Victor Davis Hanson: Reflections on the Revolution in Egypt
[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.]
For nearly three weeks, the Biden/Clinton/Obama policy concerning the tottering Mubarak regime was contradictory, incoherent, and predicated entirely on the perceived pulse of the demonstrations. Finally, the confused administration seemed to have realized that U.S. foreign policy must center on long-term support for the non-violent transition to secular consensual government, rather than hour-by-hour, very public assessments of Egyptian individuals. To the degree that individuals thwart constitutionality (quite a different thing from plebiscites), we should be opposed; to the degree they aid it, we should be supportive. That way, we at last dispense with the embarrassments of “Mubarak, a dictator/not a dictator, should/should not/sort of should not go.”
Many other questions are not being asked in the general euphoria over Mubarak’s demise. Why are the more oppressive governments of Syria, Iran, and Libya not subject to the same degree of popular unrest that is said to be surely spreading to Jordan or the Gulf? Is it because for all the authoritarianism of a Mubarak or a Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, there was never the threat of a genocidal Hama, or thousands perishing on the proscription lists under a Khomeini, or international assassinations of dissidents in the Libyan manner? (Would Egyptian-like protests ever have deposed Saddam and his Baathists [cf. the failure in 1991 after the Shiite/Kurdish uprising]?) Does the greater anti-Westernism of a Syria or Iran counterbalance its oppression in the minds of the populace? Much of this reminds me of a Gandhi being fortunate, to paraphrase Orwell, that he was rebelling against the British, and not Germans of the Third Reich....
Read entire article at National Review
For nearly three weeks, the Biden/Clinton/Obama policy concerning the tottering Mubarak regime was contradictory, incoherent, and predicated entirely on the perceived pulse of the demonstrations. Finally, the confused administration seemed to have realized that U.S. foreign policy must center on long-term support for the non-violent transition to secular consensual government, rather than hour-by-hour, very public assessments of Egyptian individuals. To the degree that individuals thwart constitutionality (quite a different thing from plebiscites), we should be opposed; to the degree they aid it, we should be supportive. That way, we at last dispense with the embarrassments of “Mubarak, a dictator/not a dictator, should/should not/sort of should not go.”
Many other questions are not being asked in the general euphoria over Mubarak’s demise. Why are the more oppressive governments of Syria, Iran, and Libya not subject to the same degree of popular unrest that is said to be surely spreading to Jordan or the Gulf? Is it because for all the authoritarianism of a Mubarak or a Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, there was never the threat of a genocidal Hama, or thousands perishing on the proscription lists under a Khomeini, or international assassinations of dissidents in the Libyan manner? (Would Egyptian-like protests ever have deposed Saddam and his Baathists [cf. the failure in 1991 after the Shiite/Kurdish uprising]?) Does the greater anti-Westernism of a Syria or Iran counterbalance its oppression in the minds of the populace? Much of this reminds me of a Gandhi being fortunate, to paraphrase Orwell, that he was rebelling against the British, and not Germans of the Third Reich....