Is That Egg on Their Faces?

Mubarak supporter Chris Matthews complained about our “experts” working in the State Department who are supposed to have been able to see all this coming, and demanded to know “What are they doing over there?” But these platoons of analysts couldn’t have seen the [Egyptian] revolution coming down the road, because it passed them in the night, shrouded in the fog of Washington’s astigmatism.

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The Obama administration pretends to sympathize with the Egyptian people and the protesters in the streets, but in reality they are appalled – and frightened.

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[I] t’s interesting to note how the divisions [in Egypt] are playing themselves out. The Muslim Brotherhood and some secular parties are agreeing to participate, while Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency, is standing with the youth and secular nationalists who want Mubarak out as a precondition for talks. So much for the alleged radicalism of the Brotherhood: the bogeyman held up by the Israelis, the neocons, and Glenn Beck’s fan club as the central hub of the “axis of evil” turns out to be one of the more moderate factions in the movement.

Justin Raimondo

We haven’t liked el Baradei since he told the world there were no WMD in Iraq. How can we possibly stand by while he stands at the head of the people trying to bring true democracy to Egypt? Not letting him in on the "negotiations" is a start. (If I were the protesters, I would take that as a sign and start making serious defensive plans.)

The supporters of the regime – and, standing behind them, the US government – are waiting out the protesters, hoping they’ll get bored, frustrated, and be forced to return to “normalcy” – which, in Egypt, means a return to repression. The regimists hope to create the illusion of change without implementing any fundamental reform, keeping the apparatus of the state – the political police, the state-controlled economy, and the office of the President – intact and under the control of the usual suspects. In short, they hope to pull off in Cairo what the Obama-ites pulled off in Washington, D.C. – phony “change” in the service of Power.

Gasp! I can’t believe he said that.

[T]his is just the beginning of the insurrections that are bound to germinate as the international economy continues to shrink and the consequences of worldwide inflation takes hold.

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Europe has already seen massive protests, as in what happened in Greece, and it’s not impossible that the wave of discontent could leap the Atlantic and set a prairie fire burning on our very own shores.

Could the US greedmonger bankers who set off the global economic crisis actually have been the instigators of a worldwide uprising toward democracy that eventually runs them out of business? Wouldn’t that be ironic?

P.S. I can never think of Egypt without thinking of Red Skelton’s old skit where he announces the news saying, "It looks like we're having a bit of trouble in egg-wiped.”

Bless him, may he rest in peace. Can you imagine anyone finding that funny these days?