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(h/t Foreign Confidential)
NBC talking head Brian Williams seems shocked, simply shocked that the 'Arab Spring' isn't turning out the way he told everyone it would. The Muslim Brotherhood is out to create a Sunni version of Khomeni's villayat-e-fiqh , an Islamist state along the lines of Iran.
Notice,by the way, the gratuitous Israel bashing and Jew hatred voiced by the Brotherhood spokesperson. These are the people President Obama encouraged all along and has now officially recognized.
Based on how the Obama Administration has acted from the first, that should hardly be a surprise.
I'm hardly surprised that Brian Williams and others would be surprised. After all, when the Egyptian revolution started, they all acted as giddy as school girls at the prospect of the Mubarak government being overthrown. No one stopped to ask basic questions like "who are these revolutionaries", "what are their intentions toward America", or "where are these people getting their support?"
ReplyDeleteExperential common sense on the part of the media and the US government would have meant asking these basic questions along with a few others. For the most part they didn't. Its absolutely breath taking how stupid the media and our leaders are in this area and others.
First it has to be understood that there was absolutely nothing America could have done to save the Mubarak government even if it wanted to. I'm not sure that would have been a good idea any way. The Mubarak government had extracted just about all it could in black mail from the Americans and would have cut us loose very soon any way. As such, when the Mubarak government faced collapse America and its leaders had the following options: 1.)identify groups within Egypt whose values and interests are compatible with our interests and support them. This way we might have been able to achieve a situation where we would have had an Egyptian government who would have been responisve to the needs of the Egyptian people and would not have been hostile to our interests, or
2.)stay out of the situation entirely. As stated previously the Mubarak government could not have been saved. Unfortunately by acting as we did this meant the Mubarak government fell faster than it would have had we simply stayed out of it. Since the Muslim Brotherhood is the most powerful force in Egypt, they were able to step into the power vacum with little resistance. Had we simply stayed out of it, this would have given other groups a chance to organize, gain support, and gain funding. Given human nature and the desire of people to survive and gain influence, this is very likely what would have happened. In other words, the government that would have emerged would have likely had a significant counter weight to the Muslim Brotherhood and would be less dangerous to America and its interests than the Egytian government we are likely to end up with.
In an ideal situation, option 1 would probably be best but it requires a level of competence on the part of the CIA and other American intellegence services that frankly we don't have. Also, America is bankrupt with a worn down military. As such, option 2 was really the only workable option. In the mean time, while this is happening, we could have redeployed our forces to defensible positions. This way we would have a fighting chance no matter what happens in Egypt.
We opted for neither option 1 or 2. All I can say is we should pray for our country. Assuming it can survive long enough to get more competent leadership, the new leadership will likely spend a long time picking up all of the pieces!! I'm sure the Russian, Chinese, Indian, and Western European leaders wake up evey day thanking what ever god they believe in that the problems their countries face is no where near as severe as those faced by America.