The LBR‘s Adam Shatz on Egypt’s anti-Mubarak protests and its reception abroad:
Despite the Mubarak regime’s efforts to invoke the spectre of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptians aren’t demonstrating for an Islamic government any more than the Tunisians were; they’re demonstrating for an honest government – one that will improve education and infrastructure, reduce poverty and inflation, end the Emergency Law, stop torturing people in police stations, stop doing the bidding of the US and Israel in Palestine, stop rigging elections, and, above all, stop lying to them. And whatever their differences, they are united in the conviction that neither Mubarak nor his son Gamal, who is being groomed to succeed him, is capable of meeting these demands. As one young activist said to me last year, ‘We need a radical shake-up. We have a saying in Egypt that you can’t make a sweet drink out of a rotten fish.’
[…] And so, as police were dispersing protesters in Tahrir Square, Hillary Clinton did her best to scatter seasoning on the rotten fish: ‘The Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.’ Later that day in his State of the Union address, Barack Obama hailed the people of Tunisia, but said nothing about the Egyptians who hoped to repeat their example, and in whose capital city he had delivered a grand speech full of promises yet to be fulfilled.
Once again, it’s the supposedly democracy-loving EU and US that put themselves firmly in the way of actual democratic progress. Imagine my surprise.