The Arab Fleet Street

Is it possible it's not principally about Mubarak? From an "Economist" survey of Arab reporting and editorializing about Egypt:

Tariq Hameed of the pan-Arab daily Al Sharq Al Awsat writes that Egyptians’ dissatisfaction with Mr Mubarak has nothing to do with the president himself, whom he describes as being "neither Saddam Hussein nor Zine el Abidine Ben Ali [Tunisia's recently ousted president]," and "a nationalist in both war and peace" whom Egyptians are "proud to have as a part of their history." Rather it is the institutionalised tolerance of unlimited presidential terms that they are protesting against:

"The crisis is not a crisis of the Egyptian regime, but a crisis of all Arab republics. If the opponents of Mubarak’s regime blamed it yesterday for being a client of America, how can they blame Washington today for not standing against it strongly, or forget that there other Arab republics whose democratic predicaments are far greater than the plight of the Egypt...? Washington has allowed Nuri al-Maliki to take a second term in Iraq, despite losing the election! Is this a case of Arab hypocrisy, or its absence? What about the Sudanese regime, for example? And the other republics?

"This is not a defense of the Egyptian regime, or any other, but is a call for reason and reflection, rather than emotion."

Egypt's Top Anglican: "All We Need Is Democracy"

The Most Rev. Mouneer Hanna Anis, Egypt's Episcopal bishop and presiding bishop of the Anglican Communion province encompassing the Dioceses of Jerusalem and the Middle East, is taking a middle-way line on the crisis in Egypt that isn't reflected in much reporting I've seen. He evidently wrote his pastoral letter before today's bloody clashes between Hosni Mubarak's friends and foes:

President Mubarak made it very clear that he will not seek re-election after he finishes his term in November 2011. He appointed Mr. Ibrahim Soliman as a Vice President. He has a good reputation among Egyptians. This appointment ruled out the possibility of appointing the President's son as a successor. President Mubarak also appointed a new Prime Minister, Mr. Shafik who was the Minister of Civil Aviation (Egypt Air, etc.). He is a very good man and has done a lot of improvement in his previous Ministry. President Mubarak also called for a review for the Constitution to allow democracy; he also assured the people that those who were responsible for the violence, destructions, looting, escape of prisoners, etc. will be brought to judgment.

Our concern was that extremist groups would take advantage of the demonstrations to push for violence. We thank God that this did not happen. It seems that the majority of the youth who are demonstrating are aware of this possibility. Many of them started to see this possible risk. The youth who were interviewed by the television yesterday mentioned that all [that] they need is democracy. Many groups this morning are demonstrating in support of President Mubarak, the new government, and peaceful transfer of authority at the end of the President's term.

Out Of The Courtroom And Back To Class

As Egyptians stand up to their authoritarian president on the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, 11 UC Irvine students may face criminal prosecution for disrupting an on-campus speech by the Israeli ambassador last February. At the Orange County DA's office yesterday, 50 people (some shown here) gathered to protest a grand jury investigation of the 11.

Ambassador Michael Oren finished his speech after the protesters were arrested. The university suspended the Muslim Student Union for a year, though the organization denied any involvement in the incident. As the Times reports this morning:

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Irvine's law school, said the issue is not about free speech or expression but about appropriate punishment.

"I don't think the D.A. should press charges, but what the students did wasn't freedom of expression," he said.

"I favor them being punished by the university because what they did was wrong," he said, adding that "university discipline is sufficient."

Chemerinsky is no enemy of free expression, so his nuance is important. You can't use your rights to deprive someone of his. That's the first irony of the Egypt comparison, since those who do enjoy the blessings of freedom must use it discerningly. A college or university campus is one place where a legitimate spokesman for a point of view -- the ambassador of a sovereign nation and vital U.S. ally definitely falls into that category -- is entitled to expect to find open minds and pointed but civil debate.

Instead, young people who may not fully appreciate the purposes of a liberal education nor the privilege of attending one of the greatest universities in the world at still-popular prices end up wasting their time and our money on street theater. When it comes to UCI, I'm not just talking about the anti-Israel club.

But criminal prosecution of student protesters sounds like a Mubarak move. Unless he has evidence that the students were up to something worse than being obnoxious, DA Tony Rackauckas and his grand jury should close the books on this case in the hope that the young people will open theirs and get back to class.

Giving Him The Boot

Max Boot is one conservative who thinks we should push Mubarak harder.

Hat tip to Hugh Hewitt

Iran, Egypt, And The Tipping Point

My Nixon buddy Hugh Hewitt writes to say that he's not endorsing a military crackdown in Egypt nor under any illusion that we could do anything to bring one about.

As for the comparison between Egypt's unrest and the 1978-79 Iranian revolution that led to the shah's ouster, Hewitt's unique perspective on the latter comes from his work during those months on Richard Nixon's staff in San Clemente, working on Nixon's 1980 book The Real War. It's for Hewitt to write about what 37 said privately about Iranian and U.S. policy as opposition pressure built on the shah's regime. Had his broad liberalization policies offended the Shi'ite mullahs? Could he have held onto power, and prevented considerable misery for his people and headaches for his neighbors and us, by pushing back in the streets before protests got out of hand?

In The Real War, Nixon described his conversation with the exiled shah in Mexico in 1979:

As he sees it now, the crucial mistake the United States made was not in giving him support or failing to give him support but in being indecisive. One day, he would receive public and private assurances [from the Carter administration] of all-out support. The next day, a story would be leaked to the effect that second-level U.S. emissaries were in contact with his opposition. The day after that, a statement from the White House would indicate that the United States, in the event the shah was overthrown, would accept any government the people wanted. A vacillating United States government could not seem to decide whether to support the shah unequivocally, force him to compromise with his enemies, or leave him free to maneuver without its support.

Obama can't be accused of the same kind of equivocation in Egypt. His administration seems to have adopted a unified policy of studied ambiguity, wanting neither to offend Mubarak's successors nor, in the event he stays for a while, Mubarak. I don't think Obama has any other choice. In Iran, had we wanted to, we had months to work in coordination with the shah to forestall the rule of the grim theocrat Ruhollah Khomeini, who had set up a government-in-exile in France. The Egyptian crisis blossomed overnight, ruling out much of a U.S. role.

One think we can't and shouldn't evade is our status as a friend of the Mubarak regime, which among other things is a possibly indispensable cornerstone of the Israel-Palestinian peace process. Besides, if the U.S. is going to stop backing authoritarian regimes, somebody had better be prepared to take over from Beijing buying trillions in U.S. treasuries. Obama would have looked weak and opportunistic by abandoning Mubarak too early. Instead, he'll wait for the tipping point, when helping usher Mubarak out of power would be the fitting work of a realistic friend.

As of this morning, it doesn't look like we're there quite yet. Right now, I'm watching former UN ambassador John Bolton gently praise Obama's handling of the situation and predict that Mubarak wants to hold on until his current term expires later this year.

What Really Counts: U.S. Words Or Billions?

Barack Obama must be feeling pretty powerful these days. Though he can't get a bill through the House anymore, the word from an abundance of commentators and bloggers is that the next 30 years of Egyptian history is his to write by virtue of a righteous turn of phrase.

The prevailing analogy is Jimmy Carter's policy toward Iran in 1978-79, when an authoritarian, pro-Western leader, Shah Reza Pahlavi, was driven from power and replaced by the theocratic regime whose leaders continue to confound us. Carter's critics made the hard to disprove (or prove) claim that the shah would've been able to hold onto power indefinitely with strong U.S. support. Late last week, Hugh Hewitt said as much when he ventured this critique of Obama's policy in Egypt in an interview with Charles Krauthammer:

[W]hen I heard [Obama's public statement about Egypt], I tried to put myself in the position of a Muslim Brotherhood activist listening, and I thought Obama cleared the way, immunizing them from any kind of crackdown. In other words, that Saturday will be a tumultuous, violence-filled day, because the President signaled to Mubarak, don’t use the army....Let me go back to 1979...If we knew then what we know now, would we have been better off if the Shah had instructed the army to fire on the mob, and even with the horrendous bloodshed that would have occurred....?

So theory one is that Obama can save our Egyptian ally from a mass popular movement with stronger rhetoric, encouragement of a brutal military crackdown, or both. Theory two comes from a potential Mubarak successor, Mohamed ElBaradei, who suggested this weekend that we'll get a more moderate Egyptian regime if the U.S. pulls the rug out from under Mubarak. On the basis of his own analysis of the Iranian revolution, Kai Bird agrees:

Recent events in Egypt recall the street protests of 1978 in Tehran when...Carter had to decide whether to remain loyal to the Pahlavi regime, a long-standing American-backed dictatorship—or whether the time had come to abandon the Shah and support a popular uprising demanding human rights and democracy. Carter tried to have it both ways, modulating his support for the Shah, calling for political liberalization, and warning the Shah against the use of state violence against unarmed protesters. Obama seems to be following the same script, and the results may well turn out to be equally fraught with unintended consequences....It is imperative that Washington finds a way to place itself on the side of those political forces advocating change and reform—despite America's historical baggage of temporizing with Arab kings and dictators.

Hewitt says we got Islamists in Iran because the U.S. didn't back the shah, thus opening the popular floodgates. Bird says we got them because we backed him too much, further seeding and radicalizing the deluge. There's a third theory, of course, which is that it doesn't matter that much what Obama says, that political outcomes will occur in Egypt principally as the result of internal political and cultural dynamics, just as in Iran. To an extent, Bird himself concurs:

The end of the Mubarak era will...spell an end to Egypt's cold peace with Israel. No post-Mubarak government, and certainly not one populated with Muslim Brotherhood members, will tolerate the continued blockade of their Hamas cousins in Gaza. Israel will thus be faced with additional strategic incentives to end its occupation of the West Bank, dismantle its settlements and quickly recognize a Palestinian state based largely on its 1967 borders.

This assertion complicates the picture even more. In Bird's view, Obama and his speechwriters can alter the course of events at a fluid moment such as this one and yet will be powerless to keep a new Egyptian government, whether dominated by moderates or hardliners and in spite of our $2 billion in annual aid, from railroading Israel.

Obviously Bird has high hopes along these lines. But if he's right that any new Egyptian government will actively support Hamas, then the revolution will probably be devastating to the peace process. Israel already has good cause to fear Hamas ending up in charge of a Palestinian state. If Egypt becomes an enemy again, I imagine Israel will at least be tempted to keep indefinitely the West Bank lands it won in the 1973 war against Egypt and its allies. If Egypt waxes even more aggressive, Israel may even be willing to vie for the Sinai again.

Nobody wants to see that happen. Whether or not it matters much what Obama says this week, let's hope that our $2 billion continues to speak loudly in the months and years ahead.

Neocon Dreams

Jeffrey Goldberg:

[U]ltimately I have to come down on the side of people like Reuel Gerecht, who argue that the imposition of ostensibly pro-Western autocrats on Muslim populations leads to nothing good in the end. If President Bush had carried through his worthy freedom agenda (and if President Obama had picked up the standard of democratic change) Hosni Mubarak might have long ago been convinced to seek retirement before his people sought it for him, and today we would be watching orderly elections in Egypt in which the Muslim Brotherhood represented one choice among many, and not images of Cairo on fire.

A Bridge Too Fatah

Eli Lake on what a post-Mubarak regime might mean for Israel and the Palestinians:

One of the services Mubarak provided as an American client was to train and supply the Palestinian preventive security services [on the West Bank]. I don't think a new Egyptian government would withdraw from the peace treaty with Israel. It's hard to govern Egypt, provoking a war with Israel would be suicidal. The Muslim Brotherhood leadership would always talk about the peace treaty in terms of a referendum for the Palestinian people. But I don't think it would want the Egyptian security services enmeshed with Hamas' enemies in the West Bank. What's more I doubt the next Egyptian government would enforce a blockade of Gaza.

Obama Isn't The New Carter

On his radio show today, Hugh Hewitt announced that President Obama had "said nothing" about the crisis in Egypt in his remarks today. Hewitt seemed somewhat startled when his guest, Charles Krauthammer, repeatedly praised the president for what he said and what he's doing:

[The U.S.] had two choices. Do we either say nothing, or even undermine [Egyptian president Hosni] Mubarak, as Jimmy Carter did in 1979 when he kicked the stool out from under the Shah, and then he’s done, or do we try a riskier course, which is we stay with Mubarak, which is what Obama did, but insist that he bring in democrats, bring in reformers, bring in the opposition, and essentially begin a transition out of the Mubarak era. It’s going to end anyway. He’s 82. He’s not going to run any reelection, he’s not going to win reelection, either. His son is not going to take over. So do you want a controlled transition to democracy? Or do you want an abdication, riots in the streets, chaos, out of which it’s more likely that the bad guys are going to win? So I think they chose the slightly more difficult course, staying with the guy who’s quite despised, but insisting that there’s a transition that is obvious to the Egyptians...

Islamist Egypt

The murder of 21 Christians in Egypt in an al-Qaeda-style operation exposes a frightening political reality, Michael Slackman writes:

“If [President Hosni] Mubarak disappears tomorrow, you will have the Islamists as the strongest political force in the country,” said Mohammed Salmawy, head of the Arab Writers Union. “The political parties, even lumped together, do not have the power to take over, and you have the army, which will not allow the country to go into chaos. Worse yet, you might have military Islamic rule because there is no reason to suppose the army is any different than society.”