(US) Wrongly Choosing Egypt's Generals Over the Democrats

[tekisui]

Source: Washington Post

THE OBAMA administration's latest flip on Egypt - it now publicly backs "the transition process announced by the Egyptian government" - is driven by fear of the dangers that could come with a victory by the pro-democracy movement headquartered in Cairo's Tahrir Square. "There are forces at work in any society . . . that will try to derail or overtake the process to pursue their own specific agenda," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Saturday. Most likely she was referring to the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist movement that many in Washington worry could hijack an uprising currently led by secular liberals.

Egypt's Islamic threat cannot be discounted. But the administration has focused on the wrong problem - and, as a result, has taken the wrong side. The biggest threat to the stated U.S. objective of a "real democracy" in Egypt is not an extreme opposition but the very regime the administration is backing - which is attempting to limit change and perpetuate its hold on power beyond President Hosni Mubarak's announced retirement in September.

Mr. Mubarak leads not a personal dictatorship but an autocracy rooted in the Egyptian military, which seized power in a 1952 coup and has held it ever since. The vice president he appointed last week, Omar Suleiman, is a general who heads the military's intelligence service. Mr. Suleiman says he is leading a reform process that will respond to the popular uprising - an initiative Ms. Clinton endorsed. But Mr. Suleiman's statements in recent days as well as his first talks with the opposition strongly indicate that he does not intend to allow the reforms necessary for a genuine democracy.

more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/07/AR2011020705407.html?tid=nn_twitter

[malaise]

1. So what's new

American Foreign Policy is always hawkish

[DirkGently]

2. This is the kind of idiocy you get into when you try to control an entire region.

... and the U.S. has a history of backing bad regimes because they oppose the current Scary Ideology.