What are we to make of Egypt, as representative of the problems facing US foreign policy in the middle east? President Bush erred by invading Iraq in 2003, but the policy that followed is delusional (this author uses that word to describe current Sec State Kerry, but it also must represent Obama in his 2009 Cairo speech and Clinton, with her excuses about Benghazi. If both Bush and Obama have messed up in the middle east, what really can the US do? Im afraid the answer may be, not very much, and of course there can be no moral duty for the USA to do the impossible, such as to create within Egypt the preconditions for liberal democracy, especially now that classical liberalism (government subservient to people, instead of the other way around) in the USA is mostly represented by conservatives and the tea party, while modern liberalism is becoming increasingly illiberal, to the point where it often seems to share rather than counter things like the populist Egyptian longing for dictatorship. But at the very least, we could avoid legitimizing the terrorists pretexts for violence by avoiding the respectful public repetition of those delusional pretexts, in other words by not doing what Clinton did after Benghazi and what Kerry did after the recent kidnapping of children by Boko Haram in Nigeria. hoover.org/research/reflections-revolution-egypt
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 06:46:43 +0000
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