If bullets fly tomorrow, Obama get's the blame.

[GSLevel9]

That's how the Arab street will see it. There was a window for the administration to call for Mubarak to step down and be seen in a positive light by the Arab street... a fantastic chance to redeem ourselves actually... and people are starting to blame the US and Israel.

I hate to say it but this is a Ray-Gun moment.

"Mr. Mubarak, get on that plane"...

[tabatha]

1. What happened in Iran?

[Fumesucker]

2. A hated US installed and supported dictator was overthrown..

Explicitly against the wishes of the US..

[GSLevel9]

3. different situation. (if you're talking about last years events)

Iran has a government that is in a fight with the US... Obama had NO CONTROL over what A-Jad did.

But it's mostly about the appearance of being on the "Street" side...

If Obama went on AJ-E and made a call for Mubarak to step down, it'd do a lot to repair the US rep.

[SidDithers]

4. Obama will be blamed regardless of what happens...nt

Sid

[yourout]

7. +10000....you beat me to it.

[pipoman]

8. The US will be blamed regardless..

[okieinpain]

56. i agree.. n/t.

[Avalux]

5. So you know what the arab street will see? What 'people' are blaming the US and Israel?

You make an awful lot of assumptions in your post, then unequivocally state that this is a Ray-Gun moment. Pardon me if I don't find you credible.

[GSLevel9]

10. made my opinion after reading this:

edited as requested.

[Avalux]

12. No link. Advice: read more than one article before forming an opinion. n/t

[spanone]

6. sez you

[corpseratemedia]

9. I see it as our horrendous foreign policy for the last 10 years specifically the uncalled war

against an innocent country that is the root of all the revolution.

All these neonconpoops had absolutely ZERO foresight into looking at the future of both the character of Middle East politics and younger generations when deciding to kill a million Iraqis. Just astonishing. None of them wanted to learn from Iran of course. I mean I know these young people are sick of their respective conditions and/or dictators, but I believe a war that has murdered over a million Iraqis to privatize oil fields may have been the original long simmering kindle. I haven't been reading much here lately so this may not be at all an original thought but adding my 2 cents.

I just will never see a modern American prez siding against an "ally," no matter how anti-democratic that ally is..our foreign policy has become a human rights embarrasment to our people. sad.

[upi402]

14. Many years of propping up dick taters

and assasinating lected leaders from time to time. And they aren't shielded from those facts there, like we are here.

Yes, it's on Obama's watch, but I think he did a pro job with his statement.

[babylonsister]

11. Wow. Unrec for opinion of poster w/o any back-up. nt

[Puzzler]

13. Does the average Egyptian give a shit about what the US thinks right now?

[justiceischeap]

15. I've seen some tweets that suggest they do.

It seems his 2009 Cairo speech was quite inspirational.

However, we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. We don't know if the admin isn't being more demanding because we have so many people in Egypt and we need to get them out. There's a lot that we don't and probably won't know (unless WikiLeaks dumps more cables).

[EFerrari]

27. Yes, they do. They know who has propped up this man all these years. n/t

[Kaleva]

16. By default, i think you are pushing the meme that the US controls or has influence over the world

[Cali_Democrat]

17. You think Obama can just tell him to get on a plane and Mubarak would comply?

Just like that? That's naive.

[GSLevel9]

20. but by siding with the democracy movement...

Obama would be on the right side of this thing.

Perception is sometimes more important than reality.

[Cali_Democrat]

34. So I assume that you want Obama to be very public about wanting Mubarak to go...

What if Mubarak ends up staying in power? Do you realize how foolish Obama would look? Not to mention that his relationship with Mubarak would be in tatters.

What if Mubarak does leave and there is complete chaos in Egypt? What if repressive factions take over and oppress the people? It's not like Democracy will spring up just like that even if he leaves. There will be a power vacuum and a good chance of prolonged chaos. And Obama will have inadvertently supported this if he directly calls for the ouster of Mubarak.

It's best to just do nothing at this point and let the Egyptian people decide their fate without interference.

Obama is playing this the right way.

[pampango]

40. Telling Mubarak to institute real reforms and not shoot demonstrators is the same

as telling him to get on a plane and leave. It just uses "diplo-speak" to say the same thing. (Avoiding the ol' "interfering in our internal affairs" charge from the dictators of the world.)

Mubarak knows (as do the Egyptian people) that he can't stay in power and in Egypt without violence and repression. Reform and allowing public protests have never been and are not now what Hosni Mubarak is all about.

While I like to think that, if I were president, I would tell someone like Mubarak to get on a plane, I suppose that would open the question of why I don't tell every dictator in the world to just leave; followed by "Who gives you the right to tell the leaders of other countries to relinquish power?"

[Arkana]

18. Well, thanks to DU, I know he'll be blamed for whatever ends up happening.

[dionysus]

47. +5000

[TwilightGardener]

51. +10000.

[forty6]

19. Yup, we were all wrong !!! We thought we were electing Superman, and he ...

turned out to be locked in to the last 30 years of history...unable to get in that phone booth and change into his Superman costume, and fly in 5 minutes to Cairo and settle this thing once and for all.

Geeze, why didn't we see this coming and elect Sarah P? She would have been Wonder Woman for sure!

Oh please, threads like this are so sensationalist, so premature, and so revealing of fear as the major selling factor, even to the liberals and whoever else reads them.

We cannot take responsibility for Ronald Reagan's ineptitude and chock it up to Obama's cautious, thoughtful recalcitrance to intervene as Reagan would have.......anybody remember Grenada? Was that a manufactured war or what?

If Democrats continue to try to post sensationalist threads like this one over and over and over again, perhaps someone will end my misery here and just ban me........I have never seen so many supposedly educated people trying to write a world history textbook based upon what they have read and seen on the American media in the last 7 days! It's disgusting how little historical study, and intellectual effort goes into some of these threads and posts.

[babylonsister]

23. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! And keep posting. There's a big

tent supposedly, and we are not all reacting that way. :thumbsup: to you for your honesty. It's very frustrating for a lot of us.

[forty6]

31. Thanks so much, I just get so sick of people who think they elected ..

Superman, when the world is one he didn't create, they ask him to fix it within a week..

I watched the original Superman on TV growing up at 7 or 8 years old..

I'm much older now...........JFK, RFK MLK all gone.......my Supermen.......I learned we don't need supermen we need people who think logically..

Sometimes I wonder here, about how old people are, asking Obama to be their Superman!

[sabrina 1]

38. The People V The Dictator

It really is a simple choice, for any decent person.

Combine that with the inspirational speech given by Obama to the Muslim World and it's hard to blame the people for thinking that the words meant something.

They thought he meant that there would be no more Bush/Reagan-like support for Brutal dictatorships e.g.

They thought he meant that 'change' was coming.



It's nice to be in a place where you can wait until Obama sorts it all out. Nice not to be living in Egypt, eg, or in any of the countries where we are supporting other brutal dictators.

Nice to have the luxury of being objective about other people's lives. Not to have to worry about being beaten to death for taking a photograph, eg. That kind of thing tends to make the situation a bit more urgent. I knew someone who lived under a dictator. She was a nervous wreck even after leaving, traumatized actually, terrified of anyone in a uniform especially the police. The effects are lifelong even with therapy. These people are finally standing up to the abuser they were so afraid of for so long.

So, it's the Dictator or the People. Whose side is this country on?

We had no problem attacking other former allies, dictators, when we had no more use for them. So the perception everywhere is, correctly, we must still have some use for this particular dictator.

There aren't two sides to this. No moral equivalent between a Dictator and the people he is abusing. Obama has a compulsion to find moral equivalencies when the side he wants to be on, is exposed as thoroughly reprehensible.

Mubarak cannot rule that country anymore no matter how much the U.S. wants him there.

The people have spoken, they are the authority now and if Obama wants to speak to Egypt, he will have to speak to them.

They have fired their dictator. The U.S. will look even more foolish when Mubarak is forced to leave by his own people, like Ben Ami before him if they are still prevaricating when it happens.

[grahamhgreen]

35. It doesn't take a Superman to ask a dictator to step down - JUST A MAN.

[treestar]

46. In that case, why didnt he do it the first day in office

And go through the entire list of nation's with dictator's and demand they step down?

This guy has been there since 1981, so Reagan and on should have been saying this daily.

Where were YOU? Oh, you waited until it got hot over there. And now order the President around. LOL, he probably could beat you at chess.

Whats with the right wing be a MAN theme, eh? Couldn't a woman be President?

[grahamhgreen]

54. Because puppets don't ask that other puppets step down?

I said ask, not demand.

The "Man" theme was started by the OP using the term "superman", instead of "superhuman"; a more appropriate response would be, "It doesn't take a superhuman to suggest that a dictator consider stepping down - just a human."

[RandomKoolzip]

50. Nice (probably unconscious) gender stereotyping, BTW.

[jonnyblitz]

39. oh give me a fucking break. we just want somebody perhaps

that doesn't support fucking tyrannical dictators. it's "OBVIOUS" why this admin is remaining PUBLICALLY neutral and it's NOT to "show restraint and stay out if it" because this country meddles with EVERY FUCKING COUNTRY on this planet to ensure our "interests" are met, if not overtly then by PROXY.

oh and mine and others opinions are not based on what we have "read in the media the last 7 days", btw. what a truly fucking IGNORANT post. info about our relationship with Egypt and WHY is not HIDDEN INFO. The Egyptians know what is what as well.

your post is beyond IGNORANT.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Oh com'on bullets have been flying already

officially 150 people have died so far.

[GSLevel9]

22. that's right... I'm just referring to the twitter rumors that tomorrow

Mubarak puts the foot down??

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. And rumors are there that the army is about to give him

the middle finger too... by the way tomorrow is today already. They are a few hours and time zones ahead of us.

[Malikshah]

25. The U.S. should stay out--this is the Egyptian people's time. We'll be blamed

regardless. No need for malcontents here to ratchet up the hysteria.

We have abso-frikkin-lutely no idea what is being done in the back channels. Speculation is not helpful on our end. We'll have to wait for Wikileaks on this one.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. Wiki leaks were leaked last weak

and we are playing with the insurgents as well

Go to the usual suspects to read the five cables.

[Warren DeMontague]

26. The apostrophes are already flying.

DUCK!

[EFerrari]

29. I saw a tweet by a CNN reporter that included the abbreviation "govt's"

for "governments". Maybe he posts to DU, too. :)

[treestar]

43. The apostrophe's

rule the World!!!!!

They can order the Egypts fate if Obama would just say the thing's that need's to be said!

[Forkboy]

30. Does he get credit for it if the bullets DON'T start flying?

[emulatorloo]

32. LOL

great to see you back :toast:

[JoePhilly]

48. No, he'll be blamed for how the situation has stagnated.

[Angry Dragon]

33. The Us has tried to control the world for so long we are

hated or at the very least not trusted.
I do not know how much we have backed up Mubarak
just so we could try to control the Middle East.
From all indications Mubarak is a greedy dictator.
It is time for the Us to just worry about themselves
and let countries sort themselves out on their own
Obama has no right to tell Mubarak what to do.

It is time for us to stop interfering in other countries.
If this is what Obama has done then that is fine with me.
If Egyptians start being murdered by the military then
it would need another look.

[Safetykitten]

36. I do not see how. Reasons...

It's only been two years.

Congress was controlling everything.

He was elected President, not world king.

It takes time to pull a guy off the dole.

He had so many other things going on, like HCR....oh sorry, that was Congress.

Republicans are mean to him.

Democrats are mean to him.

Independents are mean to him.

We don't deserve him.

He has a larger chess-like move that will blow people's minds and our tiny brains do not see in five dimensions like his.

[Forkboy]

37. "We don't deserve him."

That's pretty creepy, right there.

[treestar]

45. All perfectly valid

Do you seriesly argue hes world king? That Congress' has no power?

That post sounds bitter about a series of statement's that are bare reality.

[greytdemocrat]

41. Goes with the job,

When you're POTUS you get blamed and lauded.

That you had anything to do with "it" isn't a factor.

[treestar]

42. OK that shows (or should i say show's) that you just blame Obama

for everything and give him credit for nothing.

That's (or thats) your intent. Nothing substantive.

Not only is Obama king of the US, he's king of the World!

[SidDithers]

44. Hehehe...

Sid

[Catherina]

49. Too late. Missed the huge window several times. Blamed already. n/t

[Renew Deal]

53. Yes, mostly by the NY Post and other Obama haters.

They'll "blame" him no matter what he does.

[Renew Deal]

52. Does Obama control the world?

Why is everything that happens the US Presidents fault? That's BS.

[Codeine]

55. Will he be blamed when apostrophes start flying? nt

edit: Shit. Read the thread first, Codeine. Beaten to the punch. :dunce: