The Other McCain

So says a leading Egyptian businessman:

Shafik Gabr was one of President Obama’s greatest fans eighteen months ago. Today, as Mr. Obama presses for the immediate resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, not so much. “The United States is siding with chaos if they force Mubarak out now,” says Gabr.
Gabr is the Chairman of the Artoc Group for Investment and Development, one of Egypt’s leading businesses. . . .
He is, needless to say, sickened by recent developments. He is also alarmed at the response by the Obama administration. “If the transfer of power happens today, the mobs will rule,” he warns. “It will be similar to the circumstances that brought Hamas to power in Gaza.”

The chaos is described by a BBC reporter in Alexandria:

It’s getting increasingly difficult to work as a foreign journalist here – there’s anger and tension from all sides, not just with the political crisis but also because of the worsening economic situation here. Twice in the last couple of days we have been attacked and driven off by angry locals while trying to film in the streets.
In many areas law and order has completely broken down. One of the country’s biggest shopping malls on the city’s outskirts has been completely ransacked by looters.

President Obama told the National Prayer Breakfast that he’s praying for an end to violence in Egypt. His tardy attempts to stage-manage the situation have already damaged both Egypt and his own influence:

Prior to delivering this clear criticism regarding the insufficiency of Mubarak’s announcement that he would retire only at election time, Obama’s administration had cautiously navigated the crisis in Egypt. But this caution was cast to the wind this week with Washington’s blatant revocation of its endorsement of Mubarak. . . .
“I think that the Obama administration is really struggling to keep up with the events themselves,” Isobel Coleman, senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Wednesday in a conference call with reporters.
“Obama and U.S. foreign policy are between a rock and a hard place: On the one hand, to sort of pull out the rug from under Mubarak doesn’t say much for our long-term relations with this guy; on the other hand, we have already been caught on the wrong side of history. The equivocation out of Washington is interpreted very clearly on the streets of Cairo as siding with the government,” said Coleman.

Notice that the White House spent Monday and Tuesday trying to make Obama the protagonist of the Egyptian drama. After Obama’s speech Tuesday, violence erupted Wednesday in Cairo. Now the White House is trying to keep the president off the stage.

Yesterday, the prominent Egyptian blogger known as “Sandmonkey,” whom PJTV’s Roger Simon says is the son of a top Egyptian general, was reportedly beaten, arrested and released. His car was “destroyed” and his cellphone taken away from him.

Drew M. at AOSHQ has an Egyptian news roundup.

UPDATE: Almost forgot – Roger Simon’s telephone interview with Sandmonkey:

UPDATE II: It’s not just Obama’s foreign policy that is implicated in the Egyptian crisis, but also his economic policy, as Dan Collins explains:

The gathering consensus is that the latest events in Egypt, while inspired in large part by “simmering resentment” against Mubarak’s regime, were in fact ignited by food shortages. Egyptian currency is pegged to the dollar, so as the dollar inflates due to “quantitative easing,” the policy of meeting debt obligations by printing more money, food naturally becomes more expensive on the market. So, those who say that Obama has inspired the unfolding events in the Middle East are right in a sense, though it has had little or nothing to do with his grandiloquent speech to the Egyptians during his Apology Tour.
This morning, the Telegraph tells us that worldwide food prices have hit an all-time high. On the global market, this is in part as well a function of rising energy costs, as crude oil now averages over $100 per barrel. . . .

Read the rest. It is little realized what a disastrously destabilizing political force inflation can be.

Turn on the TV news, and that’s all you hear. Whereas Jehovah smote the ancient Egyptians with a series of plagues, now we’re cursed with a repetitive plague of Egyptians on TV news. Dan Collins reacts poetically:

In Aegyptus did Kubla Bam
A peaceful transition decree . . .

Read the rest, although I prefer Dan’s prose to his faux-Coleridge. Linked late Wednesday by Instapundit, who also links Robert Springborg:

The so-called “pro-government” forces are actually Mubarak’s cleverly orchestrated goon squads . . . The opposition, largely cognizant of the dirty game being played against it, nevertheless has had little choice but to call for protection against the regime’s thugs by the regime itself, i.e., the military. And so Mubarak begins to show us just how clever and experienced he truly is. The game is, thus, more or less over.

If this were a socialist regime cracking down on its opposition — e.g., Chavez in Venezuela — the Left would shrug and say something about breaking eggs to make an omelet. But what the Left accepts when done on behalf of the “proletariat,”  it finds intolerable when done without such a revolutionary pretext. Or, as Lenin put it: Who, whom?

However, whereas doctrinaire Marxism is disavowed by the 21st-century American Left — so vehemently, in many cases, that it is considered de facto proof of “extremism” for any conservative even to speak the word “Marxist” as an accusation — the Left has a more difficult time denying that their foreign policy instincts are fundamentally anti-American. That is to say, whenever any overseas problem arises, the leftist insists that under no circumstance should the United States pursue a given policy merely because it would advance U.S. interests.

Mubarak is a U.S. ally? Mubarak must go, says the Left!

To the Left, American interests are inherently illegitimate, which is why the Left sides with the anti-Mubarak protesters even when those protesters shout “jihad” in the streets of Cairo.

If Islamic jihad is bad for America, the leftist reckons, Islamic jihad can’t be all bad. So, mirroring their Cold War stance, the Left in the 21st century may be described as anti-anti-jihad. (And Pamela Geller is Joe McCarthy!)

The auguries are inauspicious, the omens are . . . well, pretty doggone ominous, and Egypt teeters on the brink:

As dawn broke Thursday, heavy gunfire reverberated in central Cairo as the two sides continued to face off at Tahrir Square — the confrontations portending what awaits when Egypt awakes.

It is likely there will be no good outcome in Egypt. Rather, we will get either bad or worse. What can we do, but laugh?

Code Pink Dupes Saved from
Cairo Chaos by Evil Oil Company

That there’s funny, I don’t care who you are!

Let’s start with the basics: When you carry signs and chant slogans, that’s called a “protest.” When you start throwing rocks and molotov cocktails, that’s called a “riot.” So it’s time for the talking heads on TV to stop using terms like “protesters” and “demonstrators” to describe the mob in Cairo.

Furthermore, don’t ever try to lecture me about “racism” for describing what’s happening in a foreign country, or act like I’m morally inferior to you because I don’t share your particular opinion about events.

When the “Arab street” does the same thing in Cairo that we’ve seen them do in Jerusalem and Gaza, it’s not racist to interpret today’s violence in terms of a historic pattern of mob violence. And the fact that you, Mr. Moral Superiority, are cheering for the immediate overthrow of Hosni Mubarak doesn’t make me a thought-criminal for suggesting that maybe we don’t want to be so hasty.

For crying out loud, they were actually swooping down on Tahrir Square on horses and camels! At what point do stereotypes stop being stereotypes and instead become, y’know, facts?

Speaking of ugly stereotypes, here’s the snotty BBC correspondent looking down his nose at uncouth Yanks:

President Barack Obama has suddenly got tough on America’s ally of 30 years. What’s more, he’s abandoned the language of a law professor and adopted the tone of a civil rights leader. He’s made it crystal clear he’s on the side of the street, not the weakened strong man. As mass demonstrations turned into a revolution, under the benign but watchful eye of the army, the White House has been struggling to keep pace. Maybe now Mr Obama has caught up. Just about.

Screw you, limey bastard! If we Americans want to badmouth the president as a naive parvenu who’s gotten in over his head, that’s our right. But we’ll tolerate no such lectures from you Brits.

And, honestly, I thought Obama’s speech Tuesday night was just about right: He made it clear he was angry at Mubarak, but explicitly spoke of the “aftermath of these protests.” In other words: OK, you’ve had your protest rallies, Mubarak’s on his way out, “free and fair elections,” yadda yadda — now go back home and stop distracting us the week before Super Bowl Sunday.

Trust me: The next-to-last thing I want is for Barack Obama to be able to claim credit for a foreign-policy success. But the last thing in the world I want is for Islamic extremists to take over a country with 75 million people and modern military weapons, sitting right next door to Israel — a scenario that could lead to Armageddon.

Also, $4 a gallon for gas. That would be tragic.

So I’m making an exception and siding with Obama here: All you angry dudes in Cairo, go home, sleep with your four wives, chill out with some goat stew, and bet on the Packers to win by three Sunday.

Meanwhile, America wishes to express our gratitude to the Egyptian mob for providing us with such excellent entertainment, especially the pro-Mubarak dude who accidentally caught himself on fire with a molotov cocktail:

Classic! We’re not laughing with you, dude. We’re laughing at you.

VodkaPundit has accused me of turning the snark up to “11,” but I have barely begun to tap the deep well of mean-spirited sarcasm inspired by the Egyptian “revolution.” I mean, please: 600 injuries? You call that a “revolution”? I’ve seen more injuries than that when rednecks started fighting over beer at a ZZ Top concert in 1976.

Jim Geraghty tells me it’s too early to start making jokes at the expense of Anderson Cooper.

So give me another 15 minutes. I needed a smoke break anyway.

UPDATE: Ace of Spades:

There is a pretty good chance that the army winds up siding with Mubarak and crushing the resistance, and then Mubarak installs a puppet replacement as president. That may not be the most likely scenario but I can’t see how it’s not a plausible one.

Well, no duh, Ace: Eric Dondero called that one yesterday. And here’s Reuters via MSNBC with a follow-up:

The fate of Egypt’s pro-democracy movement may rest on the shoulders of the country’s top soldier, who has so far refused to use force against protesters demanding the removal of President Hosni Mubarak.
In a rare balancing act, Lieutenant General Sami Enan, the armed forces chief-of-staff, has won praise from both the United States and a leading member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, who said he could be an acceptable successor to Mubarak. . . .

Read the whole thing. Enan’s relatively young (61) and there’s a solid pattern: All four Egyptian presidents since independence have been former top army officers. So “meet the new boss,” etc.

Meanwhile, Ace links this spin from Robert “Baghdad Bob” Gibbs:

“‘Now’ means ‘yesterday,'” Gibbs explained. “When we said ‘now,’ we meant ‘yesterday’… that’s what the people of Egypt want to see,” Gibbs said, adding that a process that begins one week, one month, or many months from now won’t suffice.

But we are, after all, talking about a “process.” What does that mean, “a process of transition”? Appoint a committee to study it? Have some meetings to discuss it?

Gibbs is clarifying the when. Instead he needs to clarify the what.

UPDATE II: In a helpful reminder why this blog is called “The Other McCain,” Philip Klein interviews a certain senator from Arizona:

“We’ve seen in past history very well organized fanatical organizations can hijack democracy, whether it be Lenin, or whether it be radical Islamic extremists in Iran,” McCain told me outside the Senate floor when asked about whether he was concerned that the Brotherhood could gain power. “They are an organization with ties to terrorist organizations. They support Sharia law, that alone should be reason not to have them as part of any democratic government. Sharia law is the most abhorrent treatment of women and perversion of the democratic ideals we stand for.”
Yet when I asked him whether the United States should recognize a government that included the Brotherhood, he insisted, “I think the United States should take every step to make sure there is a free and fair and open and transparent election, and that won’t happen.”

See? Johnny Mac repeats that silly mantra, “free and fair and open and transparent election,” in the same way a tribal shaman makes a ritual incantation, supposing that by merely saying the magic words, he can ward off the Evil Eye. This is democracy as a superstition.

UPDATE III: Oh, boy. Allahpundit is calling the pro-Mubarak forces “fascist” and comparing them to “SA” (Sturmabteilung, a/k/a “Brownshirts”), so I guess maybe Godwin’s Law is now in effect.

Let’s start by stipulating what seems to be the unfortunate but self-evident fact: The thugs who descended on Tahrir Square today to beat up anti-Mubarak protesters were organized by the regime and operating with the regime’s approval. In this sense, then, they were like SEIU goons beating up a Tea Party protester, except for the fact that your typical Tea Party protester isn’t associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and doesn’t start ranting about the need to “destroy Israel” the minute a CNN camera crew shows up.

A better analogy is to say that the pro-Mubarak thugs were like the Chicago cops at the 1968 Democratic convention, or the Ohio National Guard at Kent State — which would make the anti-Mubarak protesters analogous to SDS, Yippies and various other smelly peacenik scum of that era.

What I’m trying to say is that the facile comparison “X = Hitler” when discussing a confrontation between X and Y requires us to take a long, hard look at the variable Y in the equation. Depending on what Y represents, we might take a different view of the tactics of X. And this is especially true when X has at its disposal tanks and machine guns that they have not yet used against the unarmed Y.

My admittedly imperfect understanding of the situation in Cairo is that the army told the protesters to disperse, and when the protesters didn’t disperse, then the goon squad showed up and started busting heads.

Such tactics are not something I would endorse or advocate, but then again, I’m not the president of Egypt. Maybe if I was the president of Egypt, I’d do the same thing. (Note the hypothetical, as I’m rather dubious of my prospects of ever becoming president of Egypt.) But who is the better judge of the situation in Egypt: Me, Allahpundit, Nicholas Kristof or Hosni Mubarak?

Which one of us is the Egyptian with the responsibility for the future of his own country? And which one of us has led Egypt during a 30-year period when that nation has been at peace with Israel and an ally of the United States?

Excuse me if I’m too willing to give Mubarak the benefit of the doubt at a time when the popular thing to do is to denounce Mubarak as a hateful tyrant. But I’ve never been much for saying things merely because it was popular to say them.