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Posted on 01/28/2011 9:14:48 AM PST by SE Mom
From FOX:
DEVELOPING: Loud explosions and gunfire were heard in the Egyptian capital of Cairo Friday, as protesters demanding the removal of President Hosni Mubarak defied a curfew, Al Jazeera reported. Egyptian television reports the ruling party headquarters in Cairo are on fire.
From TWITTER:
WashingtonPost: Clinton: We urge #Egypt authorities to allow peaceful protest, reverse unprecedented steps it has taken to cut off communications less than 20 seconds ago
links?
Couple of questions...What is a technocrat?
And wasn’t the government of Pakistan kind of a military based thing?
Lookit, Ambassador Bolton mentioned the Muslim Brotherhood as being dangerous and likely to take over should Mubarak fall. You’re saying the MB has little influence in Egypt (not that I doubt you. from what I’ve read the MB has little influence anywhere)so you dispute Bolton’s assertion? I’m not trying to be argumentative but all I’m hearing is this big, bad Muslim Brotherhood gang are gonna eat us all for dinner. Yet my reading, and your anecdotes, indicate that the MB is no big force.
How about ElBaradei? He’s supposedly loosely affiliated with the MB. He’s been mentioned as a replacement for Mubarak.
bttt
Agreed here for sure.
Said the pragmatic Democrat circa 2003.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/258358/revolution-egypt-im-pessimistic-stanley-kurtz
Revolution in Egypt? I’m Pessimistic.
January 28, 2011 7:22 P.M.
By Stanley Kurtz
Ever since 9/11, I’ve been skeptical of plans for what I consider to be overly rapid and naively optimistic American plans to democratize the Middle East. It’s not that I’m against democracy, or even against policies designed to encourage it over the long term. The problem is that what Americans actually mean by democracy is not just elections, but liberal democracy, the broader cultural attitude toward individual liberty that’s necessary to make elections work. Bring elections prematurely to a country with a deeply illiberal culture, and you are asking for trouble. We Americans tend to take our liberal democratic values for granted, and so we’re often slow to recognize that merely giving Middle Easterners the ballot isn’t enough to turn them into liberal democrats.
That’s why the chaos in Egypt concerns me. Broadly speaking, I agree with National Reviews editors. They do a good job of treading the same fine line as President Obama and our other policy-makers. If anything, however, I would stress the danger of a post-Mubarak Egypt even more. There may well be a genuinely democratic opposition in the streets of Egypt right now. Yet broadly speaking, Egypt is bereft of the culture of liberal democracy, and that spells trouble.
I was no great fan of Pakistan’s President Musharraf, but I was also far more skeptical than most liberals or conservatives about the prospect for democracy in Pakistan after his departure. Pakistan had at least a core liberal tradition left over from British rule and embodied in its lawyers. Today a younger generation of Pakistan’s lawyers showers the assassin of a moderate Muslim governor with rose petals.
If you want to read about the cultural realities of Egyptian life that ground my skepticism, here’s a piece of mine on Egypt from the months after 9/11. For a more thorough look at the issue, here’s my take on the Middle East’s tribal culture and the barrier it poses to democracy. I cover Cairo toward the end of that piece. But for a quick, fun, and bitingly skeptical take on the whole idea of democracy promotion as traditionally understood, have a look at this.
;)
So true - and Carter's betrayal is another example of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. The Shah was not perfect, but he was certainly better than the alternative!
What concerns me the most is how so many people see "the Islamist question" as religious rather than an expression of Saudi foreign policy. The Shah's enemies were funded by the USSR; who funds radical Islam today? The Muslim Brotherhood has influence solely because of Saudi cash.
But of course, our Dear Leader has the perfect solution to international Saudi influence... just bow to their king.
I trust you now see "that" doesn't compute. Too similar to "Not Without My Daughter."
100% spot on again.
I bow.
Wow.
What you said.
I am glad there are people smarter than me that contribute to this forum.
Gabe
ping, good response by Rep. Thaddeus McCotter
And asking someone's age on this subject is to find out if someone has lived through and event or not. It helps to know from what perspective they are seeing the situation.
WOW, you take us back. not good times ahead
Thank you for posting your reflections.
My fear is the widespread poverty combined with a majority of the population born after 1980 makes radical islam more able to gain a foothold in Egypt.
It’s not an easy task sitting here in America to understand all the forces, cultural, religious and economic that have driven Egypt to this moment that literally NO ONE seems to have expected.
It's kind of like sifting sh*t through a sieve.
If you look long enough, you ask yourself, why the f*ck have I been looking at this crap?
:-)
Thank you, FARS.
Thanks for your post and ping.
I saw this on the site you posted:
“Iran Planning to Sieze UK Embassy”
Have you heard about this? More chaos? Sounds like Ahmanutjob would like to throw mega fuel in the fire.
http://www.worldthreats.com/?p=2080
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