[Peace-discuss] One possibility

[C. G. Estabrook]

And There It Is: Neocons Test Idea of US Intervention in Egypt
Posted: 31 Jan 2011

Just now on MSNBC, neocon Dan Senor, former Iraq occupation spokesman, raised 
the possibility of intervention in Egypt.

Host Chris Jansing asked Senor, more or less, why Americans should care about 
what’s going on in Egypt. What are the implications for our country and economy?

Senor, as he is trained to do, conjured a dangerous false dichotomy that 
continues to embroil the US in pointless, expensive, deadly conflicts decade 
after decade.

“There are two directions it could go. If the Egyptian government — and other 
governments for that matter — is replaced by moderate secular, pro-American 
governments that actually want to truly partner with us in fighting terror and 
fostering some modicum of liberal democracy, progressive government, 
representative government throughout the region, that’s important for the United 
States’ security. If things go the other direction, and those governments are 
replaced by Islamist governments, you could have regimes there that actually 
incubate terrorists– that directly affect the West, the geopolitical and 
economic implications are enormous.

“Oil prices could really start spiraling… commodity price inflation… so this 
could really hit us at home economically — there’s a lot at stake right now. 
American forces are deployed in Afgfhanistan and Iraq today. If we have a failed 
state in the Middle East — a total collapse of a government with no real 
infrastructure that we can work with to actually succeed whatever government it 
replaces — we will have to deploy American resources at a time that we are 
pretty stretched thinly right now.”

Two options, says Senor. Egypt can only have a Renfield government that 
obsessively seeks to please its master to curry its continued favor, or it must 
descend into a benighted Islamic nutocracy and probably also somehow devolve 
into an undeveloped facsimile of Afghanistan. The “liberal, progressive, 
representative” bit is odd since Mubarak and many others like him including the 
recently deposed Ben Ali of Tunisia are staunch and valued allies of Washington 
— none embody any of those qualities.

But never mind that. IF Egypt, or the other states who are without doubt in the 
same line of teetering dominoes, falls, Senor raises the non-negotiable need to 
“deploy resources” — that’s code for invasion. In case any doubt remains, 
though, the mention of America’s strained “resources” makes it crystal clear. 
He’s testing the waters for a US attack on the most populous Arab country.

Egyptians — right now very angry with the US — are not likely to sit back, after 
ousting a powerful dictator, and allow this to happen. And frankly, the US 
doesn’t have the ability or resources to take it on, anyhow, as its utter 
failures in Iraq and Afghanistan prove, not to mention its perpetually botched 
foreign policy that consists entirely of threats and bribes everywhere else.

America’s foreign policy is still informed by the disproven — by reality, mind 
you — philosophy of the neoconservatives. Only the debt-fueled collapse of our 
own system, the Military-Industrial Complex, will end the madness. Since more 
elections clearly can’t.