Takin' It to the Streets II

What’s a superpower to do with a unsavory and unstable ally? Here’s Gary Sick at Foreign Policy:

You may try to carefully maintain your ties with the current ruler (see Biden above), while offering rhetorical support to freedom of expression, democracy, and human rights. Regrettably, as the Carter administration can attest, that may produce the worst of both worlds. If the ruler falls, he and his supporters will accuse you of being so lukewarm in your support that it was perceived as disavowal; whereas the opposition will dismiss your pious expressions as cynical and ineffectual.

And what is this superpower doing? Here’s Richard Fernandez:

But Washington will not be hurried. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that President Obama will review his Middle Eastern policy after the unrest in Egypt subsides. The future, in whose spaces the administration believed its glories to lie, plans to review its past failures in the same expansive place. Yet time and oil wait for no one. Crude oil prices surged as the markets took the rapid developments in. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu observed that any disruption to Middle East oil supplies “could actually bring real harm.”

But then the President made the call to Mubarak. Here’s Newsweek‘s report from John Barry:

It was an intervention that dramatically—and publicly—escalated the American involvement in the Egyptian crisis. In an address from the White House, Obama outlined what he had told Mubarak, putting the administration unequivocally behind the demonstrators’ demands. “The people of Egypt have rights that are universal,” Obama said in his speech. “And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.” The president also warned both sides against violence but his message was clear: “When President Mubarak addressed the Egyptian people tonight, he pledged a better democracy and greater economic opportunity. I just spoke to him after his speech, and I told him he has a responsibility to give meaning to those words, to take concrete steps and actions that deliver on that promise.” And, said Obama, “we are committed to working with the Egyptian government and the Egyptian people—all quarters—to achieve” those goals.

That’s something — and far better than Secretary Clinton’s wan words earlier in the week.

But the fact remains that we wouldn’t be in this predicament if we weren’t so unserious about our energy needs. We prevent and curtail and demonize domestic production, while bribing people with money we don’t have into buying cars they don’t want.

Meanwhile, our military has been inexplicably tied down in a tertiary conflict with little or no bearing on our actual security.

It’s almost enough to make you think folks in Egypt have it relatively easy this week.