02-04-2011, 10:23 PM
[url="http://www.kforcegov.com/Services/IS/NightWatch/NightWatch_11000027.aspx"] link[/url]
Quote:Comment: US media commentators have treated American audiences to excesses of hyperbole and exaggeration. Headlines described Egypt as on the brink (of what, pray?) and in chaos. This is entertainment not journalism.
Quote:US Issue. [color="#FF0000"]The US administration has acted with insufficient data and prematurely. Cairo is not Egypt. Just as Washington is not the United States. Television images of events in Cairo are hardly an adequate evidentiary basis for abandoning a US ally of 30 years. It might be time for political change, but not based on superficial TV coverage of al Tahrir Square.
The US might have damaged irretrievably its relationship with Egypt because of inaccurate, incomplete analysis, biased advice and lousy timing, if Mubarak remains in office. He and his Saudi, Israeli and Jordanian supporters are likely and rightfully to resent the ill-advised, overt US siding with a small number of hard core demonstrators in Cairo. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the anti-government protestors are pro-democracy instead of pro-Sharia, in their hostility to a secular Presidential government.[/color]
There is still no good news from Egypt tonight and there is still no sign of a revolution, just poverty and unemployment.
Methodological comment: The collapse of a regime is not inevitable. The regime under stress always is trying to find a line it can hold. Some regimes retain the potential to muster sufficient resources to stop the decline, stabilize conditions, limit damage and trounce the opposition. In those infrequent cases, power sharing is avoided and the government recovers its power for a time.
In the cases in which a regime recovers its power, the underlying grievances almost always are economic, rather than ideological.
The new Army-backed government of Mubarak/Suleiman has stopped the decline, stabilized conditions and begun to limit the damage caused by the protestors. The anti-government elements have failed to capture Cairo. Failure to capture Cairo means failure.
In retrospect, they appear to have had a primarily economic agenda. This was treated as a challenge to authority by the government, a huge mistake that made matters much worse. Amending the constitution and other political reforms, which resonate so well in the US media, are irrelevant to the shortages of bread and water.
The Egyptians need food and water more than democracy. Political reform is cheap and easy to enact, but completely misses the point.