Giving Him The Boot

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

Hat tip to Hugh Hewitt

Overthrowing The Peace Process

Why Mubarak matters, according to the New York Times:

Israelis worry that Jordan is in a precarious state and a successful overthrow in Egypt could spread there. And if the Muslim Brotherhood were to gain power in Egypt, that would probably mean not only a stronger Islamist force in Gaza but also in the West Bank, currently run by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, as well as in Jordan, meaning Israel would feel surrounded in a way it has not in decades.

If Egypt also turned unfriendly, that would quite likely stop in its tracks any further Israeli talk of peace negotiations with the Palestinians, officials and analysts said. A peace treaty with the West Bank would involve yielding territory and military control to a relatively weak Palestinian Authority. Trading land for peace with autocrats like Mr. Mubarak, some analysts say, is not a sound basis for enduring treaties.

Photo: Graffiti on Israel's security and separation wall near Bethlehem, January 2011

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.

Next They'll Want The Vote

Scott Perlo wonders why men are less involved than women in faith communities -- and why women aren't running more faith communities:

The far-reaching Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey indicates that women outclass men in all the most important indices for religious belief and participation: affiliation, belief in God, regular prayer, and -- most tellingly -- the reported importance of religion in their lives. It is actually quite stunning how much resistance to female religious leadership still exists in America, considering how many more women than men engage in spiritual practice.

When Is A Palestinian State Really Not One?

When its leaders have the responsibilities of sovereignty without having sovereignty. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley say Israel has options other than allowing an independent Palestine or waiting for Arabs to outnumber and outvote Jews in Israel:

Already, by unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza, former prime minister Ariel Sharon transformed the numbers game, effectively removing 1.5 million Palestinians from the Israeli equation. The current or a future government could unilaterally conduct further territorial withdrawals from the West Bank, allowing, as in the case of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s West Bank government, or compelling, as happened in Gaza, large numbers of Palestinians to rule themselves and mitigating the demographic peril. The options, in other words, are not necessarily limited to a two-state solution, an apartheid regime, or the end of the Jewish state.

Chick-fil-As And Gays

Evangelical chicken sandwiches land in political hot sauce.

Yorba Linda Sky

3 p.m. Sunday

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.

Easy For Him To Say

Should the U.S. use its influence to facilitate regime change in Egypt? The opposition leader being mentioned as the new boss sure thinks so:

[Mohamed ElBaradei] criticized the Obama administration, which has expressed support for the rights of the protesters but pointedly refrained from calling on Mr. Mubarak to step down. In an interview with CNN, Mr. ElBaradei called that approach “a failed policy” that was eroding American credibility.

“It’s better for President Obama not to appear that he is the last one to say to President Mubarak, it’s time for you to go,” Mr. ElBaradei said.