Mr. Ledeen:
“Obama’s statement the other day (yesterday if I remember rightly) was not encouraging. “The future of Egypt will be determined by the Egyptian people” and we will support them. What does that mean? ”
I agree with Winston above at #6…it means that the Gentleman Allegedly from Hawaii is voting “Present”.
Sadly, that seems to be the prudent thing to do publicly at the moment. A little empty “Obama Chin Music” to soothe the savage rioters.
Privately, I’d wager that they have gamed engineering a military putsch to gakk Mubarak and set up a transitional government with promised elections to see if that doesn’t get the beggars off the streets.
(It’s pretty clear that Mubarak is the problem AND the solution here. To put it in maritime terms, the crew is mutinying against their captain, so he responded by firing his chief mate, the bosun, and the ship’s cook…frilliant.)
Meanwhile, we promise support and recognition to whichever party wins the election,(more support if the winners are not the MB’s, much less support if the winners are).
Y’know, the South American countries could be a valuable resource in this, they all transitioned from military dictatorships to democracies fairly recently, and with comparatively little bloodshed.
