Clash action

Over at American Thinker, James Simpson says that "if Egypt should fall, it will mark the beginning of the end for what little remaining stability there is in the Middle East."

A combination of leftist and Islamist forces provoked the protests, and we are likely looking at a ring of radical Islamic states rising up to surround Israel.  Once their power is solidified, perhaps in a year or two, they will combine forces to attack Israel.  If Israel falls, the United States will stand alone in a sea of virulent enemies and impotent allies.

It has been obvious to some of us for years that the Third World, burdened by a low-average-IQ population, too many people, and in many cases a politico-religious totalitarian system in a 7th century time warp, was going to blow. The most likely occasion would be a steep rise in food prices. 

The question wasn't whether, but when. We could say, with Hamlet: "If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come -- the readiness is all." Well, it's here, at least the beginning of it, and to put it mildly we are not ready, and it's hard to know how we can be.

Papa Doc thinks he's ready though. Simpson again:

So whom does Obama support, Mubarak or his enemies?

Obama wasted no time in telling us.  He supports Mubarak's opponents, and he probably has been all along.  The Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that the Obama administration favors a role for the Muslim Brotherhood in a new Egyptian government.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest extremist Muslim organization, is behind practically every Muslim terrorist organization ever formed.  And while they may have publicly renounced violence as the LA Times article claims, internal documents tell a completely different story.

And if that weren't bad enough, Obama's latest comment to Egypt's leader is that "an orderly transition ... must begin now."

Must begin.  Now.

A few posts ago, when the Egypt disorder was just finding its legs, I asked why we had to issue orders to those involved. I still think it is a mistake, particularly when Papa Doc supposedly speaking for us puts all the chips on the worse of two distasteful parties in the clash.

Papa Doc isn't the only American politician who has tried to throw his weight behind one side in a foreign civil conflict. In fact, every president in my lifetime has. Almost always, it's gotten us into a bad space, turned hearts and minds against us, and stamped TV news images of flag-draped caskets on our brains.

I'm not saying that the eruption in Cairo is unimportant or has no potentially serious consequences for the United States. Of course it will be a rum business if the Muslim Brotherhood takes the whip hand in Egypt (as our president's stance makes only more likely). For whatever it's worth, I doubt that Egypt falling into the militant Islam camp will by itself be a disaster. But when you throw in the wild cards of Pakistan and Iran, the odds that Israel will either be overrun or be forced to launch a pre-emptive strike get a lot grimmer.

It's still hard to see what good it does us to try to control what goes down in Egypt, at least through official diplomatic channels. (Conceivably we might accomplish something through clandestine action, but given the present incumbent in the White House, it's unlikely to be the right thing.) Does Papa Doc really believe that by acting the paterfamilias and demanding an "orderly transition" to a government including the Muslim Brotherhood, the MB will set aside their hatred of the Great Satan?

But Papa Doc, like his predecessors, cannot conceive that sometimes a policy of benign neglect is the the best option when all others are worse. He is an intervener by nature, a remaker, The One around whom the universe revolves. A U.S. federal judge rules the Obamacare law null and void, in toto? Screw him. Full speed ahead to the glorious triumph of government health care! He'll stand in the hospital door in defiance of the court!

Like most leftist utopians, Papa Doc recognizes no limits to his power to shape events to his liking. If he wants it, that makes it orderly. And the orderly transition must begin now.