Somebody help me out here. As near as I can tell, conservatives are now obsessed by the Muslim Brotherhood and the possibility that it will gain power in Egypt. And, in some vague way, they seem to blame the Obama administration for this possibility. But at the same time, they’re four square in favor of dumping Hosni Mubarak and turning Egypt into a real democracy, and they vaguely blame the Obama administration for not being forthright enough about this as well.
So…..what’s the conservative plan? Does anyone know? How are we supposed to (a) dump Mubarak, (b) support democracy, but (c) ensure that the Muslim Brotherhood is kept on the sidelines? Who’s the go-to conservative if I want to know what their plan is?
The “plan” here is the same “plan” that conservatives have used since January 20, 2009: assert the opposite of whatever Obama says, and damn the consequences. Consult today’s Onion for another example.
jayjaybear
It’s not like the Republicans (and, to be honest, the Democrats) haven’t held those two opposing ideas in tension with each other before. We did an awful lot of diddling with the makeup of the Iraqi parliament and cabinet in the aftermath of our invasion of Iraq, all while proudly declaiming the virtues of democracy.
Chyron HR
The “Plan” is the same as it’s been for the past ten years:
Al from Quantum Leap fucks with everyone’s headsKill all the Muslims to make the world safe for democracy.BGinCHI
No Plan is just another word for nothing left to lose.
Max Peck
I think the plan is to win the white house in 2012. By whatever means necessary.
Jay C
Methinks Mr. Drum is being just a tad on the sarcasticalish side here: although his confusion as to what “conservatives” might think is the best course of action for the US to follow wrt Egypt is quite understandable. Mainly because they don’t have one: or much of any notions outside of “bash Obama”.
In fairness, liberals haven’t been forthcoming with much in the way of good ideas about what to do in Egypt, either: when the “best” course is, in essence, to do nothing/as little as possible (IMHO) – the situation doesn’t lend itself to facile solutions.
Not that that will stop the neocons from fulminating about it, anyway…
Chris
Like I’ve said several times: the plan is to keep both of those narratives alive, then wait and see whether Egypt turns into a nice respectable democracy or an eebil terrarriss Ragheadistan.
If it’s the former, Bush did it.
If it’s the latter, Obama did it.
In neither case will the Egyptian people have had more than the most superficial relevance to what happened.
Here endeth the thought process.
chopper
to be fair, these are the same retards that thought we’d be done in iraq in 6 weeks, and it would all be paid for with oil money. conservative opinion is completely ignorable when it comes to the mideast.
Mike in NC
Kommissar Krauthammer?
Zifnab
Repeal and Replace?
Stand them up as we stand down?
Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran?
It’s adorable anyone still thinks the GOP has a plan, as far as national policy is concerned.
zzyzx
The last two days I listened to Rush for a few minutes to try to find out what the official conservative view was. Yesterday he was reading from the health care law opinion. Today he was saying that it being cold in Dallas disproved global warming.
The impression I get is that he’s not going to weigh in while there’s a chance he might have to change his mind later.
Bnut
Secret GOP Plan for Egypt:
1.Complain bitterly about any and all things
2.???
3.Profit!
Current song:
Boogie on Reggae Woman
Phish
ericblair
Democratic, like “constitutional”, “pro-family” and “Biblical” actually mean “relating to things that I like and/or have been told that I like.”
Therefore, if the Muslim Brotherhood wins a free and fair election it’s undemocratic. Very simple. Trying to get the wingers to admit hypocrisy over this is like the proverbial porcine vocal lesson.
Hope this helps, have a nice day.
Spaghetti Lee
I wish Obama or some other prominent Dems had the sense of humor to goad Republicans into saying stupid (stupider than usual) shit, based on this flaw of theirs. Obama says “I do not support torturing your children or raping your pets”, and the next day every 2012 Gooper candidate is talking about America’s child-torturing, pet-raping future.
New Yorker
The neocons are much easier to understand if you see their every impulse as a defense of the Israeli right. We needed to overthrow Saddam Hussein because he was a threat to Israel (I think they genuinely believed he had WMDs) and we need to bomb Iran because they’re also a threat to Israel. On the other hand, we need authoritarian governments in Egypt and Jordan because they’re not threats to Israel, while democracy there could lead (as it did in Lebanon and Gaza) to governments hostile to Israel.
When you realize that nothing matters to the neocons but the preservation of Israeli supremacy in the middle east (and the subsequent seizure of land and settlement building that comes along with that), it becomes easier to predict what their reaction will be to events in the region and Obama’s responses.
This, of course, doesn’t apply to loons like Glenn Beck or charlatans like Rush Limbaugh.
freelancer
“The Wingnuts were created by Masters of the Universe. They lost their shit. They rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a plan.”
hildebrand
@ericblair: or the successful porcine aviation lesson
Woodrow "asim" Jarvis Hill
@New Yorker: Interestingly, the word I’m hearing is that the neocons are actually splitting from Israel’s hard right over events in Egypt.
If this pans out, it could prove to be very interesting…
Elvis Elvisberg
Well, duh. Because everyone with policy beliefs left the GOP in the Bush era, Republicans have none left. They’re animated entirely by resentment of liberals, foreigners, and minorities.
It is kinda funny to see those resentments collide. “We hate Obama! And we hate Muslims! But… I think I was trained to say a little while ago that the US should spread democracy through the world. So, that means we should… um… Obama sux!”
@Bnut: Great song. It wasn’t til I started listening to real reggae that I realized what a great job Phish does of it.
Chris
@zzyzx:
That’s it exactly.
Suffern ACE
I believe that the plan is to continue to sell arms to whomever is in charge as long as they promise to shoot at the Muslim Brotherhood as often as possible.
Obviously Mubarak was too soft and hasn’t been using the weapons properly, or the people would be happier.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@New Yorker: This, although New Yorker and I are both now in danger of being denounced as anti-Semites.
Little Boots
@New Yorker: True, except I don’t believe they believed, or cared, if Hussein had WMDs. They cared only about one thing: asserting American dominance in the region. Whatever excuse would land a big American army in the middle of the Muslims would do. I do think they though the Arabs would simply fold at that point and beg America to leave and promise to love Israel for ever and ever. In that, they made a terrible miscalculation.
Southern Beale
Umm actually I think that tactic goes back a good bit further. Say to the Clinton Administration, if not even further …
Barkley G
One must not forget the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and ACORN.
I watched Glenn Beck the other day, so I imagine that I’m ahead of most folks on the topic.
Basically the Muslim Brotherhood uses community organization tactics it learned from ACORN. See it makes sense.
We live in scary times.
jl
Some of them have already decided that it would be great if they could cut a new notch on Bush II’s gunbelt by claiming the current crises will lead immediately and painlessly to FREEDOM and the region will transform itself quick as a bunny into a huge prosperous gated Arizona suburb surrounding the Persian Gulf, or Suez Canal.
Then, using strict geometrical logic, the conclusion must be that the unrest is a result of GWBtalk and the Iraq invasion.
I thought that if some group issued incoherent babble that contradicts itself from day to day, that said group would discredit itself among the public and at least some of our political ruling class.
But, since the financial crisis and Great Recession, I have realized that my thought was a mere childish pipedream.
John - A Motley Moose
The Onion is a little slow. I went there in December of ’09.
http://www.motleymoose.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2113
Little Boots
@Barkley G:
And Obama was a … COMMUNITY ORGANIZER. It all fits!!!~!
Just Some Fuckhead
A surge.
Chris
@freelancer:
Far too dumb to by Cylons. Make ’em Daleks.
Nellcote
@Barkley G:
So do the teabaggers. Does that count as ironic yet?
sidhra
The Muslim Brothers are kind of tea partyish. 20 percenters in Egypt. As we’ve seen here, that’s enough to turn politics nasty strange.
Little Boots
@jl:
Incoherent self-contradictory horseshit is what earns you a seat at the table.
freelancer
@Chris:
Shrill, anti-humanistic, monoliths with cold, armored exteriors only capable of xenophobic war cries for the destruction of all others? No, that’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?
Warren Terra
@Chris:
Nah. More like Sontarans (mindlessly militaristic, actually puny but make up for it by marching in unison and waving big guns) or Slitheen (they look like fat bastards, but they’re really ravenous aliens, and their ultimate plan is to blow up the planet into poisonous radioactive chunks that they can sell to foreign-based corporations). But not the coldly emotionless, technically advanced Daleks.
What, me, a nerd?
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: Too late. Zandar’s got the Daleks already, assigned to Harold Ford and the DLC:
TRIANG-U-LATE! TRIANG-U-LATE!
johnsmith1882
The Republican plan is the same as always: throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks. And if nothing sticks, staple-gun that shit to the wall and declare it as “proof” that Obama is a socialist/fascist/Nazi/Muslim Brother/time traveler who wrecked the economy in 2007, and that all liberals hate America/love Stalin/etc./etc./Amen.
jl
Economic conditions of the poor might play some role in the timing of the unrest, though there is much more to it than that. Food stable commodity prices have skyrocketed. People are pressed at a basic level of putting food on the table for their families that will get them angry enough out in the streets and take big risks.
To the extent that economic conditions for the average person has triggered the unrest, I doubt anything Bush II or Obama said or did has much to do with it.
The countries with most unrest are Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Yemen. Lots of poor people, no industrial or manufacturing or agricultural sector that benefits that mass of people, not major energy exporters, so no oil dollars to spread around.
I admit I am just guessing from internatiobal price stats I have been following.
I have not heard the issue of the recent conditions of the people covered in the corporate media. I guess they do not ‘do’ reality or factual information anymore.
News has become corporate social engineering, mass audience marketerring, and political fantasies.
Anyone know of a good analysis of how social and economic conditions have changed recently for average person in those countries, please post a link.
Edit; just remembered, I think, that in Tunisia, it started with one (or a couple?) of people setting themselves on fire as a protest of economic conditions. I think so. I will look later when I have time.
Bulworth
Has the Senate agreed to allow the Kill The Asteroid Kill Bill to procede? Would only be fair, everything requires an up or down vote now, etc.
Stillwater
The conservative plan for Egypt is the same as the conservative plan for health care: Democrats suck! That’s about it, really. Not very rigorous or well thought out, I admit, but sometimes political expediency trumps solving real world problems.
jl
I forgot to post food price index over last two years.
FAO Food Price Index
Release date: 03/01/2011
http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/
Little Boots
If Pharaoh can’t give the people bread, pharaoh must go. So has it ever been.
Chris
@Warren Terra:
More so than me (which should scare you); I missed both references. My sci-fi knowledge isn’t as widespread as all that, but now I’ve got two more things to investigate, so thanks!
MikeJ
@Bulworth: I was also against the Obamasteroid bill but from the left. If we work with Grover Norquist to kill it surely we can get something more liberal passed.
Little Boots
@Little Boots:
the thing is, 1% of our bribes to Egypt could have gone to food security, and he’d still be sitting pretty. Oh, Mubarak, you dumb fuck!
Poopyman
Egypt update:
A Tweet:
If you’ve lost John McCain, you might as well just pack it in.
MikeJ
@Warren Terra: Ever see one of their rallies? I’m guessing Adipose.
Nellcote
@jl:
Ed Shultz on msnbc last night did a couple of segments on banksters/hedge funders fucking up commodity markets and causing food prices to rise world wide.
Linky
Little Boots
@Poopyman:
the guy who thought Sarah Palin could be president thinks Mubarak can’t. That is cold.
Amir_Khalid
What if a Muslim Brotherhood man becomes the next president of Egypt? The Obama admin is sticking to its proper place in this matter: the sidelines. It has to do business with whomever it finds in the Presidential Palace afterward. By not trying to direct events in Egypt, by not anointing any favorites or calling out any bogeymen, it has least a chance of being heard by an MB president of Egypt and persuading him that it serves Egypt best to work within the current arrangement.
Or it could wade in as the neocons want, ordering people around or having the CIA install a US-puppet government. (The blowback in Iran took some 25 years to hit; but when it did, it hit the US hard. It wouldn’t take so long in Egypt this time.) Do the neocons really want to make it a political liability for the Egyptian President to listen to the US?
Chris
This guy knows what’s going on:
@freelancer:
Nice summarization, isn’t it? I’ll throw in this additional line from the wikipedia article, “author Kim Newman has described the Daleks as behaving “like toddlers in perpetual hissy fits”, gloating when in power and throwing tantrums when thwarted.”
Hunhhhh…
The Dangerman
The Holy Triumverate (sum of each % add to 100%)
1) Cut spending X%
2) Cut taxes Y%
3) It’s all Obama’s fault Z%
kindness
The conservative plan for Egypt: Pop a tent in their pants listening to Beck & Rush.
The conservative plan for Sarah Palin: Pop same tent listening to Sarah, erupt tent. Change pants.
I would say they are all doing a circle jerk but honestly they aren’t even touching themselves and they are getting off on it. They are some sick bastards.
Little Boots
@Amir_Khalid:
Depends. would Egypt step back from the treaty with Israel? Lift the blockade on Gaza? In that case, yeah, most Neocons would love to see Egypt and the U.S. in a state of war, if at all possible.
jl
@Nellcote:
Thanks. I don’t think modern derivatives markets all by themselves can make prices rise.
there is a better case that in some cases, they can make prices much more volatile in the short run.
Of course, increased volatility means increased uppidowniness, and uppiddowniness implies periods of more uppiness.
And if you are poor person who needs to eat at least several times a year, then increased volatility is a ‘rise’ that could kill you, or seriously mess with people in your family.
Chris
@Little Boots:
Frankly, I think there’s a not inconsiderable part of the conservative base that’s itching, burning, begging for an all-out Samuel Hungtingtonian war, not just America vs. Egypt but all of Islam vs. “the West” however they define it. When you read the comments section of PJM or wherever you get your wingnut news day after day after day, it’s very hard to conclude otherwise.
Which is the inevitable consequence of stirring them up with ten years of rhetoric about how there is no moderate Islam, there are a billion and a half Muslims in the world and every one of them’s coming to kill you and rape your women.
MikeJ
@Nellcote: I would guess the Russian ban on exports might have a teensy bit to do with a rise in prices.
Tsulagi
As you would expect, all those questions answered, much more, and even history corrected at RedState. Currently in the top recommended diary spot by an obvious student if not graduate of the Glenn Beck School of Advanced International Conspiracy Studies.
You will learn that while the Muslim Brotherhood would be bad, a far worse and sinister choice to head Egypt would be ElBaradei. Did you know that fucker snookered us into invading Iraq? I didn’t until the author who is understandably proud he put more relish on Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s hot dog revealed it.
That sneaky Manchurian candidate Obama actually set up all these events in the hope of installing another “proto-communist” like himself in Egypt, ElBarabei. Like Beck, they can’t be fooled again.
The solution is simple. For democracy to bloom in Egypt their military must act.…
By “And pray,” the author meant the Egyptian military, if not the entire nation, should pray to Allah for a Gooper president elected 20 months from now. That solves all their problems. Because only in that eventuality will “Democracy in Egypt will then be saved, only no will know it, or live to see it.”
Apparently best case democracy will be an unknown known, possibly known only by dead people in Egypt. Success.
Cris
1. Depose Mubarak
2. …
3. Freedom!
MikeJ
@Tsulagi: So they need to hold out 20 months and nobody will live to see it? Huh?
Amir_Khalid
@Cris: In other words, the same plan they had for Iraq.
jimmiraybob
RE: Asteroid Destruction and American Preservation Act
I agree with the Teapublican position that this should be an individual effort – we must maintain the right of the American citizen to: 1) not be coerced by the state to participate in our preservation, and/or 2) individually and independently contract with their own asteroid destruction service provider and not be mandated against their will to support a bloated and corrupt central government boondoggle and communist scheme to enslave mankind. It is time to stand up to the socialist Obama Death From The Skies Plan, which would unconstitutionally, illegally and anti-Biblically contract with only one qualified central asteroid destruction service capable of reducing wasteful redundant services at a considerable savings to the tax payer. We must not sacrifice our liberties on the alter of expediency!
Let the Fountain Hills Arizona Municipal Trash-Collection Tyranny Act of aught and ten be a reminder that together we stand against fascism or together we hang …. [sound of asteroid exploding in atmosphere] …….
Nellcote
@MikeJ:
Yes, that’s a part of it. What I thought was interesting and hasn’t been reported on elsewhere is that something changed a while back that allowed hedging (?) in the commodities markets which allowed a food bubble which we’re seeing the result of now.
jl
@Nellcote:
Weird weather and crop failures around the world have had something to do with the price increases.
Egypt gets wheat from major world exporters.
Big exporters like Australia, Russia and U.S. have had reduced crops due to unusual weather, I think. And fires in Russia last summer, which were consequence of very unusual and intense heat wave.
Nick
You know, when there were crises like this in the past, like in Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyztan, i don’t remember my first reaction being “How can I spin this to reflect on President Bush negatively”
and I hated him.
DPirate
I’m sure “Teh Plan” is similar to Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Chile, Haiti, Iraq, Cuba, Venezuela, Phillipines, Indonesia, Panama, Vietnam, Poland, and everywhere else we’ve stuck our noses.
evinfuilt
@Tsulagi:
Really? The Glenn Beck school of thought really would blame the gentleman warning us about our false intel was actually tricking us to invade by screaming at us not to.
They are toddlers, I mean Daleks.
Morbo
HA, I saw that Onion headline as I was leaving work. Sofa king perfect.
cmorenc
@Little Boots :
IMHO the Bush Admin genuinely thought Saddam Hussein had WMD, the same way a poker player thinks he’s calculated correctly that his opponent has a decent hand, but player is confident he has the better hand, based on what’s on the tables and what “tells” he believes the opponent is showing from his demeanor and past actions. The Bush neocons’ confidence in playing “all in” on the war bet was based on two presumptions:
1) If they were proven right about the WMD, their action in going to war would have been justified in the eyes of both the American people and enough of the Arabic world would have then nervous about the prospect of progressively coming under Saddam’s domination to come around about the justification for the war, in light of Kuwait the first time around.
2) If OTOH they failed to find WMD, nonetheless they were confident the war would be won easily and decisively, and with Saddam gone, Iraq could be quickly stablilized into a profitable, and somewhat grateful ally in possession of a large, friendly oil supply. With such a smashing victory in hand with 9/11 still freshly in the recent past, the vast majority of the American people wouldn’t have cared or paid much attention to the fact that the justification for the invasion (WMD, ties to Al Quaeda) turned out to be dubious, because Americans love a huge success story, where we BOTH take vengeance on an enemy of America AND manage to turn its people and resources around to friendliness and a strong, mutually beneficial relationship.
Recall that even before the Iraq invasion was actually underway, the neocons were already thinking out loud about which troublesome offshoot of the axis of evil they were going to take on or intimidate into submission next – Syria first, then maybe, just maybe Iran. As disastrously wrong as they turned out to be in retrospect, it’s hard to recall just how arrogantly cocky and ambitious they really were back in the first half of 2003.
bcinaz
oops, forgot D) Make sure Obama is blamed, somehow, for some thing.
Bill Arnold
@The Dangerman:
You forgot “piss off liberals”. That’s job #1.
Svensker
@New Yorker:
Yes, this. Although I do think that Rush is, if not a zionist, certainly sympathetic. But there’s been a bit of a wait and see from the not totally rabid zionists on the Right. The total wackaloons — Hannity, Levin, Horowitz, Gellar, etc., have been screaming about losing Mubarak to the Islamofascists from the beginning. They have no problem sacrificing American security and the hopes/lives of millions of Egyptians to the needs of the Israeli settlers.
steve
“to be fair, these are the same retards that thought we’d be done in iraq in 6 weeks, and it would all be paid for with oil money. conservative opinion is completely ignorable
when it comes to the mideast.”fixt!
Caz
Kind of like Balloon Juice – take the opposite position of conservatives all the time, blame them for everything, and damn the consequences.
It certainly must be nice to just be able to blindly support the progressives across the board. It would suck if you had to actually independently evaluate issus and come to your own conclusions. Better to just be a sounding board for the left-wing propaganda.
Mike in NC
If Dick Cheney was still calling the shots in Washington, he’d have had the CIA fix up Ahmed Chalabi with a fake Egyptian birth certificate. He’d then be welcomed with candy and flowers in the streets of Cairo.
jl
@Caz:
“blindly support the progressives across the board.”
Uh oh. You got us.
Solidarity is strong here with the infamous Jane Hamshers and Great Orange Satans of the left.
And people are banned if they criticize the corporatist lackey and political class traitor Obama.
Nick
This is because Obama didn’t use the bully pulpit. Oh, and he’s a corporatist.
Nick
@Caz:
We do, that’s why we blame conservatives for everything