The case of Hosni Mubarak’s vanishing mojo illustrates a number of things about the panoply of U.S. foreign policy subsequent to the Second World War on Evil.
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| Mubarak (right) prepares to leave town. |
Mubarak is the latest in an extended procession of scoundrels who we backed for a long period of time and ended up wishing we hadn’t: Tito andSlobodan Milošević of Yugoslavia,Manuel Noriega of Panama,Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Augusto Pinochet of Chile, Leopaldo Galtieri of Argentina (the Falklands War guy who Reagan National Security Adviser Dick Allen described as the “majestic general”), Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (aka “The Shah”) of Iran and Saddam “Gomorrah” Hussein of you-know-where comprise a short list of thugazi we sucked up to for ages until they skulked out of town with nothing but the feathers on their backs. Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, head of the world’s most corrupt government—Somalia is actually more corrupt than Afghanistan but it doesn't actually have a government—only retains power by virtue of our aegis.
It’s interesting how Big Dick Blackheart and The Ditto Monster and The Bull-Goose Lunatic at FOX News and Blood Libel Barbie and The New American Centurion have fallen out over Mubarak’s misfortune.
Big Dick Cheney, shooting off both sides of his mouth at some Ronald Reagan love fest the other day (how long are the neojobs going to keep kissing Reagan’s dear old demented and departed rear end, anyhow?), warned that Egypt without Mubarak may be a scary place. Rush says that “The 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronaldus Magnus” (Jesus in a g-string, Rush. “Ronaldus Magnus?”) serves to illustrate how Barak Obama is screwing up the Mubarak mess the way Jimmy Carter screwed up the deal with the Shah of Iran.
Glen Beck says Obama and Mubarak are alike. Somehow the protesters who want Mubarak out are like the Tea Baggers, and Obama and Mubarak are both laughing at all of them. Beck’s also been throwing the word “caliphate” around like he knows what it meant, and he says the fires in Egypt will spread around the world like the fires that spread in the First World War on Evil when somebody shot Duke What’s-his-name in East Wherever-it-was. Beck’s fellow freak Sarah Palin said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network that the Egyptian crisis was “Obama’s 3 a.m. White House phone call” and “that call went right to the answering machine.”
If you wish to make a coherent statement, Sarah, please press “one.” Otherwise, hang up.
Neocon activities chairman Bill Kristol actually went to bat for Egypt’s revolutionaries and castigated Babbling Beck, saying that Beck’s “hysteria is not a sign of health.”
When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left, he brings to mind no one so much as Robert Welch and the John Birch Society. He’s marginalizing himself, just as his predecessors did back in the early 1960s.
There’s more:
Nor is it a sign of health when other American conservatives are so fearful of a popular awakening that they side with the dictator against the democrats. Rather, it’s a sign of fearfulness unworthy of Americans, of short-sightedness uncharacteristic of conservatives, of excuse-making for thuggery unworthy of the American conservative tradition.
Yikes. It sounds like Kristol is angling for Keith Olbermann’s old job on MSNBC, doesn't it?
Beck and his Beck-olites shot a volley of beck-ola back at Bill. One such Beck-aroo, the laughable yet terrifying Ruth King, decries Kristol’s for admonition of “the great unwashed conservative quarter” for “not embracing the catastrophic events unfolding in the Middle East.” “Glen Beck’s got it right,” Ruth declares on her “Ruthfully Yours” blog. What’s “at play” in Egypt, says Ruth, is the “advance of Islamic supremacism.” Ruth also expresses skepticalism about Kristal’s motives, and notes that, “The left wing lemmings are eating up this discourse among us like maggots on dead flesh, but that is their only joy, so let them have it.” Shortly after her stunning placement of “lemmings” and “maggots” and “dead flesh” in a single sentence of “discourse,” Ruth avers that, “the right needs new intellectuals”
She apparently considers herself one of the new intellectuals the right needs, as she only mentioned 9/11 three times in the course of her little essay. In her circles that’s considered a highbrow display restraint. On the other hand, if she thinks Kristol is an intellectual she can’t be much of one herself.
Don't imagine that the right-wing warmongery is breaking up like the ice cap. When push comes to shove, these people will always rally around their core conservative values: racial and religious bigotry, which for the foreseeable future will maintain a laser focus on the world’s sand negro population.
Also don’t kid yourself into thinking that Bill Kristol has had embraced the virtues of cognitive clarity. Removing totalitarian regimes from power in the Middle East in order to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries is the raison of his New American Century neoconservatism. Peace through superior firepower applied against regimes we don't want to talk to is still Kristol’s justification for our hapless involvements in Iraq and the Bananastans, and it is the crux of his argument for war with Iran. Backing anti-Mubarak revolutionaries is just another phase of his life-long campaign to save the world by blowing every corner of the Middle East that doesn’t belong to Israel to smithereens.
What we need to learn from the Mubarak mess, at long last, is that poking our hegemon into the internal affairs of other countries doesn’t accomplish anything except make it hurt when we go potty. Here's hoping that in future we do a better job of keeping our imperial pants on.
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) is the author of the critically applauded novel Bathtub Admirals, a satire on America’s rise to global dominance.
