Charon wrote:But I think Nit and Havoc have most of the right of it. Very few Arabs like the U.S. for a multitude of reasons, and if we start openly and proudly going "Good job protesters" a lot of people will start wondering what we had to do with it.
I think that this philosophy is very much a self-fulfilling prophecy. Arabs mistrust the US precisely because of the US support for dictators like Mubarak, and if the response to the protests is weaksauce, people will remember it and interpret it as tacit support for the regime - and justifiably so. It's like a vicious cycle: the more America fails to support democracy in the Middle East, the more people will mistrust America, and the less likely America is to support movements like these. I think that at some point we'll have to bite the bullet and no longer support Mubarak, the sooner the better, since his regime is dying anyway.
Regarding the reasons America supports guys like these, there's this puff piece on Politics Daily (annotations added):
Link
Anti-government protests in Egypt, coming on the heels of those in Tunisia, have given rise to the question: Can President Hosni Mubarak be toppled?
I would ask a different question: Should he be toppled?
That would be up to the people of Egypt.
From our comfortable distance here the United States, it is easy to criticize his regime. Mubarak is far from a democrat -- conservatives can look no further than Egypt's discrimination against Coptic Christians for evidence.
But this may be a case where the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know, or, as the saying goes, "He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard." While there are hopes that a more egalitarian leader would emerge to replace him, that seems quixotic.
That quote is a quote by Henry Kissinger, words he spoke about the regime of Indonesia's Suharto. And this attitude right there: this is why people hate America. We'll see it recur throughout the article.
A look to the past is in order.
Mubarak became president only after the assassination of his predecessor, Anwar El Sadat (Sadat was hated for making peace with Israel). Osama bin Laden's lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had worked to overthrow Sadat, and was arrested following the assassination.
Zawahiri's ideological godfather was another Egyptian, Sayyid Qutb, who in many ways shaped the ideas that led to 9/11. Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood supported the unsuccessful coup attempt against Sadat's secular predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser.
The point here is that radical Islamist ideology began in Egypt, and this has informed Mubarak's policies. As Zawahiri wrote in his memoir (according to Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower"): "The River Nile runs in its narrow valley between two deserts that have no vegetation or water. Such a terrain made guerrilla warfare in Egypt impossible." Egypt has resisted Sharia law -- so far -- primarily because the terrain allows secular leaders like Mubarak to fend off Islamist insurgents -- unlike in Afghanistan or Pakistan. But make no mistake, Egypt was always the most desired goal for conquest.
So the Egyptian people can't handle
the truth democracy? No, on the contrary, it is due to disillusionment with the powers that be that people despair and turn to radicalism.
Still, because of our noble desire to support international moves toward freedom, many Americans seem to be hoping for Mubarak's ouster. Were I guaranteed a better replacement, I would be among them. But I'm not so optimistic. It's also interesting to note that some of the folks who decried President Bush's "Wilsonian" foreign policy in Iraq would like to see Mubarak's ouster. Keep in mind, I'm not advocating a Kissinger-esque "realpolitik" position here for the sake of preserving the status quo -- my argument is that the Egyptian people may also be much worse off if Mubarak goes.
He claims he isn't advocating Kissinger, yet he quotes Kissinger in support of his argument. Anyway, no one is calling for Wilsonian/Bush-like interventions, there are intermediate stages between the two.
But the deeper problem is the one I raised earlier: Mubarak's days are rapidly drawing to a close. When he goes, there will be a power vacuum anyway, and we don't know what will follow. The more we fail to support genuinely pro-democratic, grass-roots movements like these, the longer the Muslim Brotherhood and their ilk will have to hijack the anti-government sentiments among the people and the more the people will remember that those damn Americans, once again, didn't support the local democrats.
Even toppling regimes that were clearly anti-American -- from the Soviet Union to Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- resulted in power vacuums and instability, giving rise to new problems that had been obscured by the heavy-handedness of the ousted regimes. The benefits of toppling an anti-American government may outweigh the costs, and so one naturally wonders about the cost of toppling an ostensibly pro-American one. Were Mubarak's regime an obvious American enemy, such as Iran's, rooting for a revolution would be a no-brainer. But in Egypt, things are a bit more complicated.
Never mind that Saddam was initially pro-American. And once again: see the reason people in the Middle East hate America.
[/align]
Though hadn't he swung more firmly towards America in the closing years of the cold war and before his invasion of Kuwait?
