the americans have paid the egyptian military a shit-ton of money to look out for their interests---namely preserving the figleaf of legitimacy on the united states' degenerate policies regarding israel. oil is a minimal interest. american paranoia about islam is in the best of circumstances thinly concealed racism and in any event is a non-problem in egypt.
so i don't know what the right is on about. particularly not that fuckwit john bolton, who apparently feels the need to repeat the bromides of henry kissinger with reference to the election of salvador allende in chile, 1972. we all know how that turned out. go conservative geopolitics!
the al jazeera edito is more interesting. faulk gets it right here:
Quote:
Here is the crux of the ethical irony. Washington is respectful of the logic of self-determination, so long as it converges with the US grand strategy, and is oblivious to the will of the people whenever its expression is seen as posing a threat to the neoliberal overlords of the globalised world economy, or to strategic alignments that seem so dear to State Department or Pentagon planners.
As a result there is an inevitable to-ing and fro-ing as the United States tries to bob and weave, celebrating the advent of democracy in Egypt,complaining about the violence and torture of the tottering regime - while doing what it can to manage the process from outside, which means preventing genuine change, much less a democratic transformation of the Egyptian state. Anointing the main CIA contact and Mubarak loyalist, Omar Suleiman, to preside over the transition process on behalf of Egypt seems a thinly disguised plan to throw Mubarak to the crowd, while stabilising the regime he presided over for more than 30 years.
I would have expected more subtlety on the part of the geopolitical managers, but perhaps its absence is one more sign of imperial myopia that so often accompanies the decline of great empires.
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