New Yorker : American Permissiveness towards Mubarak : "It’s a policy that goes back decades, one that neither Obama nor George W. Bush did much to change. The dramatic events of the past week have shown it to be an utter failure"

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This War Correspondent George Packer of The New Yorker was a "pundit" of Jingoism, Militarism, and Attack and he first supported the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq.


But as a War correspondent there he changed his views and acquired a lot of doubts about U. S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East and Near Asia. He published "The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq" in 2005. He began to feel some pity for the innocent victims of this cruel war.




The New Yorker
Egypt and the Velvet Revolutions
by George Packer
February 3, 2011


Egypt and the Velvet Revolutions


Some excerpts :

In 1986, at the climax of the original People Power revolt, President Reagan sent Senator Paul Laxalt to Manila to tell Ferdinand Marcos that it was time to leave—and Marcos left. That kind of paternalism is not possible today, not in the Middle East, not after Iraq, not in the age of Al Jazeera, not with the foreign-policy views of President Obama. Ambassador Frank Wisner went to Egypt to deliver a more cautious message than Laxalt’s, and the violence grew worse, and Wisner came home. There’s no reason to think a direct order from the White House would have had any success.

From the start, the Administration has been reacting to rather than anticipating events in Egypt, always a step behind. And yet Obama’s public words, and what we can surmise about his non-public diplomacy, have seemed right to me, if a day late. He understands the limits of American leverage over Mubarak and the pitfalls of American heavy-handedness in the region.

What Obama can be faulted for is not his “handling” of the current crisis, but his mistaken belief, upon taking office, that Muslims in places like Egypt wanted American respect first and last. His Cairo speech, in June 2009, was the fullest expression of that belief. It was long on understanding and dialogue, and short on human rights and democracy.

As I wrote last year, when Obama finally got around to these topics, his first rhetorical move was to condemn American meddling. But his Cairo audience was already applauding the word “democracy,” which caused Obama to stumble over his speech. He and they were in different places, and in a sense, the U.S. has been stumbling to catch up ever since.

Administration policy in Egypt has allowed Mubarak to crush the few remaining pockets of breathing space for civil society and the political opposition. It’s a policy that goes back decades, one that neither Obama nor George W. Bush did much to change. The dramatic events of the past week have shown it to be an utter failure.

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