Last week, the Obama administration started releasing the $1.3 billion in U.S. military assistance to Egypt that’s been on hold since October. Over the objections of human rights advocates and democracy activists, Hillary Clinton signed a waiver allowing Washington to circumvent recent legislation…
Despite the violence from street protests that left some 38 people dead over the last two weeks, Egyptians went to the polls today for the first round of parliamentary elections. As the website for the semi-official Egyptian daily Al-Ahram notes, there will be three rounds of elections for the…
Fred Barnes, with Mort Kondracke and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:
Since the revolution in January, Egypt has been in a constant state of unrest. While the protests have been mostly peaceful, there are exceptions. The other week, dozens in one of Cairo’s slums—known as “Garbage City”—were throwing rocks at passing cars, demanding housing they had allegedly been…
It can’t give many Americans much lasting pleasure that the Israeli prime minister humbled our commander in chief this week on his home turf. To be sure, a president who seems to relish provoking public confrontations with an ally may have had it coming, but in the end Netanyahu’s speech before…
Three months after the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, the new Egypt is still sorting itself out—and perhaps will be for some time to come. Observers are concerned about both the country’s domestic problems—attacks on the Coptic Community, the rise of the long-repressed Salafi movement,…
Cairo
Former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak has reportedly been placed under detention in his hospital room in Sharm el-Sheikh. Mubarak has been there since last night, when he is thought to have had a heart attack. The AP reports:
Beirut
Hillary Clinton is a big booster of Internet. Indeed, she is making Internet the central – and as best one can tell, the only – thrust of the Obama administration’s democracy policy. But even she acknowledges that in the wrong hands, technology is “not an unmitigated blessing,” as Clinton said in…
The president has wistfully been thinking about how easy it would be to be the leader of the People's Republic of China, the New York Times reports. And one unnamed official told the Times's reporters that "No one is scrutinizing [Chinese leader] Hu Jintao's words in Tahrir Square."
President Obama’s apparent frustration that he and his senior policymakers were taken by surprise with recent events in Tunisia and Egypt, reminds us of Yogi Berra’s famous line, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Some momentous event occurs on the world scene—whether it’s the Soviets putting…
Unconfirmed reports are circulating that former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has fallen into a coma in Sharm al-Sheikh. The independent Egyptian daily Al Masry Al Youm's English-language website says that Mubarak fainted twice during his final speech Thursday night. The report also seems to…
The controlled public rage against corruption, oppression, and marginalization at the hands of tyrannical Arab regimes that has unfolded in recent weeks is unprecedented and probably unstoppable, but it caught most Western observers by surprise. While they accept the Arab revolt for what it is—a…
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post has Bob Kagan's response to the recent events in Egypt:
Though Egyptian state TV has announced Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, it is unclear what the mass revolt rocking Egypt has in store for that ancient nation’s future. But what is clear is that the momentous events in Cairo--and, indeed, the massive tsunami of people-power engulfing the entire…
UPDATE: On Friday the Army made its decision. Mubarak was forced out. His Thursday speech was a disaster and it seems to have helped persuade the generals that they had, at last, to choose between Mubarak and the people. They made the right choice.
It's one thing that news organizations misread the situation in Egypt today, issuing conflicting reports throughout the day. (Hosni Mubarak will resign, no he won't, yes he will -- that's how today's events were reported, until finally Mubarak made his announcement.) But it's a little disheartening…
Herzliya, Israel
Egyptian president-for-life Hosni Mubarak announced to the world that he was not going to relinquish his position. The Washington Post reports:
NBC reports:
The Working Group on Egypt, led by Michele Dunne and Robert Kagan, yesterday sent letters to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging the administration “to press for an unmistakable and irreversible transition to democracy.”
Here's a very graphic video of an Egyptian police truck running over anti-regime demonstrators. As the vehicle cruises past, without having stopped, you can hear demonstrators referring to the police as "infidels," "sons of bitches" and then starting a chant, "Hosni Mubarak is falling."
Over the last twenty-four hours, we’ve seen Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak promise not to seek another term, quickly followed by a peek at what the next eight months might look like if he continues to cling on to power. Today, armed pro-Mubarak thugs attacked peaceful anti-regime protesters,…
Just last night I had encouraged an Egyptian friend, Raouf, living in the United States, who wanted to go back home to witness his country’s historic events. “I need to see this,” he told me excitedly. Now with fighting in the streets today I’m not so sure.
Max Boot wonders whether President Barack Obama is doing the right thing by taking a cautious approach to Egypt. "Problem is," Boot writes, "taking no stand isn’t an option for the United States in this situation." Boot goes on to praise the Working Group on Egypt's approach:
The Obama administration has gradually been adjusting to reality. On Friday evening, President Obama was still exhorting President Mubarak: “I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise.” By this morning,…
The prestigious and, since its formation less than a year ago, consistently ahead-of-the-curve Working Group on Egypt, co-chaired by Michele Dunne of Carnegie and Robert Kagan of Brookings, has just issued a new statement late Saturday. The Group includes Middle East and foreign policy experts…
On November 9, Jordan conducted its first-ever parliamentary elections monitored by domestic and international observers. I was one of the observers and was impressed by the transparency of the process. Indeed, notwithstanding some isolated incidents of violence, the elections themselves set a…
This week, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak brought his son Gamal to Washington to attend the kick-off of renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Back in Cairo, the unprecedented family visit will no doubt reinforce the widespread belief that Mubarak is planning a hereditary succession in the Arab…