(update by m 08:20 am:)
Mubarak supporters clash with Egyptian opposition protesters
THE crisis in Egypt lurched into a potentially dangerous new phase overnight as supporters of embattled President Hosni Mubarak faced off with anti-government protesters who defied a military call to disperse.
A crowd of 20,000 Mubarak supporters marched to Tahrir (Liberation) Square in central Cairo, the epicentre of nine days of unrest, far outnumbering the opposition supporters encamped there, Sky News reported.
The Obama administration and the entire liberal establishment are actively supporting the Islamist takeover, not only of Egypt, but of all Muslim countries.
(h/t: yenta-fada)
Does the US fail to understand what will happen to its strategic interests in the region if the Muslim Brotherhood is the power behind the throne of the next regime?
I would go much further than that. Genuine US strategic interests in the Middle East and everywhere else, including at home, would mean an all-out effort to roll back the worldwide jihad.
But the strategic interests of the US government at this point are exactly the opposite of the genuine stragetic interests of the American citizen, voter, and taxpayer. The Obama Administration and the US State Department are doing everything they can to promote the Islamic jihad.
…Certainly it is true that the regime is populated by old men. Mubarak is 82 years old. It is also true that his regime is corrupt and tyrannical. Since the Muslim Brotherhood spinoff Islamic Jihad terror group murdered Mubarak’s predecessor president Anwar Sadat in 1981, Egypt has been governed by emergency laws that ban democratic freedoms. Mubarak has consistently rejected US pressure to ease regime repression and enact liberal reforms in governance.
This reality has led many American commentators across the political spectrum to side enthusiastically with the rioters. A prestigious working group on Egypt formed in recent months by Middle East experts from Left and Right issued a statement over the weekend calling for the Obama administration to dump Mubarak and withdraw its support for the Egyptian regime. It recommended further that the administration force Mubarak to abdicate and his regime to fall by suspending all economic and military assistance to Egypt for the duration.
[…]
The problem with this recommendation is that it is based entirely on the nature of Mubarak’s regime. If the regime was the biggest problem, then certainly removing US support for it would make sense. However, the character of the protesters is not liberal.
Indeed, their character is a bigger problem than the character of the regime they seek to overthrow.
According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics. When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.
Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion.
WHAT ALL of this makes clear is that if the regime falls, the successor regime will not be a liberal democracy. Mubarak’s military authoritarianism will be replaced by Islamic totalitarianism. The US’s greatest Arab ally will become its greatest enemy. Israel’s peace partner will again become its gravest foe.
Understanding this, Israeli officials and commentators have been nearly unanimous in their negative responses to what is happening in Egypt. The IDF, the national security council, all intelligence agencies and the government as well as the media have all agreed that Israel’s entire regional approach will have to change dramatically in the event that Egypt’s regime is overthrown.
None of the scenarios under discussion are positive.
[…]
Anti-colonialists by definition must always support the most anti-Western forces as “authentic.” In light of Mubarak’s 30-year alliance with the US, it makes sense that Obama’s instincts would place the US president on the side of the protesters.
Read it all.
But why?
(more…)
