Tag Archives: Egypt

Mr. President, Where Was The Support?

Egypt’s young people, fresh off of toppling a 30-year dictatorship through the help of social media, used that technology to grill Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, asking her why the U.S. didn’t express support for the revolution sooner.

Americans in Wisconsin are wondering the same thing. Problem in the United States is, we elected a Community Organizer and hoped that he could be a President. Instead, what we got was a community organizer and a President In Name Only. Same disconnect, different countries.

Who Toppled A Dictator?

Only president I know that toppled a dictator recently was George Bush taking down Saddam Hussein. At that time, the same protesters that took to the streets in Egypt these last two weeks were the same ones that protested the taking down of Saddam Hussein in favor of a democracy. And they were joined by most Democrats and the media.

Today, however, it’s a totally different picture. Today some of the media, like a University of West Florida professor (I’m still trying to find out her name)  that was interviewed by the Florida News Network as an ‘expert’ on Egypt and the Middle East, are trying to attach the overthrow of Mubarak to President Obama. Giving him ‘credit’ for Mubarak’s ouster. As if Obama had anything to do with it. She said it regains America’s trust in President Obama. Well isn’t this rich? Obviously, Obama has lost whatever trust and respect he may have had, as evidenced by this so-called expert, and as confirmed by Oprah yesterday. And for any number of reasons, not the least of which was his and his advisors’ handling of the uprising in Egypt.

And while we’re on the topic of toppling dictators, lets see what side Obama supports this time in Iran. Young people (same as in Egypt) there want to demonstrate in Iran again, this time to support the democracy push in Egypt, but the Mullahs and Ahmadinejad are warning them not do take to the streets. Will President Obama come down on the side of the youths wanting democracy, or on the dictator’s side like he did in 2009?

“I have made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering in Iran’s affairs,” Mr Obama said.

Link: Demonstrations not encouraged in Iran

Oh Wait, It Gets Worse

Since yesterday’s embarrassment, apparently numb to his impish behavior on the world stage, President Obama felt it necessary to amp it up even more. Too bad he doesn’t treat America’s enemies with the same audacity as our allies.

On this audition for Saturday Night Live, here is AP’s account of what President Obama said . . .

Without naming Mubarak directly, Obama issued a written statement on Thursday night in which he criticized the leader for a lack of clarity and direction. That assessment came after Mubarak surprised those protesting in Egypt’s streets by saying, in a broadly watched speech, that he would shift powers to his vice president but remain in charge of the country. {emphasis added}

Isn’t it odd (not really) that the AP doesn’t see the irony? Here is what he said . . .

Too many Egyptians remain unconvinced that the government is serious about a genuine transition to democracy, and it is the responsibility of the government to speak clearly to the Egyptian people and the world.

If our president is going to criticize Egypt’s president for not putting out a clear message, and for not listening to his citizens, lets at least recognize that in that respect they are twins with one difference. One of them knows what he’s doing.

Link:  Losing Patience, Obama Challenges Egypt’s Leaders

Obama Uses Google To Politicize Egypt’s Uprising

While searching for the transcript of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s statement today, which turned out not to be his resignation, I came upon one of the Obama administration’s targeted Google ads in the story of Mubarak’s statement. Which does show perfectly well where our president’s priorities are. Instead of Egypt, they seem to be more in salvaging his radical agenda and poll numbers. 

How does the Obama administration buy ad space on Google to undermine the will of the people? Look at this screensave on the Times of India website.

Official Obama Website : www.BarackObama.com – Barack Obama needs your help to change Washington. Sign up today!

Just another crisis that he is not letting go to waste.

Responding to Obama’s several statements about Egypt, without naming him,  Mubarak said . . .

“I am not embarrassed to listen to the youth of my country and respond to them,” he said. But he added that he would never “accept diktats from abroad” – referring to increasing international pressure for him to quit.

Which makes this post even more relevant: Should The President Resign?

Link: Defiant Mubarak refuses to resign

Obama Stumbles On The World Stage

If anyone thought that President Obama had his finger on the pulse on the happenings in Egypt, his performance today should put that notion to rest.

I just saw the media waiting for over six hours for Egypt’s President Mubarak to announce that he is ‘stepping down’ today. While this was going on, people at The White House were saying that President Obama was going to have a statement on Egypt. The presumption was that it would be a response to President Mubarak’s stepping down.

Well, I guess the President must have had something better to do than to wait and see what Mubarak had to say, because Obama beat Mubarak to the cameras. Boy, talk about a diplomatic blunder. Obama showed, in case there was any doubt remaining, that the United States, at least under this president, can not be a trusted ally to anyone.

It’s bad enough that, to this date, Washington is still sending out mixed messages on Egypt’s troubles.  It is painfully obvious that voting ‘present’ on Egypt has not worked. And now President Obama again sticks his nose into Egypt’s business before he even knows what Egypt’s business is. One can only speculate whether Mubarak set up the whole drama which Obama fell for, hook, line, and sinker.

In his statement, which came after Obama’s, Mubarak chastised countries ‘abroad’ for not being helpful in the matter. Saying that he would never “accept diktats from abroad.”

Yesterday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu Al-Gheit said in an interview with Al-Arabiya TV . . .

“The question is not whether or not the latest American position pleases me. Ultimately, they have realized the need to conduct these major transformations gradually and on the basis of a roadmap with clear goals, guarantees, and phases. They were using the word ‘now.’ They said: You must do it now! But they changed their position… When someone says to me ‘now,’ ‘immediately,’ and whatever, I say to him: ‘Boy, go play somewhere else.’ We will do everything according to the interests of our people and country.”

So how is that whole improving our ‘image around the world’ thing going?

Should The President Resign?

Why did tens of thousands of Egyptians take to the streets and demand regime change? High food and energy prices, high unemployment, economic stagnation, and a government un-responsive to the people. That’s why they, and President Obama, are demanding and asking for President Mubarak to resign. So when we see hundreds of thousands, cumulatively millions, of people take to the streets in America for much the same reason, and then some, shouldn’t we (the media included) be asking the same question?

While our nation languishes amidst record food and energy prices, unprecedented underemployment (including those excluded from the workforce) and economic stagnation, crippling regulations, and an administration in contempt of two court decisions, . . . . there is one salient question that we should excogitate from Obama’s handling of the Egyptian insurgency. If Obama is willing to listen to the protesters of a foreign country due to their grievances from high food and energy prices and an unresponsive government, shouldn’t he accede to the similar demands of his own citizens and resign immediately?

I’m just saying.

Link: Hey Barack, Resign Now, and Now Means Yesterday

Obama, What Egyptians Want . . .

Bill O’Reilly interviewed President Obama prior to the Super Bowl game on Sunday. The interview began with what is going on in Egypt. O’Reilly asked President Obama ‘Mubarak, is he going to leave soon?’  Obama said that the Egyptian people want a representative government, one that is responsive to them. They want more freedom, and they want free and fair elections.

Too bad O’Reilly did not ask what started the rioting in the first place. And why it came as a surprise? Egypt is in the crisis that it is in because they want jobs. The rioting in Egypt and the move to end the 30 year reign of Hosni Mubarak is because their economy is in the tank. Unemployment of the largest sector of their population, under 30, is seventy percent. Everything else that Obama said is secondary.

It’s not surprising that Obama did not mention that it is jobs that Egyptians really want. Creating jobs is something he doesn’t know much about.

Link: Obama: Egyptians Won’t Permit a Repressive Government to Fill Mubarak Void

Egypt’s Unrest And The News Media

The political climate in Egypt doesn’t look good. But is that because of what we see on the news or because it really doesn’t look good?

I guess it depends on what the definition of ‘good’ is, and which side of the fence you are on. The side of democracy or the side of the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter of which want nothing to do with democracy. Well, unless you call Iran’s government a democracy.

Considering that the population in Cairo, the largest city in Egypt, is 6.8 million, is a riotous group of tens of thousands of people really representative of the other millions of Egyptians?

Not satisfied living in a country with a majority of Muslims where other religions are tolerated, it is apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to hijack the unrest over the economic disaster that Egyptians find themselves living in, and turn it into some sort of Islamic state like Iran; hostile to the West, Israel, and the rest of the non-Muslim world.

Calling for Mubarak to step down before the scheduled September elections, like President Obama has done, plays into the hands of the radical Islamists. And his calling for all opposition parties to have some representation in the ‘new’ government, including the Muslim Brotherhood, only exacerbates the problem. That irresponsible action just reinforces what we are shown in the media. Pretty presumptuous of our President to tell Egyptians how their government should be assembled. No doubt President Obama is overflowing with audacity.

The only reason for optimism in Egypt now is that the other 6.7 million Egyptians will keep a secular and more democratic government in place. Given the choice in a free and legitimate election, it is hard to imagine that they would choose a government that is anything like Iran.

Fed Policy, Govt. Policy, Egypt Burns

Here’s a little ditty that the mainstream media won’t touch with a ten foot pole. That’s because the Obama administration, environmentists, and the Federal Reserve are not insignificant players in the rioting and unrest we are seeing in the Middle East, and in the rise in prices of foodstuffs around the world. WHAT you say?

For years now, the United Nations has been complaining that they can’t continue to feed all they need to for a lack of money caused by the rising food cost. This is a direct consequence of bio-fuel nonsense where the United States is using food (corn) to put in our gas tank. This causes all kinds of food to be more expensive. Not just for foodstuffs made from corn, but meat and poultry products because it is also food for the livestock.

Compounding that is the enormous spending of the Federal Reserve. The effect of that has contributed to the increase in food prices not only here but everywhere else in the world.

Chriss W. Street at Big Government writes . . .

QE2 money quickly drove up commodity food prices around the world. This price rise is barely noticeable to Americans who only spend 10% of their personal income on food for three meals a day; but the impact of food inflation is devastating the over half the world that spends approximately 50% of personal income on food for two meals a day. The 15% QE2 induced commodity food price increase has reduced the amount of food poor people can purchase by almost 1/3.

The riots and revolutionary activity burning down Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt are about gut-level economics. Do you think Americans would riot and throwing out our government if we were forced to cut back to eating 1 1/3 meals a day? Once riots start people in cities hoard food to survive and becomes dangerous for farmers to transport food. This is exacerbates food shortages and drives prices even higher.

When you consider how lucky we are to live in the United States, where 10% of our income goes for food for three meals a day,  a rise in food prices is not as much of an issue as it is in other parts of the world like Egypt, where food consumes 50% of their income for two meals a day. Couple that with outrageously high unemployment while the ruling class lives the high life, and you have a powder keg in the making.

UPDATE 06:50:

As if there isn’t enough evidence of how government policies were accomplices in Egypt’s revolution, new evidence points to the role of labor unions and the American Left in orchestrating it:

For all the lack of clarity on where the Obama administration stands, one thing is becoming more and more clear: Signs are beginning to point more toward the likelihood that President Obama’s State Department, unions, as well as Left-leaning media corporations are more directly involved in helping to ignite the Mid-East turmoil than they are publicly admitting.

Caught By Surprise, Flat-footed, Mixed Message

That is how CNN described the Obama administration’s reaction to the upheavel in Egypt today on the Wolf Blitzer show. By now, it should become painfully obvious to the administration that the media can no longer carry their water when there are such big holes in the buckets. It is quite a shift from just two days ago when Obama adviser David Axelrod told ABC’s Jake Tapper how the president has been engaged with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from the beginning. Not to worry, that he has been on top of things for the last two years.

If the administration has been so engaged for the last two years, how could this event have caught them by surprise? They didn’t see the clues? Obama voting PRESENT on Egypt isn’t working.  The media is not yet calling the administration incompetent, although I am, but the fact that they can not longer ignore the contradiction shows they are looking out for their own survival now, instead of his.

He was on the wrong side of the fence when Iran had their political uprising. Now he has to play catch up in Egypt, and the Egyptian people are not fooled.

Another story that has not been reported in the U.S. media, if you want to connect some dots, is the unrest in other poor and mostly Muslim countries like Yemen, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan. Andrew McCarthy has a pretty good idea for why we are seeing what we are seeing.

Al-Qaeda seeks to spread Islam by brute force. The Muslim Brotherhood and its American confederates – CAIR, the Muslim American Society, the Islamic Society of North America, etc. – agree with al-Qaeda on the endgame but part company on methodology.

Links: Analysis: Egypt crisis a fresh dilemma for Obama team