NYT Kristof: Obama and Egypt’s Future

[chimpymustgo]

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: February 9, 2011

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President Obama and his aides were blindsided by the crisis from the beginning (as were we in the news media), and I fear that they’ve mishandled it since. When the protests began, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described Mr. Mubarak’s government as “stable” and “looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”

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To many Egyptians, the U.S. is conspiring with the regime to push only cosmetic reforms while keeping the basic structure in power. That’s creating profound ill will. In Tahrir Square, I watched as young people predisposed to admire America — the Facebook generation — expressed a growing sense of betrayal. In a country where half the population is under 24, we are burning our bridges.

Americans, perhaps, don’t fully appreciate that the regime is mind-bogglingly corrupt and instinctively repressive. On my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground, I’ve linked to a video that appears to show Egyptian forces shooting an unarmed, unthreatening protester in cold blood and to another that apparently shows a government vehicle driving through a group of protesters, striking them and hurtling on. Those videos are heart-wrenching, and it is because of long experience with the regime’s callousness that ordinary Egyptians don’t trust people like Mr. Suleiman one bit. They think he’s stalling in an effort to retain the system — and they’re probably right.

Human Rights Watch has confirmed 302 deaths in the Egypt upheavals, based on visits to hospitals in three cities, and says the real toll may be significantly higher. To put that in perspective, that is several times the toll when Iran crushed its pro-democracy movement in 2009. And it’s approaching the toll when the Chinese Army opened fire on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing in 1989. Yet when it’s our ally that does the killing, we counsel stability, gradualism and order.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/opinion/10kristof.html?ref=opinion

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So all those pretty speeches were just lies and bullshit...