The Other McCain

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Egyptian Regime Unraveling?

Posted on | January 27, 2011 | 21 Comments

You know, I seem to remember a U.S. president who had this crazy idea that overthrowing Saddam Hussein might help encourage the spread of democracy in the Mideast:

Police fought protesters in two cities in eastern Egypt on Thursday and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei arrived back in the country to join a major demonstration on Friday to try to oust President Hosni Mubarak.
Security forces shot dead a Bedouin protester in the north of Egypt’s Sinai region on Thursday, bringing the death toll to five on the third day of protests inspired by unrest which toppled Tunisia’s president earlier this month.
In a sign open defiance against authoritarian rulers was spreading, police also clashed with protesters in the Arabian Peninsula state of Yemen and Gabon in West Africa.

Major protests are planned Friday:

Of course, we cannot automatically congratulate ourselves about what wonders “democracy” would bring to Egypt, as this revolutionary moment might lead to the empowerment of Islamist radicals. Mubarak is authoritarian, but I don’t know that the average Egyptian in 2011 is any more enlightened than the average Frenchman in 1789.

“The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.”
– Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

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Category: Egypt

Comments

  • http://www.redstateeclectic.typepad.com AngelaTC

    And yet oddly enough, I hear the revolution in Iran is greatly hindered by the prospects that we might come “help” them. Again.

  • Joe

    I do not see Islamic Fundamentalists taking over Egypt. But they are a strong minority party there and there is the opportunity for a lot of trouble from all of this.

    That said, Mumbarack has been in power since 1981. Imagine if one policial party in the U.S. was in power that long? People would be in the streets too. Mumbarack should be working on a peaceful transfer of power to some opposition forces because he has been in power way too long.

  • hmt

    Isn’t Egypt a democracy?

  • http://twitter.com/AmPowerBlog Donald Douglas
  • Adobe_Walls

    Ha Ha good one.

  • Adobe_Walls

    Egyptian strongmen don’t transfer power they die in office one way or another. Mubarak is only the third leader in more than half a century and Egypt is the birthplace of the Moslem Brotherhood. Ask not what could go wrong but why things should go right.

  • http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/ Old Rebel

    You’re right, it was crazy, because Bush had no idea of the forces he was unleashing. That’s what happens when you mess where you shouldn’t be messing.

  • jefferson101

    FWIW, I have this vision of an American President who thought that encouraging a fundamentalist revolt in Iran, too.

    And where did we wind up from there?

    Mubarak is a crazed klepto, but he’s our crazed kelpto, and we’ve kept him in enough loot to keep him relatively honest. If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over, we may have to go kill them all.

    I don’t trust a revolution there. There is too much Islamizoidism.

    But we’re going to have to take it all on, sooner or later. I’d prefer, however, that we not have Barack as our President when we have to go head to head with them. He’s not going to be brave enough to actually protect us when we have to.

    End of comment, because I”d get fairly radical if I go on.

  • Adobe_Walls

    And to think we have nuclear warheads dying of old age.

  • hmt

    Next up, China?

    Before we get our hopes high on Egypt lets remember how the last uprising in Iran ended.

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  • Mikey NTH

    The Shah always falls. The question is when will the fall happen – at a time of our chosing or when it is most inconvenient for us.

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  • Bob Belvedere

    Quoted from and Linked to at:
    Egypt: The Dark Side Of The Loons

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