And then, in America's media, will the usual hypocrisy kick in? Over in Murdoch Land, Obama is being accused of giving aid and comfort to evil Satanic Islamicists -- here's Sean Hannity trotting out Anjem Choudary, an Islamicist who has nothing whatsoever to do with Egypt (he's British born and lives in the U.K. today) so that Hannity can rail against sharia and play right-wing Geraldo ("You're one sick, miserable, evil S.O.B but thank you for coming on anyway"). Oh, and here's Hannity again, trying to goad John McCain into saying that Islamicism is imminent in Egypt and it's all Obama's fault. And here's Dick Morris on Bill O'Reilly's show saying,
"Clearly, President Obama, whether it's because of his words about radical Islam, his failure to condemn it, his failure to name terrorism as Islamic terrorism, and his appeasement and very possibility his outright efforts to encourage people to destabilize the Mubarak regime, broke Egypt and he now owns it."
But what if Mubarak allies cling to power, or Mubarak himself? Will these same Foxsters be able to turn on a dime and say that Obama failed if that's the outcome, because he didn't sufficiently support Bush's "freedom agenda"? Can they be that blatant?
Yeah, probably. They may need to give it a bit of a rest, though. They may just decide to come back with that line a year or so from now, during the presidential race. We'll be told that people yearning to breathe free rose up in Iran, and then in Egypt -- and Obama failed them. And the hypocrisy will mostly pass unremarked.
That's exactly what will happen. If Mubarak stays, it'll be Obama's fault for not forcing him out of power sooner. If Mubarak is replaced by another strongman (our man Mohamed Elbaradei perhaps) Obama will be attacked for not personally installing a democracy. If Mubarak is somehow replaced by an actual democratic state, Obama will get pummeled for backing Mubarak in the first place. And if Egypt falls under the sway of Islamists, well that will be Obama's fault too.
I would say that Obama should have been smart enough to stay out of the Egypt mess to begin with...but he would have been attacked for that too from the right. That's how it works with our intellectually indifferent friends: no matter what Obama is doing precisely at this moment, attack him for not doing something different.
We've got another two years of this idiocy ahead of us, no matter what the actual outcome in Egypt is.
Maybe if Obama wasn't such a colossal screw-up with just about everything he does as President, we probably wouldn't be as harsh. As an OT example, the administration just got hit with contempt for that moratorium based on lies and not reinstituting any deepwater drilling permits in the Gulf. A more relevant example, Obama's silence against the Iranian regime when protests were going on there a couple of years ago; yes, he finally said something, but only after the Iranian regime crushed the protesters and murdered many of them.
ReplyDeleteYou said yesterday that food prices are what drove Egypt to revolution, but you forgot the fact that Ben Bernanke's failed monetary policy is almost solely responsible for the worldwide gain in food prices over the last six months as commodities are priced in dollars and we've literally created trillions since Obama took office.
ReplyDeleteNow that is catching up with the rest of the world. Unless we drastically cut spending and reduce our deficit, Egypt today will be this country tomorrow.