Sunday, February 13, 2011

Well, this is better

Mubarak is gone and though obviously all the credit should go to the brave protesters of Cairo and other Egyptian cities but compared to how John McCain any other Republican or even Hillary Clinton would have handled the matter are President, I'm glad it was Obama over them.

Last Saturday afternoon, President Obama got a jarring update from his national security team: With restive crowds of young Egyptians demanding President Hosni Mubarak’s immediate resignation, Frank G. Wisner, Mr. Obama’s envoy to Cairo, had just told a Munich conference that Mr. Mubarak was indispensable to Egypt’s democratic transition.

Mr. Obama was furious, and it did not help that his secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Wisner’s key backer, was publicly warning that any credible transition would take time — even as Mr. Obama was demanding that change in Egypt begin right away.

Seething about coverage that made it look as if the administration were protecting a dictator and ignoring the pleas of the youths of Cairo, the president “made it clear that this was not the message we should be delivering,” said one official who was present. He told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to take a hard line with his Egyptian counterpart, and he pushed Senator John Kerry to counter the message from Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Wisner when he appeared on a Sunday talk show the next day.

5 comments:

StonyPillow said...

"Change you can believe in" apparently means making us believe in their changes to historical facts.

Spin aside, Obama supported Mubarak and the dictatorship as much as he dared. We were on the wrong side. Again. And Egypt will not forget.

jimmiraybob said...

Mubarak is gone and obviously all the credit should go to Ronald Reagan, Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, and the new Republican Congress.

There. Thought I'd try to be the first to advance the right-wing idiocy. Probably too late though.

MD said...

This could have turned into a Tiananmen fiasco. doG knows if Cheney was still pResident it would have. I'm of the opinion that Obama moved much more quickly than anyone could have hoped for. He had to contend with the House of Saud and Liebermanastan. ....For anyone keeping score, the peaceful ouster of Arab Autocrates is now Obama 2 - Dubya nil. ........

pansypoo said...

hope this makes israel nervous.

Anonymous said...

Mr Obama might need us on the Washington Mall rioting and revolting against the faceless corporatemeisters, Kochs,Scaifes,et al pulling the strings of legions of political puppets
vox