Juan Cole responds to Biden's "I would not refer to him as a dictator" comment about Mubarak

[Emit]

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SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: ... Vice President Joe Biden also yesterday said that President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 30 years, since 1981, was not a dictator. He made the comment in an interview on the PBS NewsHour.

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things that he’s been very responsible on relative to geopolitical interests in the region, Middle East peace efforts, the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with Israel. And I think that it would be—I would not refer to him as a dictator.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: That was Vice President Joe Biden. Juan Cole, your response?

JUAN COLE: Well, Vice President Biden seems to be wanting to define a dictator not with regard to domestic policy, but with regard to the responsible role the regime plays in the international world system, you know, from Washington’s point of view. But certainly, from the point of view of human rights activists in Egypt, there are strong dictatorial tendencies in the Egyptian government. It’s seen a lot of phony elections. It’s used repressive techniques.

In some instances, those repressive techniques have been directed against radical movements. The Egyptian Islamic Jihad of Ayman al-Zawahiri was active in Egypt in the 1980s and ’90s, blowing up things, shooting down tourists and others. And these same secret police were deployed at that time to track them down, arrest them, and really to eradicate them from the scene in Egypt.

And this is one of the things that drives this regime’s repressiveness, is that it is afraid of Muslim fundamentalist movements. Whether they are radical—and there have been a number of important radical movements in Egypt that have resorted to violence—or whether they are social and political, as with the large and important Muslim Brotherhood movement, the regime is very afraid—and this comes out from U.S. cables that have been released by WikiLeaks—that the Muslim Brotherhood will find a way to take over. And, you know, when Khomeini overthrew the Shah in Iran in 1979, the first thing they did was execute a lot of the generals. And the generals in Egypt are bound and determined that a similar fate does not await them.

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http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/28/juan_cole_egypt_is_a_praetorian

[Voice for Peace]

1. I always appreciate Prof Cole's point of view.

kick

[EFerrari]

2. That was a great interview.

K&R