With Mubarak deciding to stay in office what we have is a situation where we have neither kept friends with the old regime, nor made friends with the new. Both sides in Egypt – the current group of kleptocrats and the thugs/rabble/perhaps some democrats who want to replace them – have reason to dislike American policy…while the ultimate power in Egypt, the army, has not been made to understand that their support from the US is at risk. A more stupid way of going about things could not be imagined – quite simply, if we wanted to have an Egyptian policy it should have been either to back Mubarak to the hilt (something I say “no” to) or ditch him entirely and get on side with the democratic rebels (if there are any such – this is my preferred policy, with the proviso of standing off from the rebels until we get a better idea where they’re headed). We got the worst of both worlds.
With US policy in shambles and new power structures emerging – none of which will trust us as an ally nor fear us as a foe – the only thing we can hope for, now, is that nothing really bad happens until we can get Obama out of office.
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