Where is your CVC code?
There has been a lot of blame heaped on Obama for his rather cautious remarks about the Egyptian uprising. Nicholas Kristof is pleading with him in the Times today to do more. Secretary Clinton has certainly been driving me up the wall all this time with her ice-queen persona and creepy evasiveness in responding to direct questions; Biden has been characteristically uncouth. But Obama’s delicate middle path, though, seems to me quite appropriate. He has not insisted that Mubarak step down, but has made clear that violence against the protesters will not be tolerated. He has affirmed the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian people and made clear that a just transition of power should be imminent. His administration has even indicated that it is reevaluating its aid relationship with Egypt, as if to attach consequences to these demands. That’s about it, though. He hasn’t demanded that Mubarak step down.
As someone filled with hope and excitement by recent events in Egypt, I find myself wishing that my president would go further. I’ve heard Egyptians wishing he would too. But I think this is a wish worth resisting. American presidents aren’t the good guys here, and it’s a mistake to ask that one should pretend to be. Obama stands atop a government that has spent decades supporting undemocratic regimes in the name of its short-term interests, and the bizarre interests dictated by those policies will probably suffer with Mubarak’s departure. Like the Wikileaks incidents, these protests are a force of truth that stands firmly against the US government’s practices of deception. The Egyptians have caught American Empire with no clothes, and it’s beside the point to ask that we flex a bit to look good naked.
Really, what is at stake is a whole habit of thinking about how things get done in the world. For the last decade, when you wanted “regime change,” you called up the US. Our military provided it, while destabilizing a region, tanking the domestic economy, and inventing perverse new meanings for the word “victory” in the process. Now, say the Egyptian people, that era is over. Change comes from below, from the governed, and through largely-peaceful protest. This is how real democracies are born. And it’s a whole lot cheaper.
Speaking of which, it’s time to end the massive economic aid meant more to prop up Egypt’s military and its alliance with Israel than the well-being of its people. It’s time to start imagining a world in which the US is doing less, not more. Get used to it: we’re not the heroes here (though we did invent Facebook and Twitter). We’re a large part of why Mubarak managed to hold on to power as long as he did. In the future I hope that those kinds of policies change, and that I will be prouder of how my country carries itself in the world. But for now, victory is for the Egyptians, not for us.
Nailed it, Nathan. In some sense, we are all Egyptians today. But in another, we as Americans are most assuredly not, and shouldn’t pretend to be.
Sorry Nathan, but I have to disagree with you here. I don’t think there is any chance no matter what we do that a victory for the protests would be attributed to the US in the history books, because we have been, as you write, the primary military, economic and diplomatic backer of Mubarak since he came to power. We will never be the heroes in this story. I think it would be read much like what happened in the Philippines. We backed Marcos til the bitter end, and when it was clear because of the “people power” movement that he could no longer stay in power, the US called Marcos to say it was over and got him out of the country. History has not attributed that revolution to those US phone calls and the plane to Hawaii, but to the amazing nonviolent movement in the streets of Manila that made his regime untenable.
If the US came out more forcefully to say that Mubarak should now step down, that his time is up, and that we are cutting all military aid until he does so, we would not be simply trying to “flex a bit to look good naked.” It would be doing the right thing. The moral thing. We should clearly and directly side with the people, with democracy, not with the government, which is what we are currently doing by towing the line that we have been.
There is no neutrality in the current US position. By not coming out more strongly we are in essence still siding with Mubarak in my opinion. Because we can say all the nice things we want, but until we back them up with action (meaning cutting aid), I don’t think our pronouncements will have much of an effect. For a long time we have talked the talk when it comes to democracy and human rights, but rarely walked the walk. People in Egypt and around the world know that. If we are to save any shred of credibility we still have with the people of Egypt and the wider Arab world, we have to do more. It would not only be the best thing we could do to improve our relations with the people of the Middle East, but like I said, it’s simply the right thing to do. And as Martin Luther King said, “The time is always right to do what is right.”
Never be sorry to disagree, Eric. I completely agree that the US should be more supportive of the egyptian people, and I make clear I think our military aid needs to stop. All I mean to do is remind us to expect the solution to come from Egyptians themselves, not an American president.
That said, I think you’re right about what is right. Thank you for the Marcos example — I suspect that before long Obama will act as Reagan did. And I hope that we’ll finally learn our lesson and get off the wrong side of history.
I want to aver on another point. Your reference to Secretary Clinton as an ice queen is really not appropriate. It’s a highly gendered way of framing her, and you do it in contrast to Obama, when the two of them have said virtually the same thing and with the same tone.
Of course, the United States and other powers have sought to use these local rebellions for their own purposes. Revolutions are not made in a vacuum. But excluding these foreign powers in considering the history of revolutions in the 20th century won’t help anyone understand the Egyptian situation. Why? Because foreign powers will make every attempt to see that the Egyptian situation resolves itself in a way that affirms their perceived interests. So, unless you’re willing to predict that no foreign power will covertly or overtly intervene in Egypt, you point in this matter is self-serving. But, naturally, examples exist undermine your assertion.
“Really, what is at stake is a whole habit of thinking about how things get done in the world. For the last decade, when you wanted “regime change,” you called up the US. Our military provided it, while destabilizing a region, tanking the domestic economy, and inventing perverse new meanings for the word “victory” in the process. Now, say the Egyptian people, that era is over. Change comes from below, from the governed, and through largely-peaceful protest. This is how real democracies are born. And it’s a whole lot cheaper.”
One day you will grow up and understand how the real world works. Populist revolutions tend to end hijacked by more nefarious forces that fill the power vacuum by exchanging one dictatorship with another. The Bolivarian democracies…errr president for life…errr dictatorships in Central/Southern America and the Iranian revolution come to mind.
So don’t rising food costs then encourage increased food production? Egypt used to be the bread basket in Roman times. Won’t this encourage them to start producing their own wheat, even if it is grown via the black market?
Yeah, short term the high prices cause misery. But medium and long term, aren’t they self correcting?