In a televised speech, Hosni Mubarak announced he will not stand in the presidential election later this year. Here’s a look through his political career
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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s announcement that he will serve out remaining term immediately rejected by angry crowds Egypt’s embattled president Hosni Mubarak has bowed to the pressure of millions of people massing on the streets, pledging to step down at the next election and pave the way for a new leader of the Arab world’s largest country. Mubarak, effectively abandoned by the US in a day of fast moving developments, said he would not be a candidate for a seventh term but would remain in power to oversee reform and guarantee stability — a position that was immediately rejected by angry crowds and promised yet more drama in Egypt’s extraordinary crisis. “In the few months remaining in my current term I will work towards ensuring a peaceful transition of power,” Mubarak said. “I have exhausted my life in serving Egypt and my people. I will die on the soil of Egypt and be judged by history” – a clear reference to the fate of Tunisia’s president who fled into exile last month. Looking grave as he spoke on state TV in front of the presidential seal, Mubarak attacked those responsible for protests that had been “manipulated by political forces,” caused mayhem and chaos and endangered the “stability of the nation.” In a defiant, finger-wagging performance the 82-year-old said he was always going to quit in September – a position he had never made public until now. Opposition leaders had already warned throughout a dramatic eighth day of mass protests that only Mubarak’s immediate departure would satisfy them. Shortly before his address it emerged the US had urged him not to seek re-election in the face of unprecedented protests that have electrified and inspired an Arab world desperate for political and economic change. The shift in Washington in effect withdrew US support for its closest Arab ally and linchpin of its Middle East strategy. “May it be tonight, oh God,” chanted the crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square as they waited to hear the historic speech. Mubarak’s statement came at the end of a day that saw epic protests. Millions of people rallied across the country. “Illegitimate,” chanted the vast crowds choking Tahrir Square in central Cairo. “He [Mubarak] will leave, we will not leave,” went another slogan, in a festive atmosphere that belied the tense stalemate that has emerged between the people and the regime over an extraordinary 48 hours. With the army standing by its landmark pledge not to use force against demonstrators, Mubarak faced an intense and coordinated US campaign to persuade him and the powerful Egyptian military to effect “an orderly transition” — in part via a conversation between the US defence secretary Robert Gates and Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, his Egyptian counterpart. But as troops barricaded the presidential palace with barbed wire, Egypt’s fractured opposition rallied together to reject any talks with the ruling NDP party on political reform, insisting the president must stand down before any dialogue can get under way. On Monday Mubarak ordered his new vice-president and intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, to begin a dialogue with opposition groups, including the powerful Muslim Brotherhood. “Omar Suleiman approached us, and we have rejected his approaches,” Essam el-Arian, a Brotherhood spokesman, told the Guardian. “As long as Mubarak delays his departure, these protests will remain and they will only get bigger.” Mohammed ElBaradei, the former UN arms inspector who has been nominated to lead any negotiations, met protesters and the US ambassador to Egypt Margaret Scobey, insisting afterwards that no talks were possible whilst the president remained in power. “I hope to see Egypt peaceful and that’s going to require as a first step the departure of President Mubarak,” the 68-year-old told al-Arabiya TV. “If President Mubarak leaves then everything else will progress correctly.” Mass protests were reported across Egypt, including in Alexandria, Suez and many other cities. Khaled Nasser, son of the late and still revered Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, triggered wild cheering when he appeared in Tahrir square, as military helicopters hovered overhead. “These are the people of Egypt, the real people. God willing they have reached their goals,” he said. Smaller rallies were held in support of the government but they were dwarfed by the huge numbers swelling the ranks of a protest movement that last night looked within reach of achieving a revolutionary change that will echo far beyond Egypt. Underlining the regional impact of the crisis, the Jordanian prime minister was sacked after weeks of protests over price rises and unemployment and inspired by events in Tunisia and now Egypt. Britain, meanwhile, announced that it would send a charter flight to Cairo to bring home UK nationals but passengers will have to pay £300 to use the service. Hosni Mubarak Egypt Middle East Protest Ian Black Jack Shenker Peter Beaumont guardian.co.uk
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Emboldened by the army’s support, people pour on to the streets to demand the president’s departure Ten days ago 50 people demonstrating on a Cairo student campus would have been regarded as an event out of the ordinary, something to be quickly crushed by the Egyptian police. That was then. Today hundreds of thousands of people crammed themselves into Cairo’s central Tahrir Square to call for an end to President Hosni Mubarak’s three decades in power – and the government security forces were nowhere to be seen. The protesters hung vast banners from buildings, beat drums and chanted, they picnicked with their children on patches of scrubby grass, and walked round the square holding up vast Egyptian flags. Most of all they called for their president to go, in a multitude of different ways. “Wake up, Mubarak, this is your last day.” they chanted. “We won’t leave until you do.” Others shouted simply “Go away” and “Leave”, using a dismissive Arabic expression. Their banners – scrawled in Arabic, English, French and Spanish, a nod to the international audience that is watching this extraordinary uprising unfold – said “Game over” and “Leave now and we’ll leave you alone”. Above the huge and swelling crowd a helicopter circled, feeding live images to Mubarak’s senior security officials. They will have seen the crush below, but not the detail in it: the families and friends, the bearded Islamic students, work colleagues, the rich, the middle-class and the poor – putting hands on shoulders to move through the vast press of bodies in snaking lines. They won’t have seen the happy chance meetings of friends and colleagues; the intense pockets of debate about the future of the revolution that broke out on dozens of street corners; the faces lit up with the exhilaration of free expression and free assembly, as exciting as for any crowd at a football match or a rock concert. It was, as one banner had it, a festival of freedom. But what was truly extraordinary about this gathering was how far Egypt had come in a week. People who once would not have thought of coming to protest, who would never have thought of speaking ill of a president who has ruled for 30 years or given their names to foreign journalists, have found a voice. So they filed in their hundreds and thousands through checkpoints run by the army and checkpoints run by volunteers – who frisked all male protesters, checking their IDs to ensure that no plain clothes police officers could infiltrate the crowd. The volunteers passed out printed leaflets from soldiers asking for a peaceful assembly. Young men came with free boxes of mango juice and water to hand out, round bread and biscuits, cheese and dates. Others moved through the throng collecting litter and holding up signs for the camera. “The barrier of fear was broken last Friday,” said Ahmed Lofti, who works for the oil contractor Halliburton, referring to the day that demonstrators pushed Egypt’s riot police triumphantly off Cairo’s streets. It is a victory over fear that was assisted by a declaration from Egypt’s army last night that it would not use force against those who came out on the streets today. And so they came in numbers vaster than anyone had predicted: gathering not only in the capital, but also in Alexandria, Suez and other major cities. The million-person march, Egypt’s protest movement called it. And even if it is not certain whether they reached that figure, it is clear that a transformation has taken place. Commenting on the military’s assurances regarding protesters’ security, Muhammad Warsi, a 60-year-old surgeon, said: “The high command of the army delivered a hidden message. “It is the same message that the elites of the country’s society are delivering. They’re saying [to Mubarak], ‘We loved you 30 years ago. We don’t want to humiliate you. We don’t want you to end like [Romanian president] Nicolae Ceausescu. Go in peace.” “This is a new process for us. These are our first steps. We don’t know where we are going yet,” said Mohammed Gaber, an IT engineer in the oil industry. “I’ve worked abroad for most of the last 12 years. I was supposed to be in Tripoli today, but I changed my plans so I could stay and participate in this. To be honest, I’m still surprised. No one expected any of this. If a group of students had gathered, they would have been crushed immediately. Now look at us.” Admiration for Egypt’s youth was a common theme running through the crowd. “I’m ashamed of my generation. We old people sat back and lived through decades of corruption without lifting a finger,” said Aza el-Hadari, a 63-year-old bookshop owner. “This new generation has given me the best years of my life back. “I feel sorry that Mubarak, who was after all a hero of the 1973 war effort, should be reduced to leaving with such little dignity. But he has brought this upon himself; Mubarak will go down in Egyptian history as the president who ordered security forces to fire live bullets into the bodies of his sons and daughters. There’s no way back from that.” Amid the euphoria, though, were small reminders of the individual tragedies that had taken place in the run-up to the day’s events. Azzam Abdel Latif and his wife had erected a poster of their 28-year-old son, Lotfi, along with the autopsy report into his death last Friday during fierce clashes between police and protesters. Lotfi had been returning from work in the neighbourhood of Imbaba, on the west bank of the Nile, when he got caught up in the fighting. He came across a small child who had suffered shrapnel wounds. “He grabbed the boy and went up to remonstrate with a riot policeman, asking why they were firing live bullets into the air at the Egyptian people,” said Latif. “The policeman fired two bullets into my son’s chest and he died instantly.” Latif buried Lotfi the following day and came straight to the square to begin a vigil. He said he had not been a political person before the death of his son, although he did think that constitutional reform was long overdue. Now though, that has changed. “I only had one son and I lost him to these protests; if I did have another, I would tell him to come down and join this. We must bring down Mubarak; if I see the president, I’ll get him myself.” Warsi was sitting on a bench waiting for his daughters, like many other recent additions to Egypt’s burgeoning revolution. He tells a joke with a certain relevance to the day’s events. “OK,” he says, “So Hosni Mubarak is lying on his death bed and his doctor comes and says: ‘Hosni, you have to prepare a message to say goodbye to your people.’ ‘For my people?’ asks Mubarak. ‘Why? Where are the people going?’” Today the answer came – to Tahrir Square, to bid their president of 30 years goodbye. Egypt Middle East Hosni Mubarak Peter Beaumont Jack Shenker guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …GOP Congressmen Get their Government-Subsidized Health Care Today! Still None for You.
February 1, 2011 No Comment
enlarge Today is a happy day for many GOP freshmen Congressmen. Why? Because as of today, their government-subsidized health care is in effect. And that health care plan is robust. For starters, no one can be excluded or penalized for pre-existing conditions, regardless of age. Dependents are covered up to age 26, whether they’re students or not, and even if they have a pre-existing condition. But wait, there’s more : Beginning today, a new Republican Member of Congress with high blood pressure, diabetes, or any chronic condition is immediately covered at the same premium cost as 8 million other federal employees . The same is true for his or her spouse and dependent children, regardless of age, gender or prior illness. So, no pre-existing conditions, no rate hikes, and best of all, the government pays about $700/month for each enrollee. Isn’t that nice of them? Let it sink in: Taxpayers are paying $700 per month for Congressmen like Darrell Issa, and Virginia Foxx to have access to quality health care while they go about the business of repealing it through the courts and Congress for the rest of us. In the this-is-no-surprise category, we have current polls which say a majority of Americans think those who seek to repeal the Affordable Care Act should decline their own government-subsidized health insurance. Most Americans think incoming Congressmen who campaigned against the health care bill should put their money where their mouth is and decline government provided health care now that they’re in office. Only 33% think they should accept the health care they get for being a member of Congress while 53% think they should decline it and 15% have no opinion.
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On Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN, disgraced former CBS anchor Dan Rather attributed the current protests in Egypt to President Obama's June 2009 speech to the Muslim world in Cairo: ” He [Obama] fueled this uprising in Egypt. When he came to Cairo, let us remember, and he spoke of- listen, we stand for freedom and democracy and listening to people. The Egyptians believed his rhetoric ” [audio available here ]. Host Piers Morgan's segment with Rather aired 36 minutes into the 9 pm Eastern hour. He devoted the entire interview to the Egyptian issue. Near the end of the segment, the CNN personality asked, “If you were President Obama right now, what would you now say?” The former CBS Evening News anchor began by voicing his sympathy for the President: “I'm glad I'm not because it's a real dilemma.” He then placed himself in the Democrat's shoes: “I would quietly send word to Mubarak that his days are finished, that we will do our best by him. We appreciate what he's done, but events have moved past him. I would do that quietly. I wouldn't say that publicly.” [ Video embedded below the page break ] Rather continued with his theory about Obama's Cairo speech: RATHER: Speaking of President Obama- you know, in a way, he fueled this uprising in Egypt. When he came to Cairo, let us remember, and he spoke of- listen, we stand for freedom and democracy and listening to people. The Egyptians believed his rhetoric. The actions since then have not matched that . Morgan followed-up by noting one international critique of the American president: “Well, there are many in Israel, apparently- in the media- now saying that President Obama will go down as the president who lost Egypt, which is a pretty damning thing to be saying, from a country that's been protected, in many ways, by keeping Mubarak there.” The journalist replied with further advice for Obama: RATHER: Well, that would be a devastating commentary on this administration, but we haven't seen the last card- not by a long shot have we seen that. But I would think that President Obama would want to do a number of things. First of all, assess U.S. intelligence. Our intelligence and diplomatic core is top-heavy. It talks to the wealthy people in every country. It talks to the business people. It talks to the military people. We don't seem to be able to get the intelligence from the bottom-up- from the ground-up- and part of what's fueled this in Egypt are these day-to-day humiliations and insults, particularly with young people- police who want to bribe and kick over a fruit stand- that kind of thing. The cumulative effect of that leads to this kind of business. Now, in the case of Tiananmen Square, which I mentioned earlier, and the government eventually was willing to turn the guns on its own people, I would be very surprised if that happens in Egypt. But if I were President Obama- who am I to give him advice- but you asked- MORGAN: You know something? I wouldn't like to be him right now either. It is a very difficult situation. Dan, thank you very much for your time. RATHER: Thank you, Piers. Thank you very much. On the September 12, 2010 edition of The Chris Matthews Show, Rather saw the President's name as profitable to U.S. relations with the Muslim world : “On balance, and in the main, it's still a net plus in terms of the country's reputation.”
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There are lots of conservative Americans who write in to say that they care about the environment and are worried about dependence on foreign oil, even if they wish we would stop pushing the climate change agenda. I would think they and just about anyone in the country would be worried about the agenda of the The Heritage Foundation, sent to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa at his request. The whole shopping list is worth reading, but being TreeHugger, lets just look at the issues affecting the environment:… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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The country’s fractured opposition movement have refused to discuss political reform until Hosni Mubarak stands down Egypt’s fractured opposition movement has rallied together to emphatically reject talks with the ruling National Democratic party on political reform, insisting that Hosni Mubarak must stand down before any dialogue can begin. Whether Mubarak promising to step down at the next election, as was reported tonight, will satisfy them remains to be seen. Former UN weapons inspector Mohamed ElBaradei, who has become a de facto leader of the opposition and met with the US ambassador to Egypt today, said no talks were possible while Mubarak remained in power. “I hope to see Egypt peaceful and that’s going to require as a first step the departure of President Mubarak,” the 68-year-old told al-Arabiya TV. “If President Mubarak leaves then everything else will progress correctly.” The decision to stall on entering any talks with the present regime suggests Egypt’s dissident leaders are hoping to ride the wave of public anger against the government, which took many in the political establishment by surprise. ElBaradei and other opposition figures are attempting to put themselves in a strong position to negotiate a transition to democracy if Mubarak falls. Following a week of anti-government protests that have brought hundreds of thousands on to the streets, newly appointed vice-president Omar Suleiman said yesterday that he had been mandated by Mubarak to offer an olive branch to the long-marginalised opposition. But after sacrificing some of their credibility by not giving more enthusiastic support to the demonstrations when they first erupted last week, a range of dissenting voices is now seeking to take a harder line with the regime. “Omar Suleiman approached us, and we have rejected his approaches,” Essam el-Erian, a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman, told the Guardian. “As long as Mubarak delays his departure, these protests will remain and they will only get bigger.” After years of division within organisations opposed to Mubarak, Egyptian opposition figures have now formed a coalition to try to capitalise on the huge and so far leaderless outpouring of fury. The Islamic Brotherhood, Egypt’s main political Islamist group, has joined forces with El-Baradei’s National Association for Change, along with other, smaller parties and representatives of the Coptic Christian community, calling their new coalition the National Committee for Following up the People’s Demands. Mustafa Naggar, a supporter of ElBaradei, said a request for talks with the coalition had come from Information Minister Anas Fiki and Mubarak’s new prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, and had been turned down. “Our first demand is that Mubarak goes,” confirmed Mohammed Al-Beltagi, a former Brotherhood parliamentarian and member of the new committee. “Only after that can dialogue start with the military establishment on the details of a peaceful transition to power.” However, critics of the formal opposition argue that the decision by these parties to sit back and watch how events unfold rather than take a more interventionist role was one that had been forced upon them. “With the opposition, it’s a sense of ‘hey guys, wait for me’,” said Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian publisher and political analyst. “They did not start any of this, and now they are desperately playing catch-up.” He argued that the opposition had been weakened by its inability to control the protesters, who have acted without any prompting from established political forces. “If I was Omar Suleiman and I was serious about negotiating with an opposition figure, I would say, ‘First, call the crowds off’, which of course ElBaradei can’t – barely anyone listened to him in Tahrir the other day, and they’re not going to listen now. “Most of these leaders have been left behind by events. Some of them understand the demographic time bomb that went off and changed the reality of Egypt, and hence might be able to reinvent themselves. The rest will sink with Mubarak forever. Mubarak’s opposition is dying with him.” Egypt Hosni Mubarak Middle East Protest Jack Shenker guardian.co.uk
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US leader uses network of diplomatic contacts to emphasise need for ‘serious transition to democracy’ Barack Obama has pressed Hosni Mubarak to agree to stand down as president later this year once radical political reforms have been introduced and free elections held. Obama’s message, delivered by a White House envoy, came amid reports tonight that the Egyptian president was preparing a nationwide address to offer a solution to the crisis gripping his country – an offer that would include ending his presidency in September. According to US advisers, the Obama administration is pursuing an array of contacts – including military, business and intelligence as well as dispatching to Egypt a former US ambassador who is close to Mubarak – in an attempt to manage the political transition. Former ambassador Frank G Wisner has been sent in to tell Mubarak that the White House wants him to step aside later this year. The US administration is also discussing whether to press for an interim administration, possibly under Mohamed ElBaradei, but is so far undecided on whether Mubarak should go sooner. Yesterday, the White House called in experts after being caught ill-prepared by events in Egypt. They included Joel Rubin, a former state department Egypt desk officer now with the National Security Network thinktank. He said officials described a multilayered approach that included pushing a public message that the US is not trying to decide who rules Egypt, while making clear to Mubarak that there has to be a quick and serious transition to democratic government. “There was a decision to get across the public message that this is not about America and they are not picking winners, that they aren’t playing the Bush administration game of deciding who runs which country in the Middle East,” said Rubin. “At the same time they are also using unofficial, informal channels – third parties, people who know people, who can get messages across that are pretty compelling, that there has to be a real serious transition to democracy, quickly.” Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation thinktank, who was also at the White House meeting, said the administration has yet to reach a decision on timing. “They don’t see Mubarak as being a constructive player moving forward but formally they don’t have a mechanism to tell him to go. If Mubarak were to turn around tomorrow, reform quickly, engage in public and civic reforms, the administration would accept that. But they know he’s not going to do that,” he said. “I’m talking to the highest levels of government and I sense they’re still deliberating what to do about Mubarak.” The administration has come under growing pressure to move against the Egyptian leader. But John Kerry, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee and former presidential candidate, has demanded Mubarak’s immediate resignation. “President Hosni Mubarak must accept that the stability of his country hinges on his willingness to step aside gracefully to make way for a new political structure. One of the toughest jobs that a leader under siege can perform is to engineer a peaceful transition. But Egyptians have made clear they will settle for nothing less than greater democracy and more economic opportunities,” he wrote in the New York Times . Clemons said that the US administration is also scrambling to assess and build relations with the Muslim Brotherhood. “There’s a concern right now about not having much intelligence, much outreach. It came up in the meeting how important it was to begin engaging, that these leaders were not terrorists, that this is not al-Qaida, that they’ve survived in a very toxic environment and that they are going to be significant in any equation but they’re not going to dominate the equation,” he said. “Officials I spoke to acknowledged that they needed to begin a process of engaging those who are constructive and to isolate those who are not constructive. But they’re not there yet.” Rubin said the White House is trying to frame the terms for Muslim Brotherhood participation in any elections. “With democratic rights come responsibilities and some of those responsibilities come a commitment to non-violence. Certainly it is going to be essential, as the US has a major strategic interest in this region, to see stability and continuation of the peace treaty with Israel,” he said. Clemons said one of the problems for the White House is a lack of planning for how to deal with a popular revolt against Mubarak. “I don’t think any serious scenario building, contingency plans, thought about political transitions was done in the state department, in the intelligence department, in the Pentagon. It’s really shocking given the number of years there’s been debate about Mubarak surviving, about the succession to his son, about the growing Muslim Brotherhood. I know from senior state department types there was no scenario planning done. Who knows why. They’ve been caught without those resources,” he said. Barack Obama Hosni Mubarak Egypt Middle East United States Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime has finally decided what line – and what credit – to take for the demonstrators’ actions Iranian officials and clerics are insisting Egypt’s insurrection, and similar popular revolts across the Arab world, are inspired by Islamist political ideology and have their origin in the 1979 Iranian revolution that overthrew the late Shah. But opposition leaders and independent analysts take a very different view. They say the common rallying cause is democracy, not Islamism – and that the Tehran regime is increasingly fearful of an Egypt-style uprising there. After days of nervous hesitation, the Islamic Republic appeared today to have decided what line to take. A statement signed by 214 MPs pledged strong “spiritual” support for Egyptians in opposing “the tyranny of their rulers”. It also condemned “efforts by certain western countries [code for Britain and the US] as well as the Zionist regime [Israel] to exhaust the uprising and separate it from Islamic values". Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ordered a violent crackdown on Iran's pro-democracy protesters in 2009, claimed on his webpage to have predicted and personally encouraged Egypt's pro-democracy revolt. He offered no explanation for this apparent contradiction. President Hosni Mubarak's persecution of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest Islamist party, and his collusion with the US and Israel, were his undoing, Khamenei suggested. In a webpage entry entitled Supreme Leader's View Of Egypt, quoted by Shayan Ghajar on InsideIran.org, Khamenei said the Brotherhood's struggle "is just like the yell that the Iranian nation let out against America and against global arrogance and tyranny" in 1979. Other Iranian officials are singing the same tune. Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, Khamenei's military adviser, told Fars news agency that Mubarak would share the same fate as the shah, vanquished by the forces of Islamist revolution. And in case western governments missed the point, pro-regime cleric Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami rammed it home. The uprisings heralded "an Islamic Middle East" based on religion and religious democracy, he said. Iranian-style Islamist governance, not US-style liberal democracy, was the coming model. This official Iranian interpretation of events is open to challenge, to put it mildly. Evidence so far from the streets of Cairo and Tunis suggests Islamist groups have followed, rather than led the popular mood. Egypt's protesters say they are united in opposition to Mubarak, as a symbol of injustice, and are protesting against a lack of democratic freedoms, poverty, a dearth of economic opportunity, and official corruption. Islam is not much mentioned. Purists point out the Iranian revolution was not, initially, Islamist-led. It, too, was intrinsically a response to poor governance. This is why, paradoxically, Mir Hossein Mousavi, the Iranian opposition leader who many believe defeated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 presidential election, is also lauding events in Egypt – and claiming credit. "What we are witnessing in the streets of Tunis, Sana'a, Cairo, Alexandria and Suez take their origins from the millions-strong protests in Tehran in 2009," Mousavi said on his Persian-language website, Kalemeh.com. Shayan Ghajar said Iran's attempts to spin the story revealed "more about the Islamic Republic's anxiety than the actual facts on the ground in Cairo". Western governments will have differing assessments of the Islamist role in events in Egypt. But Iran's mullahs have at least one firm if unlikely ally in their corner: Israel. Step forward Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. "Our real fear," Netanyahu said this week, was that Egypt and other destabilised Arab governments could become "repressive regimes of radical Islam". Egypt Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Middle East Protest Islam Mir Hossein Mousavi Israel Simon Tisdall guardian.co.uk
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Our sole contribution to Muslim states wrestling with self-determination is plunging their neighbours into bloodbath and chaos We are hypocrites. We cheer on the brave Tunisians and Egyptians as they assert the revolutionary power of the street. Hands off, we cry. Let them do it their way. It has taken a long time, but let the people get the credit and be strengthened thereby. We gave no such licence to the Iraqis or Afghans. We presumed it was our job to dictate how they should be governed. We accused their leaders of crimes and decided to punish them all, massacring thousands. We declared a “freedom agenda”, and bombed them to bits. Hosni Mubarak of Egypt is another Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator ruling a Muslim country with a rod of iron through a kleptocracy of cronies. Less wealthy than Saddam, he had to rely on American support, but he was only a little more subtle in his ruthlessness. We are told that there were sound strategic reasons for supporting Mubarak – as there once were for supporting the Ba’athists, Assad of Syria and Saddam himself. There were similar reasons for backing the Ben Ali dynasty in Tunisia and “Britain’s good friend”, the outrageous Colonel Gaddafi of Libya. All offered a supposed bulwark against Muslim extremism, a monster of which Americans and Britons are told to show a pathological, all-consuming and costly terror. Now, apparently, that no longer applies to Egypt. In reality there is no such thing as an ethical foreign policy. There is something philosophical called ethics and something pragmatic called foreign policy. The art of diplomacy lies in navigating between them. The Blair-Bush “crusade for democracy” failed to do so. It was motivated by the most dangerous thing in politics, religious fervour. What is happening in Egypt is plainly exhilarating to any lover of civil liberty. So too was Georgia’s rose revolution, Ukraine’s orange revolution, Burma’s saffron revolution, Iran’s green revolution and Tunisia’s jasmine revolution. Few people scanning the pastel shades of designer Trotskyism will remember which were successful and which not, but they made great television. In each of these cases people burst out in visceral opposition to dictatorship. Driven beyond endurance, they took the last option available to autonomous individuals and marched down the street. The outcome depended on the security and self-confidence of the regime and its command of the army. It rarely depended on the approval or assistance of outsiders. Indeed the most effective weapon deployed against an uprising in a moment of national crisis is to call it a tool of foreign interests. This was certainly the case in Iran. To western eyes, watching revolutions is re-enacting our own democratic origins. They remind us, sometimes smugly, that much of the world has yet to find the path to free elections, free speech and freedom of assembly. But they are also the political equivalents of earthquake or flood. Surely these people need our advice, our aid, at least our running commentary. The itch to intervene becomes irresistible. Britain, with a history of ineptitude in handling Egypt, offered its pennyworth at the weekend . The Foreign Office said: “We don’t want to see Egypt fall into the hands of extremists … We want an orderly transition to free and fair elections, and a greater freedom and democracy in Egypt.” Who cares what Britain “wants” in Egypt? Egypt is not Britain’s responsibility any more, insofar as it ever was. The US is in an equally absurd position . Having intervened for three decades, backing Mubarak with $1.5bn a year for armed forces alone, Washington has slithered from declaring him a “force for stability in the region” to “demanding an orderly transition of power”. The message to all allies is that an American friend in need is a friend who will vanish at the first sign of
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