This morning on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC radio, David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times said that Egypt’s caretaker government is reflecting the will of its people in taking steps to lessen the oppression of the Palestinians, and Gideon Rose, who is the editor of Foreign Affairs, responded (at 5:00 or so):
I think they’re getting a little bit ahead of themselves… They’re kidding themselves first of all if they think that there are all sorts of wonderful other options out there for Egyptian foreign policy that won’t have significant downsides. The more they move in this direction, the more they’re going to realize that you know what, the Mubarak government did what it did for some very good reasons and that you don’t want to make United States and Israel dramatically unhappy. And so it’s going to pose some very interesting questions. Because the U.S. on the one hand wants to support and nurture and succor the new Egyptian regime, and the new democratic Egypt, but at the same time there are some red lines that it doesn’t want to see crossed, and there’s a lot of aid and a lot of benefits for Egypt in being friendly with the United States and Israel. So just how much room the Egyptian foreign policy has to run in meeting the demands of its people it will be interesting to see. I think there is a little bit less flexibility than many of the people who are now in power in Egypt or who are starting to think they’re in power will find
David Kirkpatrick responded smartly, saying that these changes seem bold in the U.S. but they are very small, and Egypt has done nothing to actually undermine the 78 treaty with Israel.
I find Rose’s comments thuggish. A powerful man, a leader of the Council of Foreign Relations, he aligns himself with the late hated dictator and says to Egypt, You cannot go against American interests, or we will make life difficult for you, and take away your money. But at the heart of those “interests” are enormous and unaccounted costs– financially, and in our image, because of our support for Israeli occupation– and these costs are something that Rose refuses to assess, and that Brian Lehrer also. And why? Because (I believe) both men regard the establishment of Israel as a great and necessary liberal advance, as so many American Jews do. And in this way the Israel lobby finds a platform in complacent American media, and always finds a rationalization for Palestinian dispossession, including in this instance support for a dictator and indifference to the political desires of 80 million Egyptians.
