The Walking Dead

The Obama administration has been racing to catch up with events in Egypt for more that a week now. Cautiously non-commital at first, we then timidly asked Mubarak not to run again, and when that ploy didn’t work, we asking for a peaceful transition as soon as possible. That request was ignored today with the violent crackdown by Mubarak supporters.

In other words, we’ve done it to ourselves again, supporting an increasingly dictatorial autocrat for thirty years, preferring a predictable despot to the messiness of democratic reform. Mubarak kept the Islamists at bay and maintained the treaty with israel, and that was more than enough to garner our enduring friendship. Given the alternatives in the region, this seemed like a reasonable bargain. What we didn’t do was challenge Mubarak to support democratic values as he drifted toward more and more oppressive rule. If this sounds depressingly familiar, it’s the same pattern we followed in the Americas, when any two-bit dictator could gain our support and our dollars simply by opposing Communism.

It’s no wonder that the people on the street have no love for us despite the billions we’ve poured into Egypt over the decades, and that our influence and our options are now painfully limited.