“…HE’S AN EGYPTIAN…” ???

This is the second of the redacted versions of my end of a dialog I am having with an old, trusted, and valued friend concerning the situation in Egypt. I thought you might be especially interested in the analogy I draw between what is going on over there and the politics of my hometown; it’s probably not the connection you think.

For background, my buddy mentioned the Suez Canal’s being a choke point in the flow of oil from the Middle East to Europe. I share his concern and was amazed at a statistic I read in the Wall Street Journal this (Saturday, 1/29) morning.

1/29/11

Good point on the Suez Canal, but I read this morning that only about 1% of the world’s oil passes through the Canal (I find that hard to believe, but that’s what the WSJ reported this morning.), and, while life takes place at the margin, one can’t think that the disruption to the free flow of oil is a huge concern here…yet.

Mohamed ElBaradei seems to me to be the Rahm Emanuel of Egypt; a carpetbagger who is more the darling of outside forces than of the Egyptian people. He’s been out of the country a long time and doesn’t seem to have much popular support in Egypt. He does, however, have the favor of the cognoscenti in the salons of Europe and Georgetown and, like Emanuel, the money and support of outsiders may be enough to install him…for awhile.

I, too, am concerned about the Muslim Brotherhood’s taking advantage of the situation in Egypt. They are probably the most organized, and the most dangerous, element in the opposition. It may seem ethically and morally superior to support such concepts as “democracy” and “freedom,” even in the hypocritical fashion of the Bush/Obama administration, but casting a ballot (if people even get to do that in Egypt in the aftermath of this mess) without the proper prerequisites, such as rule of law and respect for property and contract rights, equates to democracy only in the sense that democracy, planted in ill-prepared soil, becomes little more than mob rule. When we topple the dictators, breaking our arms patting ourselves on the back in the process, we usually leave those closest to the situation to clean up the mess our self-styled morality has created, a la Iran, Iraq, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, etc., etc.

This all argues for wariness but only confirms my fervently held belief that we would be better off with a more humble foreign policy, a foreign policy that watches out for our interests without pretending to believe that we know what everybody else’s interests should be.