The punditry and politicians in Western democracies are offering advice to Egyptians, as fast as they can type or talk. It is sheer presumptuousness.
They offer noble-sounding platitudes about "orderly change" and "stability" and "dialogue." Who do they think the Egyptians are rebelling against: high-minded English of the Victorian Age? You don't get rid of a dictator by gradual reforms.
The fact that Western advice takes the form of meaningless platitudes shows that Western pundits and politicians are in denial -- no pun intended -- about the kind of government we have been sending billions of dollars to, over the last thirty years. It also covers their own crimes.
Listen to their sanctimonious advice about keeping demonstrations peaceful. Did America use a non-violent approach to throwing off oppression in 1776? What country did?
What gives Westerners the right to pass judgment on the Arabs' revolution? The only merit that Westerners can claim is choosing better ancestors. Six generations ago Americans had balls of steel. Since then, our system of government is nothing more than momentum. Americans of our day are so soft, so comfort and safety-oriented, that they couldn't make the smallest sacrifice for any cause, let alone walk in front of a tank or a line of heavily-armed goons, paid for by "freedom and democracy-loving" American taxpayers.
Considering all the cruel bullying and meddling that America has been guilty of since World War II, many people around the world must think that the American people are inherently cruel. Not so. In fact the average American is completely ignorant of, and uninterested in, the rest of the world. We are content with our lullaby of American exceptionalism.
So we delegate foreign policy to geeks who are supposed to know about boring stuff like that. It's hard to decide whether our foreign policy Elites or our banking Elites take the prize for corruption and incompetence.
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But let me stretch this a bit. This attitude of imperialism in the US is nothing new. When you look at our history here, we had this approach from the beginning when we murdered, lied to, used the Native Americans (who we could not have initally survived without). We had no problem whatsoever stealing their land, killing their food supplies, etc. We gained the west from Mexico when Polk fabricated a military skirmish in order to intentionally start a war with Mexico after they had refused our offer to buy that land. Mexico had just gained its independence from Spain 20 years earlier and due to a land with poor natural resources has always been a poor country. It was no match for us. Consider the idea of "Manifest Destiny"....taught to us in school as a good thing, right? It is nothing more than American Imperialism as its fever fueled westward expansion at anyone's cost but our own.
Due to our success with all this and in WWII we now turn our attention to the world, fully believing we can tell them what to do as well. Our success undoubtedly proves our superiority and our right to do so, right?
And we are getting a very strong push back. The "terrorists" are nothing more than what we ourselves were in 1776, standing behind trees, dressed in plain clothes to blend in to the masses, and taking pot shots at the enemy.
The silver mines had been depleted by then. The agricultural land there wasn't the equivalent of Ohio.
I don't think what European man did to Indians was anything crueler than what an Indian tribe would have done to rival tribes, if that tribe had had the strength to do it.
Egypt is very close to being a failed ungovernable state. 40-50 percent of Egyptians live on less than $2 per day. 700,000 university grads compete for 200,000 jobs and Egypt is the worlds largest importer of wheat. Food riots could be next.
Now comes my own personal most important question, Where to put my money. Oil?
is from Tom in Orlando
It is interesting to watch Obama hedge his bets. Nothing gives a politician a better chance to show their art of duplicity like waiting for a revolution to tip one way or the other.
Hey wait a minute, didn't he make a splash right after his election with a speech in Egypt acknowledging America's hand in deposing the Iranian president. (1952 or so.) He was given so much credit for that speech and all the "hope" and "change." Now it looks like he'll be one of the last to abandon the Mubarak ship. Ironic.
I want to put the issue of unemployment on the table. Listening to the reasons for this revolution, that is being cited. Supposedly 30% of people under 25 in Egypt are unemployed and many of those over that age, well educated, are underemployed.
I want to raise the question about unemployment becoming a world probem underlying much present and future social unrest in the modern world. As I said once before here and got shut down for it, we have modern machines which do the work of several men, we have women who want more freedom, want to work and control their own lives instead of wearing burkas in any sense of the word (and I'm surely not criticizing women for feeling this way. It is my view as well.)........AND we have an ever increasing population in this world. Modern medicine has seen to that. So WHERE are the jobs supposed to come from. Will somebody tell me that?
The pie isn't fixed at 10 inches. It grows. Any luxury that we get for three days in a row becomes a necessity. Human desires are infinite.
Even natural resources aren't as dwindling as gloom and doomers say. Have you forgotten how recently petroleum or uranium were invented as resources?
The pie grows as the population grows.
I wish I could believe in that as much as you seem to.
I guess I look at the number of people who were totally self-sufficient in the past....on their farms, building a little cabin by a stream in the wilderness surrounded by plenty of potential firewood and animals to hunt, etc. They didn't need anybody to give them a "job."
Now we are just so darn interdependent on each other. Individuals as well as countries. It's a new world now and a lot smaller than it used to be. It's anybody's guess how it will play out.