this flowering of democracy, you’ll notice that it’s only the pro-American dictatorships on the ropes: In Libya and Syria, Gaddafy and Assad sleep soundly in their beds. On the other hand, if you were either of the two King Abdullahs, in Jordan or Saudi Arabia, and you looked at the Obama Administration’s very public abandonment of their Cairo strongman, what would you conclude about the value of being an American ally? For the last three weeks, the superpower has sent the consistent message to the world that (as Bernard Lewis feared some years ago) America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.”
The man always looks so Presidential. /sarc
Bump - thanks for the ping
thanks for the ping!
also read the link to
BIG GOVERNMENT’S BACK ALLEY
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