Some Thoughts And Updates On Egypt

Some of my thoughts about what's happening in Egypt, and here in regards to Egypt.

-Well, he went there. Mubarak almost cryptically talked about "violence" in the streets, and today it magically happened. Peaceful protests have given way to actual violence in the streets. There are actual thugs riding into Tahrir Square on camels and horses now, and the streets turned into a war-zone over night. The question now is simple: how much longer can he be allowed to go on?

-A good point has been raised: can Mubarak even stop the violence now in the streets? Yes, these are his thugs now in the streets, but would they not continue to fight now, even if he left? After all, someone has to step into the vacuum when he leaves. He may have unleashed them, but he may not be able to stop them.

-Interesting, if I might say so. John McCain goes to the White House and gets a one-on-one meeting with President Obama. They went over a lot of topics, but one of them was the Middle East. Just a day ago, President Obama said the transition needs to begin now. Then, Robert Gibbs defined "now" as being "yesterday." Then, in the first thing he did after leaving the White House, Senator McCain calls for Mubarak to go. Are politics, once again, stopping at the "water's edge?" Or maybe, just maybe, are the 2008 rivals back on a similar page, and ready to work together, on some subjects.

-I just read Justine Ariel's very thoughtful piece on the lack of action by the U.S. in this crisis. I think that, on the whole, she's right with what she wrote, about the ramifications of the U.S. "sitting this out." It is absolutely a bad option, one that is largely going to leave us looking bad. I just had a second thought to myself though: many on the left (like myself) have said that the U.S. shouldn't have meddled in "regime change" in Iraq. I still don't believe our invasion served any purpose. Many on the left don't even agree with the Afghanistan War and invasion (I do), and believe it's not serving purpose. Fair enough. Well then, how can we go around and interfere in all of these situations in the Middle East? I find this to be a great argument against ideologically driven foreign policy, like that which drove the previous administration: different situations, even in the same region, need to be handled different ways. Should we be involved in the situation in Egypt? Yes, we should. This doesn't mean we belong involved everywhere, for any old reason.