Lot’s more about Muslim Brotherhood at the link. Helena Cobban describes Israel as a strategic liability for the U.S. and savages political culture of D.C.:
At a different level, Washington itself is blind (or, rather, self-blinded) regarding political trends in Egypt or much of the rest of the Middle East. This self-blinding occurred as a result of the lengthy campaign — waged enthusiastically under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, and still maintained under Obama — against the incorporation into policymaking circles of anyone who wanted to listen as closely to the non-Israelis who make up the vast majority of the region’s people, as they do to the far less numerous Israelis.
Pro-Israeli groups and individuals in Congress and the rest of the American political elite have worked hard, for decades now, to demean and marginalize the work of anyone who seeks to understand trends in the Arab world on their own terms. They sowed the wind of our government’s current, stunningly evident impotence regarding events in Egypt. Now we are reaping the whirlwind.
Actually, as the now-inevitable successor government takes over in Egypt — and this may take a few months yet to settle down — the whirlwind will probably not be so bad for most Americans as some fear. A successor government in Cairo will most likely want to have good relations with Washington, as with all other governments around the world. It may well be prepared to live with all the legal terms of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. But most likely, if it is to mark the “clean break” with Mubarakism that is the only source for stability inside Egypt, it will not perform the many other “special services” that Mubarak always seemed so happy to offer to Washington — and to Israel. That is: No more “torture on demand” for the U.S. Special Forces; no more collaborating with Israel to keep the people of Gaza imprisoned; no more covering up for Israel’s gross violations of international law in the occupied territories; no more being a useful U.S. cat’s-paw in the region.
