History will prove The Obama Administration is one of the most corrupt in our history.
Can't hide how inept it is because we see that every day. (See 1 and 1a below.)
And to add insult to injury, the President is an abject liar. (See 1b below.)
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What's new? Is our president's interest aligned with that of our nation's? You decide. (See 2 below.)
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A little history tracking the progress of government spending. (See 3 below.)
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Obama should hire them, they would fit in well with this administration. (See 4 below.)
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Two opposing views regarding Obama's handling of Egypt. (See 5 and 5a below.)
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Tonight a former Israeli Consul, Ronnie Porat, whose post took him to Egypt and Jordon gave an update of his thinking. He was frank to offer a disclaimer that he could not predict what would happen in the end but he spoke about the Egyptian people and stated that he doubted they wanted to see their nation and culture go down the Nile Drain, so he thought the military would provide a bridge over which a political transition could occur.
Frankly he was far more upbeat than I am but his comments do parallel the thinking of our son who lived and studied both in Cairo and Jerusalem and has a good sense of the Egyptian man on the street.
Porat discussed the economic and political pros and cons of the Peace Agreement between Israel and Egypt and pointed out why the cost of rendering it null and void was also a deterrent to allowing the nation to go down the Nile Drain.
He thought the Obama Administration had finally gotten their policy marching in a better and more hopeful direction in response to a question.
I truly hope Porat is right and that over the ensuing weeks the flare up in Egypt settles down, Mubarak makes enough believable concessions that a semblance of peace will descend upon the land but I believe Pandora has been unleashed.
If I were the Saudis, I would be quaking in my gold threaded garments because what Obama said to Mubarak applies to them as well.
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Dick
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1)Issa: Obama’s Stimulus Spending Simply Failed
By Greg Brown
Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and a frequent critic of the White House, says President Barack Obama’s expensive stimulus spending ideas have clearly failed and warns against their revival.
During the recent State of the Union speech, Obama called for renewed investment in education, research, and transportation alongside spending freezes elsewhere, a signal some on the right took to mean a second stimulus effort is ahead, despite the huge federal deficit.
“President Barack Obama’s $814 billion economic expansion has woefully failed to reach each of its self-imposed targets,” Issa writes in the Financial Times.
“The president’s stimulus package promised (after adjusting for inflation) that gross domestic product in the fourth quarter of 2010 would be roughly $15,200 billion,” Issa writes.
“Yet the latest figures, released this month, fell short by some $400 billion. Instead of being an important milestone for the global recovery, the data are just one further example of the failure of Obama’s Keynesian misadventure.”
The economy grew by 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter, less than the 3.5 percent economists expected but enough for some to declare victory over the prospect of deflation and declare the booming economy awaits. Part of the reason for the rise in GDP, however, was rising trade on the weakening U.S. dollar.
Issa criticized administration figures who praised the result and promised jobs would soon follow. He pointed out that Obama and Vice President Joe Biden once predicted that, thanks to the stimulus, unemployment would never top 8 percent and would by this date be back near 7 percent.
The current unemployment rate is 9 percent, where it has been stuck for 20 months, Issa writes.
“The truth is that real GDP is just 3 percent larger than it was in the quarter just before the stimulus was passed, while the current employment situation is little short of dire,” Issa writes.
In a recent speech, Obama asked U.S. business leaders to “get off the sidelines” and create new jobs.
"American companies have nearly $2 trillion sitting on their balance sheets and I know that many of you have told me that you are waiting for demand to rise before you get off the sidelines and expand, and that with millions of Americans out of work, demand has risen more slowly than any of us would like,” Obama told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
“We are in this together."
1a) The Way Forward in Egypt The U.S. risks ostracizing a regime that may yet hold on to power, while making common cause with an opposition that includes U.S. enemies.
By BRET STEPHENS
Is there a coherent explanation for the bizarre muddle that is the Obama administration's policy toward Egypt?
The charitable view is that the administration is deliberately speaking out of both sides of its mouth—sometimes hostile, sometimes conciliatory to Hosni Mubarak—because it's hedging its bets about the outcome of the unrest. Frank Wisner, the administration's handpicked envoy to Cairo, told a security conference here that "President Mubarak's continued leadership is critical—it's his opportunity to write his own legacy." Yet Hillary Clinton declared at the same conference that democratic reform was a "strategic necessity" and that it was time for Mr. Mubarak to let his vice president take matters in hand.
The alternative explanation is that the administration has no idea what it's doing. Considering that Mrs. Clinton has now endorsed the Muslim Brotherhood's participation in negotiations with the regime, I find myself leaning toward the uncharitable view.
So what should the administration do now? Here's a simple exercise:
1) Identify worst-case scenarios and set priorities. The worst outcome for the U.S. would be an Egypt led by the Muslim Brotherhood. The next-worst outcome is that the current regime survives by returning to its Nasserist roots as a secular but reactionary regime—populist in its economic policies, hostile to the U.S. and Israel, potentially a client of China, and in the market for a nuclear arsenal. Also conceivable is that the regime and the Brotherhood strike a devil's bargain and rule in condominium.
The U.S. should work toward a more democratic future for Egypt. But that should not be the primary goal of U.S. policy. What's paramount is to ensure that worst-case outcomes don't come to pass.
2) Define a position. So far, the administration's principles, as Mrs. Clinton describes them, are to encourage "an orderly, expeditious transition," free of violence and culminating in "free and fair elections."
This won't do. It's fine for the U.S. to support a process or pledge its support for the "choice of the Egyptian people." But we simply cannot be indifferent to the result of that choice. When Mrs. Clinton speaks of a transition, somebody needs to ask: transition to what? One plausible answer is an Egypt that respects individual rights, private property, the rule of law, and its international obligations.
3) Cultivate the right friends. For two years, the administration cultivated Mr. Mubarak at the expense of Egypt's genuine liberals, who were treated as nuisances. When parliamentary elections were rigged late last year, Mr. Obama raised no objection.
Now the administration is making the opposite mistake, abruptly ostracizing a regime that may yet hold on to power, while making common cause with an opposition that contains no shortage of U.S. enemies.
The U.S. doesn't have many sincere friends in Egypt, which is all the more reason that it needs to maintain the ones it does.
Specifically, the administration ought to understand and respect the interests of an army without which there can be no reform or democracy. It could speak up for the Egyptian technocrats, particularly the recently fired Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, who was probably Egypt's most competent civilian leader and is now being scapegoated by Mr. Mubarak. It needs to be outspoken on behalf of genuine dissidents like Kareem Amer, a blogger who spent four years in jail for "insulting Islam" and "insulting Mubarak" and has recently gone missing.
4) Understand the possibilities of the present. Nobody wants Egypt to return to the status quo ante. But the last thing the U.S. should want on the streets of Cairo is a revolution. And on current trends, there isn't going to be one: The protests are getting smaller, life is returning to normal, and the regime, as I predicted last week, has "engaged" the opposition in what will prove to be an endless negotiation. The real question is whether what comes next in Egypt is reaction or reform.
5) "Assist and insist." The Obama administration has an opportunity to tilt Egypt toward reform, and even commit a bit of bipartisanship in the process.
"We need to be more assisting but also more insisting," suggested John McCain at the security conference, by linking benefits like foreign aid, technical assistance and market access to a genuine process of reform and transition. The senator called it "a new compact with our undemocratic partners," and it certainly beats the old formula of paying off Mr. Mubarak year after year for ever-diminishing returns.
6) Practice the art of the possible. Mrs. Clinton is right that democracy is a strategic necessity, at least in the long run. Democracy Now is another story.
The world has long experience with democratic transitions. Few of them are swift. Many of them fail. Some end tragically.
Egyptians are now casting about for decent role models for such a transition. One is Turkey, where for decades the army maintained its prerogatives but allowed civilian governments considerable leeway. Another is Mexico, which gave its presidents near-dictatorial powers but limited them to six-year terms.
Would Egyptians be ill-served if they were to pursue some version of those models? Probably not. Would the U.S. be well-served if they did? Given the realistic alternatives, it surely would.
1b) 'I Didn't Raise Taxes Once'
Refreshing the President's memory
Bill O'Reilly's Fox interview with President Obama on Sunday was fascinating, and not merely because Mr. Obama made clear he's an ardent fan of these pages. What really caught our attention was the President's claim that "I didn't raise taxes once. I lowered taxes over the last two years."
The Presidency is demanding, and with the Egypt mess and his other duties, perhaps Mr. Obama has forgotten some of his tax achievements. Allow us to refresh his memory. In his historic health-care bill, for example, there is the new $27 billion "fee" on drug companies that is already in effect. Next year, device manufacturers will get hit to the tune of $20 billion, and heath insurers will pay $60 billion starting in 2014—all of which are de facto tax increases because these collections will be passed on to consumers as higher costs. Of course, these are merely tax increases on business.
As for tax increases on individuals, perhaps he forgot the health-care bill's new 0.9 percentage point increase in the Medicare payroll tax for families making over $250,000 and singles over $200,000. That tax increase takes effect in 2013, as will the application of what will be a 3.8% Medicare surtax (up from 2.9% today) to "unearned income" for the first time. This is a tax hike on investment and interest income, which will reduce the incentive to save and invest.
Mr. Obama also told Mr. O'Reilly that he hasn't moved to the "center" since November's Democratic election defeat, saying "I'm the same guy." Save for a couple of tactical retreats that he couldn't avoid, we agree with him. As the President said recently in the State of the Union, he's going to insist on raising taxes again on people making over $200,000 when his deal with Republicans in Congress expires in 2012. Definitely the same guy.
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2) Mubarak's Interests Are Not America's
The dictator can't be trusted. The West must lean on the Egyptian military for a transitional government that will pave the way to free and fair elections.
By SAAD EDDIN IBRAHIM
The young Egyptians now making their stand for democracy in Cairo's Tahrir Square were all born during Hosni Mubarak's reign. Although Mr. Mubarak has finally vowed to step down at the end of his term in September, few believe him. And the increasingly violent response of his dying regime demonstrates why the protestors' skepticism is justified.
Those in Tahrir Square have had their fill of the pharaoh's deception: the doubletalk, the rigged elections, the armies of plainclothes thugs employed to maintain his power. The protesters know that this 82-year old dictator is wily, and that he may simply be buying time with hollow promises so that he can settle the score with dissidents later, out of the news cameras' view.
Deception has defined Mr. Mubarak's rule from the start. Although most of the protesters are too young to remember, their parents have surely told them that upon taking power following the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in October 1981, Mr. Mubarak vowed he would serve only one six-year term. Thirty years later, he is the third-longest ruler in Egypt's nearly 5,000 years of recorded history.
He has accomplished this feat by systematically eliminating—through intimidation, torture and imprisonment—all potential alternatives to his leadership. He successfully duped Western leaders and the Egyptian middle class into believing that the only option to his rule was a fanatic Iranian-style Islamic regime. Many at home and abroad were inclined to swallow this self-serving myth, particularly after 9/11. In reality, it was the repression of his police state that swelled the ranks of jihadists.
Mr. Mubarak presented himself as the elder statesman of the region and the only leader capable of maintaining stability and brokering peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. He turned the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh into a virtual playground for Western leaders who came to sun themselves while participating in a charade of endless peace negotiations.
The idea that Mr. Mubarak is central to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been repeated like a mantra by successive American administrations. What none seems to have noticed is that he hasn't advanced the peace process one inch beyond what Sadat achieved before his death in 1981.
The reason is simple: The Mubarak regime has no interest in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate. The regime has parlayed the false perception of its role as mediator into a lucrative industry. As long as billions of dollars of Western aid continue to flow into its coffers, the regime has determined there is no benefit to a final resolution. In their cynical calculus, the best scenario is to work behind the scenes to keep the conflict at a low boil, while continuing to cultivate the false perception of Mr. Mubarak's pivotal role as a peace broker.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration bought this illusion hook, line and sinker. Until just last week the administration had fallen so completely for Mr. Mubarak's lie that it was willing to give him a pass on greater democratization in return for the false promise of his assistance in advancing peace. Only when the protests began on Jan. 25 did the White House and State Department begin to realize what a bad bargain they had struck, and the extent to which Mr. Mubarak and other antidemocratic leaders in the region have benefited from maintaining the impasse between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Mr. Mubarak's deception also extended into the economic arena. While he continued the economic liberalization and slow expansion of the market economy begun under Sadat, the benefits of such policies have not been shared equally by Egyptians. The fabulous wealth acquired through the business ventures of Mr. Mubarak's two sons, Alaa and Gamal, is emblematic of the cronyism of this regime. The educated young demonstrators in Tahrir Square and throughout Egypt were left with virtually no economic hope, and the lion's share of wealth flowed into the bank accounts of the elite favored by Mr. Mubarak.
The young and largely secular children of the Mubarak era now bravely standing their ground in the face of thugs mounted on camel and horseback—Mr. Mubarak's version of the Janjaweed in Darfur—have lifted the veil of deception to which this regime owes its existence. By setting loose his goons against the peaceful demonstrators, this aging pharaoh is trying to create the false impression that without his steady hand, Egypt will descend into chaos. The carefully orchestrated and well-armed mobs of "pro-Mubarak demonstrators" are just the latest acts in his three decades of deception.
Judging from the tragic footage that has come out of Tahrir Square and Alexandria, and the horror stories leaking out of jail cells, Mr. Mubarak may, in fact, protract his rule for weeks or even months. But the children of the Lotus Revolution, with the help of Twitter and Facebook, have revealed the pharaoh's nakedness to the world.
The time has come for the U.S. and other Western powers to spare Egypt further bloodshed and to side with Egypt's democratic future. Despite appalling missteps in the first days of the uprising, the Obama administration is now moving in the right direction by making clear that the time for transition is now. Western leaders cannot choose Egypt's future leaders, but they must continue to make it clear that they will not be deceived any longer by Mr. Mubarak.
Washington and Europe must lean on the Egyptian military and support the rapid emergence of a transitional government that will pave the way to free and fair elections fully supervised by the judiciary. Based on his record, and the violence he is unleashing on the peaceful protesters of the Lotus Revolution, Mr. Mubarak and his hand-picked cronies cannot be trusted to oversee Egypt's overdue transition to democracy.
Mr. Ibrahim, an Egyptian democracy advocate and sociologist, is currently a visiting professor at Drew University. From 2000-2003 he was Egypt's best-known political prisoner.
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3) US Government Spending History from 1900
By Christopher Chantrill
Nobody, in 1900, speculating on the future of government, could have imagined the astonishing growth and scope of government in the 20th century. Nor would they have imagined that, for many people, this gigantic government would seem the very essence of efficiency, compassion, and modernity. But the reason that government has got so big is not, as many claim, the weight of armaments and wars. Instead the money goes for health care, education, pensions, and welfare programs. You can see how it all happened in the United States in the charts below.
A Century of Government Spending
Government spending in the United States has steadily increased from seven percent of GDP in 1902 to 40 percent today.
Chart Key:blue- Transfer to state and local
red- Federal direct spending
green- State direct spending
grey- Local direct spending
Chart 1: Government Spending 1902-2014
Government Spending started out at the beginning of the 20th century at 6.9 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As you can see from Chart 1, the federal share of that spending was modest. But it was not to last. Spending got a big kick in World war I and ended up at about 12 percent of GDP in the 1920s.
Then came the Great Depression, in which famously President Roosevelt and the New Deal cranked spending up to 20 percent of GDP. World War II really showed how the United States could commandeer its national resources for all out war. Government spending peaked at just under 53 percent of GDP in 1945.
President Clinton famously said, in 1995, that the era of big government was over. But he was wrong. The post World War II era has been a golden age of government spending, and it shows no sign of ending. Although spending dropped back to 21 percent of GDP immediately after WWII, it steadily climbed thereafter until it hit a peak of 36 percent of GDP in the bottom of the recession of 1980-82. Thereafter government spending chugged along in the mid 30s until the mortgage meltdown of 2008. In the aftermath of bank and auto bailouts, government spending surged to wartime levels at 45 percent of GDP. The mortgage emergency seems to have ratcheted out-year spending up a notch. Near term government spending in the future is pegging at 40 percent of GDP.
Defense Spending since 1900
Chart 2: Federal Defense Spending 1902-2014
Defense spending in the United States has fluctuated in the last century, rising from one percent of GDP, peaking at 42 percent in World War II, declining from 10 percent in the Cold War to five percent today.
The defense establishment that sent the White Fleet around the world before World War I was tiny, compared to the defense establishment of mid century. It was about 1.25 percent of GDP. Yet this tiny establishment was expanded into an expeditionary army in World War I that consumed over 14 percent of GDP and turned the tide of the war in France. After the war the armed forces were rapidly demobilized and defense spending returned to about 1.25 percent of GDP.
Then in World War II the United States achieved an unprecedented mobilization of resources, and defense spending rose to 42 percent of GDP in 1945. But after the war it never returned to previous levels. From a low of 7.33 percent of GDP in 1948 it doubled to 15 percent at the height of the Korean War in 1953, and was maintained at about 10 percent during the peak of the Cold War through the end of the Vietnam War. Against this the defense buildup during the Reagan era, from 5.6 percent of GDP in 1979 to 7 percent of GDP in 1986 was modest, and the Bush buildup from 3.6 percent in 1999 to 6 percent in 2010 to fight the first battles against Islamist extremism equally restrained. The plans of the Obama administration show a reduction in spending back to 4.6 percent of GDP by 2014.
The Growth of Government Education
Government spending on education has expanded from about one percent of GDP in 1900 to 7 percent in the second decade of the 21st century.
Chart 3: Education Spending 1902-2014
Education in North America began as local and individual. But the common schools movement intiated in Massachusetts in the 1840s began a process of centralization and bureaucratization that came into its full flowering in the 20th century. Education spending began the century at one percent of GDP, primarily at the local level. In the early decades, from 1910 to 1940, spending increased to accommodate the build out of high schools. After World War II, spending increased due to an expansion in higher education and the increases in teacher pay. Allowing for a dip during World War II and a bulge in the 1970s government spending for education has steadily increased year on year, reaching 7 percent of GDP in 2008. Under President Obama, education spending is set to increase sharply to 7 percent of GDP by 2014. Chart 3 shows that most education is provided by local governments. However since World War II the federal government has increased its role, starting with the GI Bill and continuing with periodic enactment and expansion of educational grant programs to local K-12 schools and state colleges. (Note: the blue sector in Chart 3 is intergovernmental transfer from the federal government to state and local governments, i.e., grants.)
The Growth of Government Healthcare
Government did not intervene significantly in the provision of health care until the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid 1960s. Since then government health care has increased to around 7 percent of GDP.
Chart 4: Healthcare Spending 1902-2014
At the beginning of the 20th century, government spent little on health care. The platform of the Progressive Party in 1912 called merely for a reorganization of public health services into a single national health service. As Chart 4 shows, government health care did not exceed one percent of GDP until the 1960s. It was about 0.25 percent of GDP in the early decades, 0.5 percent in the 1920s, and peaked at about one percent of GDP in the depression year of 1932. Then, in 1965, Congress passed the Great Society legislation at the behest of President Johnson, featuring Medicare, a health subsidy program for older Americans, and Medicaid, a health care provision for the poor. Ever since, government health care expenditures have trended steadily higher. Government health spending breached two percent of GDP in 1970, three percent of GDP in 1980, and four percent of GDP in 1991. Spending breached five percent of GDP in 1995, six percent in 2007, and seven percent of GDP in 2009. (Note: the blue sector in Chart 4 is intergovernmental transfer from the federal government to state and local governments, i.e., grants).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)Two Blondes With Hammers...
Sara & Judy were doing some carpentry work on a Habitat for Humanity House.
Sara was nailing down house siding, would reach into her nail pouch, pull out a nail & either toss it over her shoulder or nail it in.
Judy, figuring this was worth looking into, asked, Why are you throwing those nails away?' Sara explained, 'When I pull a nail out of my pouch, about half of them have the head on the wrong end and I throw them away.'
Judy got completely upset and yelled, 'You moron! Those nails aren't defective!
They're for the other side of the house!'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)Realpolitiktian
Obama’s handling of the Egyptian uprising reveals that in foreign policy, too, he is a pragmatic centrist to the core.
By John Heilemann
Barack Obama was still luxuriating in the afterglow of his State of the Union address when he suddenly found himself blindsided by the first full-blown foreign-policy crisis of his presidency. The swelling, surging pro-democracy uprising in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria, rocking Egypt to its core. The shocking downfall of Hosni Mubarak, the country’s staunchly pro-American and abominably autocratic president for the past three decades—and, until this week, presumably for life. The reverberations throughout the region, from Jordan to Yemen. And then the bloody, all-but-certainly Mubarak-sponsored crackdown on protesters and journalists alike.
At the time of this writing, on the afternoon of February 4, that crackdown seemed to have ended, however temporarily, with a vast throng once again filling Tahrir Square. And though Mubarak continued his desperate bid to cling to power for as long as possible, his departure was a foregone conclusion, the only question being its precise timing—and thus equally certain was the start of a new and uncertain future for Egypt and the dynamics of the Middle East.
Yet whatever the long-run implications of the insurrection, in the short run the episode has provided something we hadn’t seen before: a picture of Obama in the crucible, grappling with an unpredictable and unpredicted foreign imbroglio. And although that picture isn’t wildly at variance with earlier portraits of him, it is revealing nonetheless. It’s an image of a president who views foreign policy, as he does so much else, through the lens of pragmatism, not idealism or ideology. Of a president who is in some ways (and surprisingly) more sure-footed playing the inside game of old-school diplomacy than the outside game of grand public gestures. And who is striving to balance a modest conception of American influence, especially in the Middle East, with an awareness that, in the end, the U.S. still packs a throw weight rivaled by no other nation.
This combination of qualities has been for some a recipe for frustration. In the face of the raw exhilaration of the scene in Tahrir Square in the uprising’s first week, with thousands of peaceful demonstrators challenging the legitimacy of a corrupt and crapped-out regime, the expectation among many Obamaphiles was that the president would adopt a heroic stance, demanding Mubarak’s instant exit. Instead, his initial reaction was one of reflexive restraint. When the president reported on January 28 that he had spoken with Mubarak and urged him to undertake democratic reforms, the Nobel Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei dismissed Obama’s pronouncement: “To ask a dictator to implement democratic measures after 30 years in power is an oxymoron.”
The president’s people were well aware that his words were underwhelming, but argued that circumspection was, in fact, a virtue in these circumstances. “I think that every situation of this sort requires a thoughtful response,” the outgoing White House senior adviser David Axelrod told the Huffington Post. “You want to respond in a way that’s thoughtful and constructive, and sometimes with foreign policy, the most constructive answer isn’t necessarily the most visceral or satisfying.”
The trouble for Obama was that his posture was consistent with that of the rest of his administration, which in the first few days of the uprising seemed less guilty of thoughtfulness than of cluelessness or fecklessness. Critics pointed quickly to Hillary Clinton’s declaration, as the protests took off, that Mubarak’s government was “stable,” and to Joe Biden’s proclaiming to PBS’s Jim Lehrer that he would “not refer to [Mubarak] as a dictator.” Asked by Lehrer if it was time for the Egyptian president to go, Biden answered, “No. I think the time has come for [him] ... to be more responsive to some ... of the needs of the people out there.”
Certainly those statements seem embarrassing now, and certainly they reflected a serious underestimation of the uprising. But there was also a logic to them. From the outset of the crisis, Obama and his people were acutely aware of the signal they would be transmitting if they cut Mubarak—our most reliable ally in the Arab world for 30 years—loose precipitously. “It would have been terrible, in my view, if on the first day of this, Obama and Secretary of State Clinton had totally pulled the rug out from under [him],” said former secretary of State James Baker. “That would send a horrible message to other countries in the region about being allied with the United States.”
By the weekend of January 29 and 30, the administration had concluded that it would try to ease Mubarak out. And so began several days in which there was a fairly sharp divergence between the messages being conveyed in private—by Frank Wisner, the longtime diplomat dispatched to Cairo to meet with Egypt’s president in person; by various officials to the newly appointed vice-president, Omar Suleiman; and by the Pentagon to the Egyptian military brass—and those being broadcast, including by Obama himself, for public consumption.
Such tightrope-walking is the very stuff of high-stakes diplomacy, and by the lights of an assortment of masters of the art, including Baker and Henry Kissinger, Obama and his team enacted it with considerable skill. Despite the yapping of some on the nuthouse right, who are already developing a precooked narrative that Obama should be blamed for “losing Egypt” when it inevitably becomes a radicalized Islamist state, the vast majority of mainstream Republicans also supported Obama’s maneuvers.
That Obama would earn bi-partisan support in his handling of his first major foreign crisis is not as surprising as it might seem. To the consternation of some on the left, his handling of national-security matters over the past two years has been firmly rooted in the centrist-realist Establishment consensus from which almost all of his foreign-policy team hails. From Clinton to Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the new national-security adviser, Tom Donilon, these are hardheaded people with a deep understanding of Realpolitik and a commitment to long-range thinking. In the case of Egypt, that has meant an abiding concern for what comes next: in terms of Egyptian cooperation on counterterrorism, on access to the Suez Canal, on standing fast against Iran. Perhaps most of all—if perhaps less than the panicked members of the Israeli political class—they are worried about what a new, probably less secular, Egyptian government will mean for the Holy Land.
With all this in mind, the swift departure of Mubarak of his own accord, followed by an orderly transition to a reformed democratic system, would have been the ideal scenario, one in which America would have applied—and would have been seen to have applied—only the lightest touch. But it was not to be. With Mubarak’s refusal to go gently into that good night compounded by his decision to unleash his goon squads, Obama’s hand was forced. Thus the open break with Cairo in the middle of last week. And thus the news on Thursday that the Obama administration was pushing a proposal whereby Mubarak would step down posthaste and be replaced by a transitional government headed by Suleiman with the support of the Egyptian military.
In the meantime, to be sure, the damage inflicted by Mubarak’s crackdown was severe—and it raised the question of whether swifter and more forceful action by Obama might have been in order. Yet the truth is that the pace of progress in Egypt has been remarkable. Within eleven days of the start of the uprising, the pressure from the street in combination with the pressure from Washington yielded an array of concessions that a month ago would have been unthinkable: Mubarak agreeing not to run for reelection; the forswearing of the notion that his son, Gamal, long seen as his chosen heir apparent, would succeed him; the call by Suleiman for an open dialogue with the opposition, including the Muslim Brotherhood, which remains officially banned. It is hard to imagine that any of this could have come much more quickly than it did.
And certainly not because of anything that Obama could have said or done. As David Ignatius wrote last week in the Washington Post, “Washington debate about the new Arab revolt tends to focus on the U.S. role: Has President Obama blundered by not forcing Mubarak out sooner? Should America abandon other oligarchs before it’s too late? But this isn’t about us. If Washington … can help broker a stable transition to new elections, so much the better. But Egyptians don’t need America to chart their course.”
Don’t need—and don’t want. No doubt some of the protesters in Tahrir Square pined for a clear sign that Obama was on their side. And no doubt many will be grateful if Obama and his people help to speed Mubarak’s exit. But the power of what is taking place in Egypt—and in Tunisia and, maybe soon, elsewhere—is that it is a local, organic, bottom-up phenomenon in which the United States has not loomed large. It really is not about us. And nor is the hard work that lies ahead, work much harder than the removal of a despot, the work of building a functioning democracy. Obama’s handling of the crisis suggests that he understands this. Here’s hoping that the aftermath of the crisis proves it definitively.
5a)MICHAEL GOODWIN: Egypt Protests Prove That It's Amateur Hour at the Obama White House
By Michael Goodwin
In her 2008 race against Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton famously used a ringing red telephone to question Obama's national-security chops. "It's 3 a.m.," a narrator warned over video of a sleeping child. "Who do you want to answer the phone?"
We now know neither Obama nor Clinton was ready for the call from Egypt. Whatever the clock says, it's still amateur hour in this White House.
From the moment the demonstrations started 12 days ago, the foreign-policy team stumbled. Secretary of State Clinton said Hosni Mubarak's regime was "stable," and Vice President Joe Biden said Mubarak wasn't a dictator and shouldn't resign.
As the ranks of marchers swelled, Obama's instincts took him in the opposite direction. He quickly tried to push Mubarak out, first behind the scenes, then more publicly.
A measure of uncertainty in the face of the historic uprising is understandable, but American leaders have been serially certain. They have wholeheartedly embraced ever-shifting simplistic views, none of which fully reflects the obvious dangers ahead and the fallout from dumping an ally of 30 years.
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One result of turning on Mubarak came when press secretary Robert Gibbs said negotiations should include "non-secular actors."
Translation: The White House is ready to have the Muslim Brotherhood join the Egyptian government. Other officials confirmed that decision, even though a leader of the radical Islamist group said Egyptians "should be prepared for war against Israel."
He also said Egypt should close the Suez Canal and stop the flow of natural gas to Israel. Then Saturday, saboteurs attacked the gas pipeline to Jordan, and the one to Israel was shut as a precaution.
Meanwhile, the king of Jordan, the only Arab nation other than Egypt to have diplomatic relations with Israel, sacked the prime minister and met with Muslim Brotherhood leaders to try to stop demonstrations in his country.
Hello, the red phone is ringing.
Michael Goodwin is a New York Post columnist and Fox News contributor.
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