Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Sandmonkey the Model

There is some irony to the fact that the Egyptian blogger Sandmonkey has quit posting out fear of the Egyptian police, while Iraq the Model continues to thrive. But it's also a reminder that the wars against Israel and the September 11 attack on America were nurtured in Arab regimes that "realists" are fond of contrasting with Iraq. One concrete question that we might ask ourselves, were we in the Sandmonkey's shoes, is where to turn now? I am sure that radical Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood have answers ready to supply. But does the West? And after the "withdrawal" is completed and all we are left with are Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and a Pakistan teeming with al-Qaeda, how different will things be from the days before September 11?


It is fair enough to speak of President Bush lacking a strategy in the war on terror, but it is also legitimate to ask of what the strategy of withdrawal consists. Is it an end in itself? Does it lead to something else? I think one of the reasons the debate in antiwar circles is so focused on the past, on intelligence missteps, on what Joe Wilson did or didn't do, on what Valerie Plame was or wasn't -- is because nobody wants to talk about what they plan to do in the future. Assuming there is something they plan to do.

8 Comments:

Blogger ricpic said...

They're gonna follow us home.
Then there's gonna be a catastrophe (maybe a bomb, maybe some other means of delivery).
Then, and only then, will the show begin.

5/01/2007 06:52:00 PM  
Blogger allen said...

Just something to remember about Sandmonkey's neighbor:

"I guarantee you that the power of belief and faith is greater than the power of America and Israel. They are cowards, who are eager for life, while we are eager for death for the sake of Allah. That is why America's nose was rubbed in the mud in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, and everywhere."
___Sheik Ahmad Bahr, acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council

Top Hamas Offical Wants All Americans Dead

Where do I find size 12 ruby slippers?

5/01/2007 07:27:00 PM  
Blogger trangbang1968 said...

While the voices of truth are shut down in the middle east by despots and loonie tunes;here in America those on the left have the freedom to grind the face of the land that bore them into the ground."And the words of the prophets are written on a subway wall and tenement hall/echoed in the sounds of silence"

5/01/2007 07:39:00 PM  
Blogger Pangloss said...

On Shire Network News Evan Sayet said that in a moment of honesty one of his leftist Democrat friends told him that the reason he didn't want to be at war with Terrorism was that the jihadists scared him. Now THAT's a reason for Democrats to shy away from war that we can all understand: Cowardice.

5/01/2007 08:53:00 PM  
Blogger Solomon2 said...

I'm sorry to say that even the "pro-democracy" Egyptians I joined with in a protest in front of the Egyptian embassy five weeks ago don't get it: deep down, they accept the legitimacy of the Mubarak regime, and merely ask to be treated better. Rice meets with them personally to tell them the U.S. wants to see democracy in Egypt, but once these guys leave they say she must be lying. The police just want order and the diplomats want change, but the grass-roots isn't there to support them because the intelligensia won't step up to the plate. Ugh!

5/02/2007 05:38:00 AM  
Blogger Ash said...

and the grassroots involves a lot of folks whom admire the Muslim Brotherhood and I know how so many of you really are keen to empower Islamists, Sharia law and all that fun stuff. How do you square that circle?

5/02/2007 06:50:00 AM  
Blogger Solomon2 said...

Mubarak's modus operandi is polarization: squeeze out the liberal democrats leaving a vacuum that only the Mubarak Gang or the Muslim Brotherhood can fill, thus forcing the West to support him as the "moderate" alternative, even as he stokes the fires of extremism and arms Egypt for external confrontation.

One "squares the circle" by forming a counter-revolutionary steering committee in exile, dedicated to removing Mubarak while maintaining public in order with freedom of speech during an interim period, say two years, before internationally-supervised elections.

That gives government officials a safe way out so they can jump from the Mubarak ship. As the dump-Mubarak movement swells, in time he either hands over the keys or else people stop listening to him.

5/02/2007 07:11:00 AM  
Blogger Nichevo said...

Ash, we are trying to square the circle so as to avoid the other paradigm, cutting the Gordian knot.

You can figure that one out yourself, can't you?

5/03/2007 01:24:00 AM  

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