Sunday, March 6, 2011

Obama's handling of Egypt

   Mike Masterson writing in today's Democrat-Gazette points to a video that can be found on YouTube of an MSNBC interview with Niall Ferguson. Masterson quotes a friend of his who apparently said of the video, "finally someone in academia who gets it." The video can be watched here.

   I'm fairly tired of the criticism of Obama's handling of Egypt. Believe me, there are plenty of things we can criticize our president for at the moment, but his response to the revolution in Egypt should not be one of them. The funny thing is I haven't heard any suggestion as to what he should have done differently that resonates. I've heard from his critics that he either should have said more or said less, or supported the protesters more or supported Mubarak more. I think he hit about the right note.

  The sillier criticisms I hear are that since Obama "didn't say enough" during the protests following Iran's most recent presidential election, it was inconsistent for him to come out in the end for a change of power in Egypt. Iran's leaders are no friends of ours and any strong or vocal support for those protesting the regime would just allow those leaders to paint genuinely domestic revolutions as U.S. engineered. Egypt on the other hand, since Mubarak was an ally, was a totally different dynamic and the same principle wasn't in place.

  As far as Mr. Ferguson and his comments in the video, all I can say is that if you take away his oh-so-intelligent sounding accent he doesn't really sound any different than Hannity or any other blowhard you hear on FOX. Something along the lines of "Blahblahblah Obama blahblahblah Muslim Brotherhood blahblahblah".

 

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