It’s been a week since the remarkable events in Egypt began. Today is supposed to be a million person demonstration in Cairo. The Mubarak regime has done everything to try to put the cat in the bag in Egypt – cut off Internet and cell phone, imposed curfews and shut down transportation – all to stop the demonstrations. Yesterday the Egyptian army announced that they wouldn’t interfere with the protests, so today’s protests could be huge.
In my opinion, Mubarak’s days are numbered. I assume that Mubarak is negotiating a graceful exit behind the scenes and the administration’s careful words seem to indicate that this may be the case.
The reaction of the American public has been mostly positive and sympathetic to the protestors. Remarkably, Republicans have been divided on their reactions. Some like John Bolton and Thaddeus McCotter think we should throw our support behind Mubarak. Others, like Elliot Abrams want to take credit for the protests as part of Bush’s “freedom agenda.” Greg Sargent knocks down this nonsense.
Abrams complains that “Obama’s remarks did not clearly demand democracy or free elections there,” as though the White House could engineer its preferred outcome in Egypt through sheer force of will. Meanwhile, in 2005, Bush congratulated Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on “winning” 89 percent of the vote in the Egyptian elections.
This reflects the reality that, rhetoric nonwithstanding, American leaders have supported democracy when they believed it was in U.S. interests — and supported autocrats like Mubarak when it wasn’t. As Steven Cook writes, “Change is coming to the Arab world because of its own internal problems and contradictions. Arabs are writing their own narrative and Washington would do well to make a strong statement in favor of the democratic aspiration of the people and then back off.”
Conservatives might also stop trying to take credit for the bravery of those attempting to write their own history — to the extent that they’re doing so, it is more in spite of us than because of us. Frankly, I doubt anyone understands that better than the protesters themselves, none of who will be fooled by the U.S. cautiously withdrawing its support for a leader whose 30 years in power are largely due to our sanction.
Personally, I think the administration’s approach has been the right one. Not everything that happens in the world is about America and sometimes there’s very little we can do to influence events. Mubarak has been in power for so many years because of the support of the U.S. and other western powers. He can’t stay in power if he doesn’t have the backing of the people any longer. The U.S. can’t come down on the side of repression, even if we think that’s in our best interest. I understand the caution, we don’t know what kind of government will come out of this and it most likely won’t be as friendly as the one it’s replacing. But surely we want our rhetoric about freedom and democracy to mean something when push comes to shove.
To keep up with what’s happening in Egypt, Al Jazeera English and BBC World has live coverage of the protests.