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| A US soldier watches as a statue of Saddam Hussein falls in Baghdad on April 9, 2003. Courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald. |
Neocons as romanticists? You’d think that was the case in reading David Brooks’ interpretation of the Obama Administration’s response to the Egyptian crisis in which the erudite, comparatively moderate Republican columnist at the NY Times takes a swipe at both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (See No Quarter’s Larry Johnson for more about the neocons’ “trying to light the fires of democracy in Egypt.”)
Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic offers a more thoughtful, in-depth analysis of how Washington has responded to the unfolding revolt in Egypt. Ambinder clearly points out the difference between an Administration benefiting from the expertise of a cadre of seasoned diplomats and taking well-considered steps rather than following the advice of neocons to rush blindly into the turmoil erupting on the soil of another sovereign nation.
Ambinder writes:
After Tunisia, the intelligence community, the diplomatic community and the White House all anticipated that protests would spread. The sheer number of calls the State Department was fielding from other governments was a clue: lots of mid-level diplomats in the Mideast wanted to know what their counterparts at State were hearing and seeing.
What they were seeing was "a sort of contagious element," a senior administration official said. (Like others, the official offered a candid assessment on the condition of anonymity because events were still unfolding.) "By Thursday night we were warning journalists and our allies that we anticipated that Friday would be a tough day ... and that there would be some stark images."
Egypt was simply the most logical candidate for unrest. Protests of some sort erupted in the country fairly regularly. Anger at President Hosni Mubarak for breaking his promise to lift the country's decades-old emergency law was acute. A food shortage was in the offing. The government wasn't able to distribute coupons for bread that many smaller vendors relied upon. Mubarak had long ago lost the formal support of the Egyptian Army, who, the U.S. was fairly certain, would never take up arms against the people.
On Monday, January 24 and Tuesday January 25, the White House watched the first wave of mass protests in Cairo. Ironically, there was little about the internal political debate inside the country that the U.S. was not privy to, a consequence of its close military relationship with the Egyptian Army and Air Force, which had kept informal tabs on the government for Americans.
What they were seeing was "a sort of contagious element," a senior administration official said. (Like others, the official offered a candid assessment on the condition of anonymity because events were still unfolding.) "By Thursday night we were warning journalists and our allies that we anticipated that Friday would be a tough day ... and that there would be some stark images."
Egypt was simply the most logical candidate for unrest. Protests of some sort erupted in the country fairly regularly. Anger at President Hosni Mubarak for breaking his promise to lift the country's decades-old emergency law was acute. A food shortage was in the offing. The government wasn't able to distribute coupons for bread that many smaller vendors relied upon. Mubarak had long ago lost the formal support of the Egyptian Army, who, the U.S. was fairly certain, would never take up arms against the people.
On Monday, January 24 and Tuesday January 25, the White House watched the first wave of mass protests in Cairo. Ironically, there was little about the internal political debate inside the country that the U.S. was not privy to, a consequence of its close military relationship with the Egyptian Army and Air Force, which had kept informal tabs on the government for Americans.
Most Egyptian military officials of consequence were in the U.S for an annual training exercise assessment last week, as were several of the country's intelligence officials. The early briefings were basic. Outside of the National Security staff and State Department desk officials, the knowledge about Egypt's political structure was thin. A number of White House officials were given an Encyclopedia Britannica-like briefing about the basics: how many U.S. citizens were inside the country and contingency plans to get them out; reminders that Egypt wasn't a Muslim country; Hosni Mubarak was a Coptic Christian of a certain sect; the Muslim Brotherhood was at once an opposition political party and a co-opted part of the social system. The government encouraged its charities and even accepted its recommendations for cultural censorship while treating its political platform as anathema.
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