Egypt has Obama cautiously shifting world view on democracy - Washington Post

Shortly after taking office, President Obama traveled to Cairo to declare a new day in U.S. relations with the Muslim world - saying there was "no straight line" to building democratic societies in the Middle East.

The June 2009 address was in part intended to show a clean break from a George W. Bush-era "freedom agenda" of promoting electoral democracies across the region. Yet Obama now finds himself forced to move much closer to that worldview as he escalates pressure on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to make immediate changes.

Obama has shifted in that direction cautiously over the past week and a half, balancing between urging wider freedom and maintaining his position that the events are for Egyptians, not Americans, to decide. To some extent, that may be his only safe course: Obama does not yet know what kind of government will take shape in Egypt, and administration officials are confident that if it a hostile regime were to wind up taking hold, the president would inevitably take some of the blame.

And so the rhetoric has been circumspect. On Sunday, the administration called for an "orderly transition." By Tuesday, that had escalated into a demand that Mubarak begin implementing democratic changes immediately, but it was not clear what that meant, or exactly what the White House would like to see happen next. Although senior officials have made it plain that they want Mubarak to leave office right away, Obama has not said the same. He has left that to protesters in the streets of Cairo - and to some outspoken foreign policy hawks at home, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Obama has navigated some internal divides as well. In the Situation Room on Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice - who has a history of urging pressure on authoritarian regimes - called for the administration to take a harder line on Mubarak, one administration official said. That view was met with some resistance from others, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama decided that, in his public remarks about Mubarak that night, he was "not going to go all the way, but not let him off the hook," one official said. In typical fashion, Obama shared his comments with his advisers ahead of time and allowed each side to weigh in.

"By the time everyone left, we all ended up agreeing on where we ended up," the official said.

So far, Obama's measured steps have drawn mostly praise across the political spectrum. Criticism has come largely from potential Republican presidential candidates. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) said it is "frightening" to watch Obama on Egypt, and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty said the administration's response has been "inconsistent and bordering on incoherent."

But GOP leaders in the House and the Senate have expressed support, saying it is vital for the United States to speak with one voice on foreign policy. Even former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been silent on the matter.

Still, Obama's approach has not eliminated the potential peril for him domestically. If an Islamist regime takes control, comparisons to Iran will be inevitable, with Republicans accusing Obama of not managing one of the most vital U.S. allies in the Middle East and potentially endangering the security of neighboring Israel.

At first, the president appeared reluctant to push Mubarak, an ally, but appeared to grow more comfortable urging changes as Mubarak appeared less flexible.

"Historians will write, if Egypt turns out well, that this was the capstone of a shift in the administration," said Robert Kagan, a Brookings Institution scholar who is part of a working group that is warning the White House to prepare for a change in Egypt.

Some leaders in the Jewish community expressed concern this week when White House spokesman Robert Gibbs urged Egypt to incorporate the views of opposition parties. They wondered whether Gibbs was referring to the Muslim Brotherhood. White House officials held a conference call Wednesday night to reassure Jewish leaders.

The administration is mindful of the potential drawbacks of becoming too closely involved in the internal upheaval of another country. The Bush administration pressured the Israeli government to allow elections to go forward in the Palestinian territories in January 2006 - then found itself in the uncomfortable position of leading a boycott of the elected Hamas government, embittering many Palestinians.

Egypt has elections scheduled for this fall, and without Mubarak on the ballot, some fear the Muslim Brotherhood could gain political power. Such a victory would put Obama in a place similar to the one Bush found himself in after the 2006 Palestinian elections, and would challenge his pledge to allow Egyptians to determine their political future

"It's not that [Obama and his aides] have said, 'We want the Muslim Brotherhood to take over Egypt,' " said Marc Lynch, an Egypt expert at George Washington University. "It's that if they respect democracy and reject violence, they should have as much a right to participate in elections as anyone else."

kornbluta@washpost.com wallstenp@washpost.com

Staff writer Scott Wilson contributed to this report.

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Egypt Chaos Defines Bleeding in Despot Arab World: Tariq Ali - Bloomberg

Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, talks about protests against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. She speaks with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television's "Taking Stock." (Source: Bloomberg)

“Freedom lies behind a door closed shut,” the great Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawqi wrote in the last century. “It can only be knocked down with a bleeding fist.” More than that is bleeding in the Arab world at the moment.

The uprisings we are witnessing in Egypt have been a rude awakening for all those who imagined that the despots of the Arab world could be kept in place provided they continued to serve the needs of the West and their harsh methods weren’t aired on CNN and BBC World. But while Western establishments lull themselves to sleep with fairy tales, ordinary citizens, who are defeated and demoralized, mull their revenge.

The French government seriously considered sending its paratroopers to save former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pleading with officials in Washington to delay Hosni Mubarak’s departure from Egypt so that Israel has time to prepare for the likely outcome. Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair is even describing the Egyptian dictator as a “force for good.”

The almost 200 pro-democracy citizens who have been killed don’t bother him too much. That’s small beer compared with the tens of thousands dead in Iraq. And a desperate Palestine Liberation Organization is backing Mubarak and repressing solidarity demonstrations in Ramallah on the West Bank.

Hated Figures

In Yemen, another strongman in power for 30 years is beginning to totter. President Ali Abdullah Saleh is a hated figure, again backed by the West, as I discovered when I visited the country last year.

If Tunisia was a tremor, the Egyptian uprising has become an earthquake that is spreading throughout the region. The generals in Cairo are still refusing to disperse the crowds with tanks and bullets. A full-scale Tiananmen Square option, which Mubarak and his friends would have appreciated, becomes difficult in these conditions.

So what will they do? As the crisis moves a step further, Vice President Omar Suleiman, not trusted by many people as the former director of intelligence, is hoping to divide the opposition, clear the streets and negotiate a deal, offering Amr Moussa, the toothless head of the Arab League, the interim presidency. They want someone who will retain the remnants of the old institutions and, in particular, the apparatuses of the secret state that have been so useful in helping the West’s policy of renditions in the war on terror, which has so far only succeeded in engendering more terror.

Total Overhaul

The millions of people in the streets of Egypt are demanding a total overhaul. They want, as in Tunisia, a new constitution that guarantees political and social rights. They want an independent foreign policy that is decided in Cairo, not Tel Aviv or Washington. They want to lift the blockade of Gaza so that its people can live as normally as possible.

This week, the Egyptian regime, shaken by the mass mobilizations, threatened counter-revolution. Pro-Mubarak forces, a combination of the security cops out of uniform and gangsters released from prison, attacked protesters, creating mayhem in Tahrir Square. The military, which pledged to defend public safety, failed to do so.

In Alexandria, there were clashes between Mubarak’s desperate supporters and the anti-government protesters. The coming weekend is decisive. The planned march by several hundred thousand people on the presidential palace might drive Mubarak to get a helicopter to the airport. One assumes the Saudis are preparing a palace for him as is their wont.

Plan B

A post-Mubarak Egypt is difficult to predict with exactitude. What we can say is that it won’t be a repeat of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The iron will of the Ayatollah doesn’t exist in Cairo. Instead there is a decent, amiable technocrat, Mohamed El Baradei, more known abroad than at home, as a possible Plan B for the White House.

Lurking behind El Baradei is the Muslim Brotherhood. It, too, is divided, with a dominant wing composed of young, modernist Muslims who want to mimic Turkey. If the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s favorite Islamists in Istanbul can do business with Washington, why not their Egyptian equivalents? They have been engaged in private discussions with informal emissaries from the U.S. for more than a decade.

Nonetheless, a regime propelled into office via an uprising from below can’t be as cavalier in disregarding public opinion, and nor is this a time for the U.S. to start preaching the virtues of liberal capitalism: The recent fate of Iceland, Ireland and Greece should be enough on that score.

Internally, what is required is to rebuild the abandoned social safety net, providing elementary health, education and housing for the poor.

Externally, Egypt’s relationship with the U.S. and Israel will have to be modified, regardless of who succeeds Mubarak. A peace treaty that benefits Israel alone was never accepted by the Egyptian people.

Only then will Egypt be able to stop the bleeding.

(Tariq Ali is a London-based writer, filmmaker and author of the 2010 book “The Obama Syndrome.” The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Tariq Ali at tariq.ali3@btinternet.com

To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

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