http://www.truth-out.org/joe-conason-elbaradei-a-bad-guy-dont-listen-american-right67466?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitterTo his fellow Egyptians and to most observers across the world, Mohamed ElBaradei looks like a hero -- an international diplomat who might well have lived out his days in the comforts of Geneva and New York, but returned home to provide leadership despite serious personal peril. But to leading figures on the American right, ElBaradei is a figure to be mocked, scorned and dismissed as a stooge of darker forces in Egyptian politics and the Mideast.
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his years of stewardship of the International Atomic Energy Agency, he is suddenly the target of insults and attacks from Republicans who deem themselves expert on the politics of the Middle East. Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton calls ElBaradei a "dilettante," and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer goes further, calling him "a bad guy."
The opinions of these veterans of the Bush White House, perhaps the least successful government in American history since the Herbert Hoover years, are not worth much -- except as a reminder of the continuing ill wind blowing from that defunct administration and its policies. Their hostility to ElBaradei and to the mass civic movement in Egypt reveals the hollowness and uselessness of the neoconservative worldview at a moment of intense crisis for American diplomacy.
To everyone else, it is obvious that Hosni Mubarak cannot abide much longer as president of Egypt, despite the billions in aid that we have lavished on him these past three decades. And to everyone else, it is also obvious that whenever he goes, the most promising alternative is ElBaradei, a secular liberal with strong ties to the West.
More at the link --
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