Mubarak's swan song

So Mubarak has left Egypt, and conservative friends are happy to take this opportunity for yet another unfounded swipe at our current President. Man, the vitriol this man is subject to! Their concern stems from the time Obama went to Egypt to speak and apparently requested that the Islamic Brotherhood be allowed to be in the audience, and the perceived stupidity of this action. He is castigated in the name of 'political correctness' -- never mind that this same 'political correctness' has given insane creationist claims a moment's exposure on the national stage or that this same 'political correctness' vouchsafes a certain amount of moderation in Liberals' tone when addressing issues that divide us from conservative table thumpers. Needless to say, no such restraint is returned in kind. No civil tongues in their civil discourse.

Ummm, err… so Obama is so all powerful that his request for the presence of the Islamic Brotherhood launched Egypt's revolution? We sent money for guns to Saddam Hussein. What more direct support of a regime is that?. They bought guns and tanks from us, remember? They shot us with our own bullets, remember? Attendance at a speech pales in comparison, does it not? And who's to say that Obama was not fully aware of the Islamic Brotherhood's tendencies? Perhaps he was pulling a 'know thine enemy', figuring that the devil you do see is better than the one you ignore. Nothing expresses like repression.

It is inaccurate to characterize our financial support of Egypt as responsible for the current political unrest. We gave tons of money to Egypt when it was led by Mubarak; we have yet to give a dime to that country under whatever the new leadership will be. If the Mubarak-era money ‘lifted all boats’ by supporting those who planned the revolt as it fed and clothed everyone in the country, then yes, our $$ went toward shit. But we could also say that the money that found its way into Mubarak’s pocket went toward shit. Any money can be used any way, and some of it always ends up supporting people whose ideas we abhor. The point of the cash in this scenario was to buy us access to oil and military bases, and perhaps even to attempt to alleviate the suffering of the average Egyptian. We would send money to the governments of North Korea or the Sudan if it suited our purposes. We abdicated any meaningful response to human rights abuses long ago.

Many hypocrites revile Obama for his conciliatory tone with the Islamic Brotherhood as if the President were acting on a whim. We are all so sure, in our armchairs beside the fire, that we would know exactly what to do in this situation and would do it with conviction and total success. We, of course, are stupid. We cannot afford to be naive enough to believe that appeasement is either a) always avoidable or b) ineffective. And for heaven's sake can we all stop pretending this course of action was invented by the current President?! Hey, dudes -- remember Neville Chamberlain? We did business with Mubarak, despite human rights abuses, because his secular government was a relative haven in an increasingly radicalized Mid-East. So we all know this from reading the latest news -- but in one second we undergo a complete amnesiac transformation and decide that our country, in the person of Barak Obama has developed a policy of appeasement dating from about 3 hours ago, in his attitude toward the Muslim Brotherhood.

What so many Americans are too stupid to see is that to appease Egypt is to appease the American public. Imagine the clamor if Obama alienated the Moslem Brotherhood, on principle. Our contract would be revoked immediately - no more strategic military position, and a drastically reduced supply of the resource on which we have become so dependent we literally could not function without it. In light of the fact that we have done next to nothing to wean ourselves from oil, we are ridiculous to imagine that we can risk access to it by shaking our fists at our suppliers. We've seen what that yields -- higher oil prices. Strident objections to Egypt's government, whatever the regime, could cut off the supply chain entirely, radically and instantaneously crippling the American way of life, in turn destabilizing the economy to the point of collapse, resulting in chaos.

Yes, the Moslem Brotherhood is terrifyingbut to characterize Obama as a lone appeaser to an abhorrent regime in a world of staunch politial heroes is moronic. He is dealing with the same political factions and human rights abusers whom other world leaders, including our Presidents, have appeased at various points in history. This is situation normal, people. Your complaints are blatant anti-Obama agenda. Obama is required to walk the tightrope between alienation and cooperation with Egypt just as he and other Presidents have had to do with, say, North Korea or China. North Korea could bomb us out of the water and China owns us. So, they can starve and imprison their citizens with impunity. Not a peep from a dependant U.S. Thanks oil barons and finance boys; thanks greedy energy wasters; thanks spendthrifts. You pretend you are not part of the problem, and that is true -- you are the whole problem.