"On Egypt, Obama offers 'too little, too late'
By Jennifer Rubin
Last week was, in an administration with plenty of them, a low point in foreign policy execution for the Obama team. On Thursday, Vice President Biden proclaimed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to be a friend of the United States and rejected the suggestions that Mubarak should step down or was a dictator. On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sounded a little tougher, telling Mubarak not to use violence against his country's protestors and to restore Internet communications that he had cut off. But, alas, "democracy" did not pass her lips. (The closest she came: "As President Obama said yesterday, reform is absolutely critical to the well-being of Egypt.") Throughout the day, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley tweeted missives, such as, "We hope they choose a path of dialogue and reform."
By late in the day, it was safe to say no one quite understood what the Obama administration's position was. So the president sallied forth with yet another statement. He assured us that he was monitoring the situation and called "upon the Egyptian authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters."
But after talking about "reform" and working with the Egyptian government, Obama then played spokesman for Mubarak, offering to improve upon the Egyptian leader's statement earlier in the day. (The Mubarak statement was widely panned by democracy activists and Middle East experts, such as Khairi Abaza of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who e-mailed me that "Mubarak's address didn't offer anything new.") In Obama's version, Mubarak "pledged a better democracy and greater economic opportunity." A "better" democracy? Is there one at all in Egypt? Obama told us that he had spoken to Mubarak. In perfectly obtuse language, Obama declared, "I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise." The promise of a "better democracy," I guess.
His formulation still indicated that we are joined at the hip with Mubarak. He closed with this: "Surely there will be difficult days to come. But the United States will continue to stand up for the rights of the Egyptian people and work with their government in pursuit of a future that is more just, more free, and more hopeful." While the protestors in the street are screaming for Mubarak to abdicate, Obama's spiel, in the words of a former Middle East negotiator, was "too little, too late."
The same could be said of Mubarak, who fired his prime minister and finally appointed a vice president, but has done nothing to assuage the protestors. They want him gone.
The New York Times reported yesterday:
In the most striking instance, members of the army joined with a crowd of thousands of protesters in a pitched battle against Egyptian security police officers defending the Interior Ministry on Saturday afternoon.
So the army is siding with the protestors, and Obama still won't definitively break with Mubarak.
There are no "down with America" chants in Cairo or burnings of the American flag. But the incompetent Obama diplomacy, forever behind the curve, risks leaving the U.S. at odds with a new, emerging government. Abaza says: "Continuation of the status quo or another autocracy equals repression, bad governance, lack of hope and prospect, radicalization and, finally, anger against the West if it supports this type of governance."
Meanwhile, a remarkably diverse group of foreign policy gurus has proposed another approach. The Working Group on Egypt , which includes Michele Dunne, Robert Kagan, Elliott Abrams and Ellen Bork as well Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch and Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress, has put out a statement with some smart advice for Obama to pursue the following goals:
a call for free and fair elections for president and for parliament to be held as soon as possible.
amend the Egyptian Constitution to allow opposition candidates to register to run for the presidency.
immediately lift the state of emergency, release political prisoners, and allow for freedom of media and assembly
allow domestic election monitors to operate throughout the country, without fear of arrest or violence.
immediately invite international monitors to enter the country and monitor the process leading to elections, reporting on the government's compliance with these measures to the international community
publicly declare that Mr. Mubarak will agree not to run for re-election.
Most important, the experts urge the Obama administration to "suspend all economic and military assistance to Egypt until the government accepts and implements these measures."
I would add one more suggestion: find a new foreign policy team; Obama's current one is egregiously inept."
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