Tuesday, February 01, 2011

US-Israeli Strategy Crashes in Egypt

By Gareth Porter
February 1, 2011

The death throes of the Mubarak regime in Egypt signal a new level of crisis for a U.S. Middle East strategy that has shown itself over and over again in recent years to be based on nothing more than the illusion of power.

Read on.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Mullen to Egypt’s Army: Way To Not Kill Protesters!
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/mullen-to-egypts-army-way-to-not-kill-protesters/

The Obama administration’s approach to the unrest in Egypt has been as clear as mud. So it’s striking to hear the head of the U.S. military offer an unalloyed ‘attaboy’ to Egyptian troops, for allowing protesters to gather in peace.

“So far, the Egyptian military have handled themselves exceptionally well,” said Adm. Mike Mullen, America’s top officer, in a podcast. “You can see that just from the pictures that have been displayed, in terms of how they have been accepted by their people.”

Mullen’s big-up for his Egyptian counterparts — “a stabilizing influence,” he said — is a sharp contrast with four days’ worth of rhetoric from senior Obama administration officials. The military is now the only entity in Egypt that the administration has unambiguously praised. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton demanded that the government “transition” to “free and fair elections” — widely understood to be an endgame for Mubarak — and called on the demonstrators to refrain from violence.