Ryan Streeter
Republican 2012 candidates - and most GOP leaders for that matter - have been pretty measured in how they've been talking about Egypt. There aren't many headline-grabbing statements floating around out there.
And we can forgive them for that, since the situation is hard to inerpret. But can't anyone be bolder than the status quo?
First things first. It is VERY hard to know what is going to happen. For evidence of this, one doesn't need to look any farther than today’s symposium on the Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages, which shows just how little we know about what will happen in the land of the pharaohs.
Maajid Nawaz offers a hopeful view of what's next in Egypt, rooted in the belief that the Brotherhood understands its own limitations within Egyptian society and wouldn’t attempt an all-out takeover.
The leaderless nature of Egypt's street uprising raises the question of who will fill the vacuum after victory. Concerns about an Islamist takeover are valid. But that scenario is unlikely.
The Brotherhood realizes that this uprising wasn't theirs to begin with, and that the new Egypt—more patriotic, pluralistic and inclusive—would likely reject a Brotherhood attempt at usurpation. Unlike Amr Moussa (the head of the Arab League), Mohamed ElBaradei (the former international bureaucrat), and Ayman Nour (the liberal party leader and another former cellmate of mine), no one in the Brotherhood possesses the stature to unite the nation behind them. There is no Khomeini-like Islamist figure to hijack this revolution.
Amr Bargisi offers an alternative, darker view that we’ll end up with one of two scenarios: a 1789-esque revolution in which the protestors don’t stop with ousting Mubarak but go on a violent crusade against the middle and upper classes, or a heavy-handed contract between the state and the shop owners and others whose fear of chaos is greater than their rage against the state. He believes the latter scenario is the most likely, and concludes by saying:
What is clear is that Egypt lacks the sort of political culture that can sustain a liberal democratic regime. The superficiality of the opposition's demands is matched only by the absurdity of the regime's discourse. Without knowledge of the likes of Locke and Burke, Hamilton and Jefferson, my country is doomed to either unbridled radicalism or continued repression.
The reality is that we just don't know what will happen. One thing in common despite their divergent views is that the Brotherhood's total dominance may not be a foregone conclusion. That's an important point.
In the absence of clear knowledge and wisdom, GOP leaders should get on the side of cautious optimism. I’m basically of the Goldbergian persuasion on this one – as in Jonah Goldberg. He writes in his latest column that there are plenty of “valid reasons to watch the news from the Middle East with gritted teeth. And yet, I remain cheered by the news. This is a moment in which political decency and, eventually, freedom and democracy at least have a shot. That wasn’t true a month ago.”
Of course, supporting the military as the modicum of stability in this hoped-for "orderly transition" is key, and a lot could go wrong. There's a lot coming across cable TV and Twitter that suggests optimism might be ill-founded, but let's get on the side of optimism and expect that the move toward democracy (that is, after all, what the original organizers of the protests wanted) will actually achieve its goal. And let's pledge the full support of the United States to make it so.
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