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Take Action for Egypt

Jill

If you haven’t been following the protests in Egypt, it’s time to start paying attention. The situation has escalated significantly in the past 24 hours, with pro-Mubarak thugs attacking protesters and blocking journalists and human rights workers from the scene.

There is no reliable way of knowing right now how many have been killed and injured in Egypt’s turmoil. Before Wednesday’s violence, Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said the death toll could be as many as 300, but she acknowledged that she was basing that on “unconfirmed” reports. There are some who are missing, including a senior Google official, Wael Ghonim, who supported the democracy activists. On Wednesday, the government said that three more had died and many hundreds were injured; I saw some people who were unmoving and looked severely injured at the least. These figures compare with perhaps more than 100 killed when Iran crushed its pro-democracy movement in 2009 and perhaps 400 to 800 killed in Beijing in 1989.

Chinese and Iranian leaders were widely condemned for those atrocities, so shouldn’t Mr. Mubarak merit the same broad condemnation? Come on, President Obama. You owe the democracy protesters being attacked here, and our own history and values, a much more forceful statement deploring this crackdown.

It should be increasingly evident that Mr. Mubarak is not the remedy for the instability in Egypt; he is its cause. The road to stability in Egypt requires Mr. Mubarak’s departure, immediately.

Al Jazeera is a great source of news on the Egypt protests.

The situation in Egypt is dire. Please call the State Department comment line (202 647 6575) to express support for the pro-democracy movement in Egypt, and encourage the Obama administration to demand that Mubarak step down now.

Thanks to Kristin for the post suggestion.

23 thoughts on Take Action for Egypt

  1. Apparently they’ve already taken that line but Kristof:

    “They had their heads covered in the conservative Muslim style, and they looked timid and frail as thugs surrounded them…”

    Ugh.

    1. I do not think U.S. intervention here is a good idea.

      I don’t think anyone is suggesting military intervention. We’re suggesting that the U.S. support the pro-democracy forces.

  3. Jill-Thanks for posting this. Al Jazeera English has been having technical problems throughout the US since early this morning. I was able to get on for a few hours today, but it’s sinced stopped working.

    The Guardian has a live blog feed that refreshes every minute. It’s different from Al Jazeera’s live blog, as it combs the internet for multiple sources–and pulls different information into one document. Also, The Guardian is in touch with various people using social media in Egypt. The Al Jazeera site mostly gleans information from its own reporters. It’s’ good, but it’s very different from what one finds at The Guardian’s page here:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/feb/03/egypt-protests-live-updates#block-64

    I’ve been keeping both up throughout the day. I used NPR’s site to follow Mubarrak’s Tuesday talk, but quickly found that these other two are far more comprehensive.

  4. seachange: I do not think U.S. intervention here is a good idea.

    We already intervene, to the tune of $1.3B a year. We need to stop now that. It is a cynical policy tool that had outlived its usefulness years ago but we were too weak-willed to stop. It’s one of the things the demonstrators are blaming us for, and correctly.

    Getting Congress to stop that funding would be a very helpful concrete measure. The effectiveness of writing to legislators is going to depend on where we live and who our particular legislators are. I happen to live where no one in the Senate or Hiouse is particularly in favor of that aid anyway. Some of us may live where the situation is different.

    This will help State make the right decison about this situation when you call to ask them to explicitly call for Mubarak to leave.

    The US turned a corner when it told Marcos straight up his time was up. Mubarak isn’t our puppet to the same extent, but he is not in a position to blow us off either. If that’s intervention, well, we’ve been interfer/vening all along. Time to make it be for the good.

  5. To play devil’s advocate for a bit – the difference between Egypt and the Philippinnes 1986 is that when Nixon opened China, the primary US strategic threat in the Far East was neutralized. So there was little danger that the Philippinnes, Taiwan, or South Korea’s democratization in the 1980s would lead to a communist takeover.

    In contrast the strategic threat in the Middle East of a hostile government is quite real. This is a regional issue, with the future of Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, and Syria potentially at stake at least, not just Egypt. Some of these countries’ opposition is more Islamist than Egypt’s. To move too hard against Mubarak too fast would send a signal to the other countries that it’s a green light to protest and the US will automatically abandon the dictator, thus damaging all US alliances with authoritarian states worldwide. I feel this is why Obama has been treading cautiously. The US seems to be turning against Mubarak now, but it’s hard to tell what’s really going on inside the State Department and WH.

    Kristin: Jill-Thanks for posting this. Al Jazeera English has been having technical problems throughout the US since early this morning. I was able to get on for a few hours today, but it’s sinced stopped working. The Guardian has a live blog feed…(Quote this comment?)

    Thanks for the tip Kristin – I’ve been on AJE for a good deal, I will check out the Guardian blog now.

  8. Tony: To move too hard against Mubarak too fast would send a signal to the other countries that it’s a green light to protest and the US will automatically abandon the dictator, thus damaging all US alliances with authoritarian states worldwide.

    You say that like it’s a bad thing.

    There is a saying “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”. Abandoning the dictators would be a concrete step in addressing one very real source of anger at the US.

    Your point about a key difference between the geopolitical situations in the Philippines and Egypt is well taken. Here is one more analogous to the Egyptian situation perhaps – Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam. he came to us begging for assistance, we refused, and he turned harder towards the SU. Not towards China, he was a nationalist at heart, and saw the SU as much less of a threat.

    People talk about the Muslim Brotherhood as if it’s some monolithic bogeyman. It’s been around to long not to be riven with blood feuds and factionalism. That’s someone we and the rest of the world can work with. They don’t sound like they’re in any position to impose any kind of theocracy on anyone. UBL and Zawahiri damn them as being too moderate.

  10. Why are you supporters of this revolution so sure that this isn’t a repeat of what happened in Iran in the late seventies? Or do you think that turned out well? I don’t think it clearly is a repeat of Iran, but I don’t think it clearly isn’t either.

    1. Chad, it’s not a repeat of Iran. The end game may not be in the United States’ best interests, but anyone paying attention understands that you can’t call this Iran Part II just because it’s in the Middle East and most of the protesters are Muslim. That… is a little simplistic.

  11. Chad, we won’t know until it happens. Should we (as in, the global community) not support people protesting a vile dictator because we don’t know exactly how it will turn out? Using that logic, no one should ever agitate for social or economic justice because we can’t know for certain what the future will bring.

  12. I called the State Department comment line, asking for Obama / State Dept to call for Mubarak’s immediate resignation.

    And on the Guardian live-blog that Kristen linked, I saw this:

    Also in highly questionable taste is this tweet from Kenneth Cole, the clothing company, which I will quote in case it gets taken down: “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC.”

    “Highly questionable taste”? I say utterly sickening, and I’d suggest a boycott of Kenneth Cole.

  13. Ugh… Glenn Beck is suggesting that the pro-democracy protesters want “a caliphate” or “communism or a new world order.”

    Meanwhile, it appears as if the government is preparing a Tiananmen square kind of event. Security forces in riot gear are lining the streets. This could get very bad–and usually does after a campaign of media intimidation like this.

  15. chad: Why are you supporters of this revolution so sure that this isn’t a repeat of what happened in Iran in the late seventies? Or do you think that turned out well? I don’t think it clearly is a repeat of Iran, but I don’t think it clearly isn’t either.  

    Ooh! I can play this game! Egypt is to Iran as the United States is to … Brazil. Yep, it works. Think: Both the US and Brazil have the largest populations and the largest economies in their respective continents. Both have the same religion as their most widely practiced religion. Both are titular “democracies” with histories of brutality to their own citizens. Both have a history of slavery. Both were colonized by white Europeans who violently repressed indigeneous populations. So naturally, US politics and Brazilian politics is exactly the same, right?

    On the other hand, dude, Iran is not an Arab nation and Egypt is.

  16. Just saw this on CNN about Kenneth Cole: I had not realized this, but the company is known for its “irreverent” ad campaigns–and is kind of like the PETA of the fashion world. They had an ad campaign around the Gulf oil spill that included a picture of the devastation with the tag line, “I clean up well.” So, it sounds like Cole is kind of consistently an asshole not unlike that guy who owns American Apparel.

  17. Jill, GG, debbie: So you think it’s *not likely* that Egypt will become a facist theocracy if Mubarak is toppled? I’m just wondering why you think that if you do. (Or, if you don’t think that, why you’re supporting the revolution anyway.) I’m not making the silly inferences “a little similar, so similar in every respect” that Jill & GG suggest.

  18. chad: Jill, GG, debbie: So you think it’s *not likely* that Egypt will become a facist theocracy if Mubarak is toppled? I’m just wondering why you think that if you do. (Or, if you don’t think that, why you’re supporting the revolution anyway.) I’m not making the silly inferences “a little similar, so similar in every respect” that Jill & GG suggest.  

    I’m assuming you’re alluding to a potential Ikhwan takeover of the government, and sure, Egypt as a whole is a deeply conservative religious society. But there’s a world of differences between pre-Revolutionary Iran and Egypt now: the MB enjoys a relatively small support base, it has been horrendously cumbersome in currying favor in these protests, in addition to Shi’a Islam being vastly different in hierarchy and structure than Sunni Islam.

    Here’s a good take:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/haroon-moghul/4-reasons-why-egypts-revo_b_815848.html

    which is a far more articulate and nuanced, and just flat out informed take than Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s in the New York Times.

  19. chad: Why are you supporters of this revolution so sure that this isn’t a repeat of what happened in Iran in the late seventies?

    Galla said it better, but the point is simply that analogical thinking is very limited in what it can really yiled in the way of insight. Just leave it at that.

    Here’s a big difference – people in Egpt have the same example before them of Iran as a theocratic nightmare as we do. We manage to keep our Religious Right at bay without locking them all up or fighting a hot civil war. Maybe the Egyptians can too.

    Let’s take these analogies a bit further. In our political evolution, while we (bear with me) were still in England went through a democracy movement led by the bourgeoisie. It turned theocratic and quite repressive, partly because it was formulated in theological terms. Then there was a reaction to that and it was discredited as a political model. And the model that replaced it has its own horrific things wrong with it. We keep stumbling along, hopefully but not inevtiably towards something better. Same for them probably too.

  20. Look, forget about Iran. I’m sorry I brought it up. Here’s my argument: there’s a significant chance that this revolution will result in an authoritarian theocracy. One shouldn’t strongly support revolutions which have a significant chance of such an outcome. So one shouldn’t strongly support this revolution.

    Thanks, Sid, for the article, which does seem to be trying to argue against my claim that there’s a significant chance of a poor outcome here. But I’m not persuaded. I think that the MB might be better than the Iranian Islamists, but that isn’t saying much. And the fact that they face somewhat different political challenges in rising to power isn’t very reassuring, either.

    Jim: I agree with your points. The argument I had in mind isn’t really an analogical one, although I understand how you took me that way. The argument I had in mind is the one I’ve just written more clearly above. To me, the key question is whether it is *unlikely* that this revolution will result in an authoritarian theocracy. I can’t imagine how anyone could think that this is unlikely, though I’d love to be convinced. Let’s hope it is unlikely, and indeed that something good comes of all this.

  21. chad: One shouldn’t strongly support revolutions which have a significant chance of such an outcome. So one shouldn’t strongly support this revolution.

    All revolutions, if they are real, entail chaos. Chaos in a siciety opens the door for an authoritarian teak-over; peope often demand it. this is true for every revolution, so by your standard we should never back any.

    I know you specified authoritarian theocracy, but I cannot see how it improves an authoritarian government for it to be secular or atheist. China’s authoritarian is explicitly and genuinely atheist. There is plenty to criticize about it.

    I wonder how many here would have supported it at the time. For all its hideous crimes, it has achieved miracles in improving life for ordinary people.

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