Egypt Looking for Change?

[dapoes]

This is what I see in one page of this thread. All consecutive posts. Is this a board malfunction, or has everyone stopped responding to the mindless drivel of the troll? :unsure:

You and your soul mate Garf couldn't ignore me if you tried. Both of you already have proven you cant, but anyways.....nice to see you covering Garfs back...still.

 

[7days]

Its does appear that the same mistake that Carter made with the Shah of Iran is happening with Mubarak. You don't abandon your allies when people start to riot in the streets.

Michael Ledeen has a great article on this. The Problem of the Friendly Tyrant

excerpt

We should have insisted that Mubarak liberalize Egypt, and every now and then an American president or secretary of state said so, but then we backed off. Now we have a serious crisis with no “good” solution. What to do?

I think the answer is obvious: we have to stick with Mubarak, all the way down if he is indeed going down. We can talk about reform as much as we wish, but it’s as crazy to try to institute reform in the middle of an insurrection as it is to raise taxes in the middle of a depression. But we have to say — above all, privately — that we’re with him, and that while we want serious change in the future we will not abandon him.

That is the right policy, even if Mubarak goes down. If we do that, we can say to his successors: “We were loyal to him because he was a good ally, and we do not abandon loyal allies. If you are good allies, we will be loyal to you too, even at your darkest hour.”

If we bail, then both our other allies and Mubarak’s successors will know that America is not loyal, cannot be relied upon, and thus that it is a mistake to cater to the Americans’ wishes (about democracy, for example).

 

[Ms Tree]

Mistake? Alies? Who? Thr Shah and Mubarak are dictatorso who are abusing theirbcitizens. We support pilot dictators and then wonder whyvthebpeople revolt and dont like the west. Go figure.

 

[7days]

It is no mistake that the Shah and Mubarak are dictators and abuse their citizens. That is not being denied. But what may fill the vacuum of revolt in Egypt or the middle East for that matter may be much worse. Iran is a perfect example what happen when veil of democracy was hijacked by an oppressive regime. Are they better off now then they were back then? Doesn't seem so at all.

From the article:

Was it wrong to join the Soviets in the war against the Axis? Would it have been better to sacrifice thousands of American lives in order to avoid the moral stain on our standard? Are tactics to be trashed in favor of a single strategy? As I keep saying, we are often compelled to choose between various evils, and it is a legitimate choice. It’s the way the world generally works, in fact; it’s rare to have a fully attractive and morally impeccable option.

While tyrants are contrary to our national DNA, there are dictators and dictators. Some can be convinced to democratize, and those chances are increased if they trust us and are willing to work with us. One way to get from dictatorship to democracy — and that is our national mission — is to get friendly tyrants to liberalize their polities. Peaceful transitions have been accomplished, and, by the way, in societies that were widely believed to be intrinsically, almost genetically, authoritarian. To take two: Taiwan and Spain, both of which democratized from the top down.

We should have insisted that the shah liberalize Iran. Yes, I know he did some of it, and I know that Iran was — by orders of magnitude — the most liberal and open society in the Muslim Middle East. But he stopped that process in its tracks, thereby provoking the insurrection that produced the Islamic Revolution.

We should have insisted that Mubarak liberalize Egypt, and every now and then an American president or secretary of state said so, but then we backed off. Now we have a serious crisis with no “good” solution. What to do?

 

[dapoes]

It is no mistake that the Shah and Mubarak are dictators and abuse their citizens. That is not being denied. But what may fill the vacuum of revolt in Egypt or the middle East for that matter may be much worse. Iran is a perfect example what happen when veil of democracy was hijacked by an oppressive regime. Are they better off now then they were back then? Doesn't seem so at all.

From the article:

Thats a very good point. Your wasting your breath explaining to the rest of the libtards on the board. They see the Egyptian uprising as an Obama "Yes-We-Can" movement. Boy are they wrong. :unsure:

 

[dapoes]

If Obama
thinks a leader should step down
simply because large crowds of people
protest in the streets of the capitol for a week or so...

I’ve got an idea!

​

 

[dapoes]

New Obama spin...

Its not my fault!

Obama Faults Spy Agencies’ Performance in Gauging Mideast Unrest, Officials Say

WASHINGTON — President Obama has criticized American spy agencies over their performance in predicting and analyzing the spreading unrest in the Middle East, according to current and former American officials.

 

[7days]

It is a good and valid argument. Like the article said, should we have not considered the Soviets an allied friend in WW2 against the Axis? We were very much aware of Stalin's regime of oppression. Would it have been better to sacrifice thousands of American lives in order to avoid the moral stain on our standard?

Did not Spain and Taiwan come back from the brink of revolution to full fledged democratic and civil society avoiding chaos and despair?

 

[delldude]

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Pacepa on Soviet Exploitation of Islamic Radicalism
Further evidence of the Soviet roots of Islamic terrorism.

Ion Pacepa
From Ion Pacepa, the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the former Eastern Bloc of the Soviet Union.

Pacepa was a two-star Romanian Securitate General who simultaneously held the rank of advisor to President Nicolae Ceaucescu, acting chief of his foreign intelligence service and state secretary in Romania’s Ministry of Interior.

In 1972, the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB chairman Yury Andropov told me, a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States. No one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe.


According to Andropov, the Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep. The Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch.


Terrorism and violence against Israel and her master, American Zionism, would flow naturally from the Muslims’ religious fervor, Andropov sermonized. We had only to keep repeating our themes — that the United States and Israel were “fascist, imperial-Zionist countries” bankrolled by rich Jews. Islam was obsessed with preventing the infidels’ occupation of its territory, and it would be highly receptive to our characterization of the U.S. Congress as a rapacious Zionist body aiming to turn the world into a Jewish fiefdom. [Pacepa, National Review, 8/24/06]

 

[Ms Tree]

It is no mistake that the Shah and Mubarak are dictators and abuse their citizens. That is not being denied. But what may fill the vacuum of revolt in Egypt or the middle East for that matter may be much worse. Iran is a perfect example what happen when veil of democracy was hijacked by an oppressive regime. Are they better off now then they were back then? Doesn't seem so at all.

From the article:

I am not disputing the fact that what will fill the void in Egypt ill not be worse than what they have now. I am not disputing that what Iran has ended up with is not worse than what they had. What I am saying is that if we support vicious dictators that do not abide by the will of the people they will at some point will say that they no longer what this SOB in power and they want a change. Most people involved in a revolution do not really have a clear goal in sight other than to eliminate what they have in power at the time.

If the US, as a democracy/beacon to the world we need to be more selective of who we support. We cannot support rulers that abuse their people and ten be surprised when they get over thrown and turn into our enemy.

I think the comparison of Russia and WWII is not the same as our support of the likes of Batista, Pinochet, Shah, Mubarak. In the case of Russia, there was a world war going on. We allied our self with Russia and supplied them some funds and arms. With out their support, the out come of WWII could have been quite different. At the close of WWII, support of Russia ceased. There was a clear need to support Russia. What is/was that need with Egypt, Cuba, Chile, Iran? Did those needs equate with the need to beat the Nazi's? I do not believe so.

The bottom line is Mubarak is a SOB. As you stated we did not did not tell him that our continued support for him would be based on his liberalizing his country. We did not and now Egypt will suffer the consequences n part because of our actions. We meddle in other countries affairs, without the best interest of the population at heart and then it blows up. Go figure.

Would you agree to a foreign power trying to influence/support the leadership of anyone one in this country? I know I would not be pleased with this idea.

Perhaps we should try and see what the population wants and see if we cannot help them? It seems obvious the current plan is not working very well.

Iran was not a veiled democracy. It was vicious dictatorship (he killed a few of his people last time I checked) supported by a democracy who did not give a dam about the people.

 

[Ms Tree]

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Do you think our support of dictators played into the hands of Russia who was trying to turn the ME against us?

 

[dapoes]

I think the comparison of Russia and WWII is not the same as our support of the likes of Batista, Pinochet, Shah, Mubarak. In the case of Russia, there was a world war going on. We allied our self with Russia and supplied them some funds and arms. With out their support, the out come of WWII could have been quite different. At the close of WWII, support of Russia ceased. There was a clear need to support Russia. What is/was that need with Egypt, Cuba, Chile, Iran? Did those needs equate with the need to beat the Nazi's? I do not believe so.

Really? Stalin murdered 20 million yet you find no comparison? :blink:

Just because a war was going on and we needed them? :blink:

Thats your reasoning? :blink:

 

[delldude]

Will Hosni Mubarak travel to Germany as a patient as part of a graceful exit strategy for the Egyptian president? Plans for a possible hospital stay here appear to be more concrete than previously believed. SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that a luxury clinic near Baden-Baden is being favored.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,743998,00.html

 

[eolesen]

Bin Laden was once the enemy of our enemy, too....

 

[Ms Tree]

Bin Laden was once the enemy of our enemy, too....

For that we have 3,000 dead. We need to be a bit more selective in who we assist and who we back.