More Weak-Kneed Foreign Policy From Bama

It's hard to look at the situation in Egypt right now and not see the stunning failure of the Obama International Apology Tour. Wasn't that supposed to make the rest of the world not hate us? And yet Egyptians - mostly young, radicalized Muslim men - are gathering by the tens of thousands in the streets of Cairo shouting down their own dictator while at the same time decrying the United States. Even American "journalists" working for CNN and other outlets are being mugged in the streets; evidence that Egyptians are not at all in tune with the "Free Press" in this country, which would otherwise have been sympathetic to the cause of the revolutionaries.

So that's what Bama gets for telling the people who hate us how awful we are - a few bloodied talking heads and a likely return of Egypt to a decidedly less West-friendly nation. Egypt in the last 50 years has teetered on the brink of fundamentalism more severely than most people realize, with only the strong leadership of military-backed despots to keep the Arabs in line. An argument could be made that Sadat was the last rational leader Egypt had, and Islamic fundamentalists assassinated him. At best Sadat was to Israel what Nixon was to China, and at worst he was a similarly corrupt leader who created a quasi-capitalist economy to enrich himself.

It is a sad state of affairs that led the U.S. to support Mubarak for the last three decades. Mubarak was like a dam, holding back the growing sea of fundamentalism and siphoning billions of dollars from the economy for his own gain at the people's expense. He is in the worst category of dictators - no better than Saddam except that he has been more than willing to rule while on the U.S. payroll. He has played it both ways and gotten away with it, for the most part, his $100 Billion in personal wealth stashed among the banks of Europe. I don't blame Egyptians for finally getting fed up with this guy and at the same time cursing the U.S for our meddling.

But we already know how this is going to turn out. For some reason Obama actually seems unwilling to intervene in any meaningful fashion. Once again he is putting more faith in people that openly hate us than he does American citizens. Israel has the most to lose. If fundamentalists seize power from the chaos of the collapse of the Mubarak regime then if we'll end up with another Iran or Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

And it will happen on Obama's watch, not because of what he did but because of what he will not do. Don't think influence cannot still be bought - that is exactly what is already at work, and if the United States is not in that game we lose by default. Mubarak is corrupt and is hurting his country, but what will replace is not likely to be much better. Egypt is a resource-poor country relative to its population, much like Afghanistan. In such a place, with the world as globally invested as it is, money equals power. The question is how much are we willing to spend to have things break our way?

As a fiscal conservative, I same F--- 'em. Let's pull out of the whole region for a decade and see what happens. It's time to ask our allies, "What have you done for me lately?" and pull foreign aid accordingly. Will the region destabilize? Absolutely. But they are more than likely to to form pocket regimes and kill their own for a while. It's been happening in the rest of Africa for a century. It's Egypt's time now. I hope when it all plays out these revolutionaries realize they reaped what they sowed, but they'll probably just blame us.

My point is that Obama has the ability to change the outcome for the better. For everyone. Only he's not that kind of leader. He's not Reagan, not even in the same universe. But Reagan is exactly what we need right now.

2012 can't come fast enough.