Mubarak stepped down and now Egypt celebrates and that's cool. Now that "who" they were against is done the "what" they are for part starts. It's been pretty easy to be against but it is going to get messy when it comes to the positive aspects because there isn't a system - not Parties, not much of anything except a military left behind if they're getting rid of all of Mubarak.
Good luck to them - they're going to need that, also.
(I'm real happy this Prez doesn't shoot from the hip like .... oh you know)
Showing posts with label Egypt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Egypt. Show all posts
Friday, February 11, 2011
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Egyptian Discord, American Public Stupidity
If you have the mental fortitude to consider stupidity without harming yourself, you could Google "Palin Egypt" to see a pretty blatant example of a lot of people's thinking. (not limited to right or left) The thinking is that we, the USA, are somehow in charge in Egypt. It certainly is the case that Mubarak has survived as Egypt's leader thanks to our imperialistic behavior, it is not the case that we somehow established him or created his political party.
Sarah seems to believe that our government knows just what is going on and who all the players are and that we can dictate the outcome. Thanks to Mubarak's version of governing, any real opposition groups are of the clandestine variety, they are the sort of groups that can operate under the watchful eyes of security forces. Whoever has claim to any sort of leadership has not been on TV/print exhorting opposition - a la Teabaggers. This means that organization within this opposition is pretty much limited to - opposition - not governing policy.
Foreign aid and other foreign policies can help prop up a government but creating one out of chaos is well beyond the reach of even our considerable swat. Whether the President and diplomatic arms have been direct enough or not with Egypt's government might be debatable. What passes belief is that people seem to be asserting that the US should take an even more imperialistic approach to Egypt - that we should control the direction of the outcome. Gee whiz, not only shouldn't we do that, we flatly cannot.
People really ought to take a look at the state of US politics and control before they start thinking about controlling an even more chaotic situation. For Egyptians to have a government that reflects the will of the population is going to require some time to put together anything that remotely resembles political parties. Governing will require politics ... or strong arm tactics. Politics requires constituencies beyond "this guy sucks."
Sarah seems to believe that our government knows just what is going on and who all the players are and that we can dictate the outcome. Thanks to Mubarak's version of governing, any real opposition groups are of the clandestine variety, they are the sort of groups that can operate under the watchful eyes of security forces. Whoever has claim to any sort of leadership has not been on TV/print exhorting opposition - a la Teabaggers. This means that organization within this opposition is pretty much limited to - opposition - not governing policy.
Foreign aid and other foreign policies can help prop up a government but creating one out of chaos is well beyond the reach of even our considerable swat. Whether the President and diplomatic arms have been direct enough or not with Egypt's government might be debatable. What passes belief is that people seem to be asserting that the US should take an even more imperialistic approach to Egypt - that we should control the direction of the outcome. Gee whiz, not only shouldn't we do that, we flatly cannot.
People really ought to take a look at the state of US politics and control before they start thinking about controlling an even more chaotic situation. For Egyptians to have a government that reflects the will of the population is going to require some time to put together anything that remotely resembles political parties. Governing will require politics ... or strong arm tactics. Politics requires constituencies beyond "this guy sucks."
Friday, February 04, 2011
US History Means What To Egypt's Situation
I've been hearing a lot lately about what is happening in Egypt and the US Revolution and our democracy. I'd like to know how somebody can make those comparisons and act as though they know something about history. "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" has a lot of truth, but it also involves comparing history to something that has some congruence and making statements that also reflect what happened in history.
Now talking about how we succeeded in forming a government ignores a bit of something - the date of the Constitution. The government that came out of the Revolution was The Articles of Confederation and it failed. The great Constitution a bit over a half century later was sorted out by a bloody Civil War and in some respects is still not sorted out. Does somebody really think a good resolution of Egypt's current situation would be a conflict like our Civil War?
What happened in the US in response to our Revolution comes out of centuries of English evolution of government and Western European thought on governance. Egypt's experience with Western history involves colonialism from a dissimilar government and the economic/militaristic colonialism of also radically dissimilar governments. Whatever other issues the new and continuing US had with its former ruler their was a cultural and political sympathy between the two.
However corrupt English rule of the colony now the US was, it was more distant and of considerable lower degree. What exists in Egypt as corruption is within blocks not across an ocean and the results are more dramatic in their severity. Whatever context the US support of Mubarak is held in, there are not US soldiers standing in the streets enforcing the corruption and authoritarianism of the Mubarak government as there were Redcoats in the colonies.
I don't know where the Egyptian revolution is headed or what it will reach - I do know that using the US as a context is ludicrous.
Now talking about how we succeeded in forming a government ignores a bit of something - the date of the Constitution. The government that came out of the Revolution was The Articles of Confederation and it failed. The great Constitution a bit over a half century later was sorted out by a bloody Civil War and in some respects is still not sorted out. Does somebody really think a good resolution of Egypt's current situation would be a conflict like our Civil War?
What happened in the US in response to our Revolution comes out of centuries of English evolution of government and Western European thought on governance. Egypt's experience with Western history involves colonialism from a dissimilar government and the economic/militaristic colonialism of also radically dissimilar governments. Whatever other issues the new and continuing US had with its former ruler their was a cultural and political sympathy between the two.
However corrupt English rule of the colony now the US was, it was more distant and of considerable lower degree. What exists in Egypt as corruption is within blocks not across an ocean and the results are more dramatic in their severity. Whatever context the US support of Mubarak is held in, there are not US soldiers standing in the streets enforcing the corruption and authoritarianism of the Mubarak government as there were Redcoats in the colonies.
I don't know where the Egyptian revolution is headed or what it will reach - I do know that using the US as a context is ludicrous.
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