International Affairs

Mohamed Elbaradei, who has spent almost all of his waking life on American soil and sees New York, where he taught and worked, as the center of the world, has finally come up with a slogan to unite the Egyptian masses: “Yes, we can.” It does have a catchy ring. The Tunisian revolution, he writes this morning in The New York Times, “sent a powerful psychological message, ‘Yes, we can.’ ” It is clear to Elbaradei who the true leader of Egypt is: American President Barack Obama. But things took a turn yesterday when Hosni Mubarak, who actually lives in Egypt, refused to yield to his demands. President Obama virtually ordered him to step down. Leon Panetta, chief of the CIA, announced that Mubarak would follow the directive without hesitation last night. But he did not. Mubarak’s slogan might be, “No, we won’t.”

I’m sorry to spoil the party, but I’m troubled by some of the reporting on the upheaval in Egypt, with the focus essentially on the protesters in Tahrir Square. The breathless reporting — including by what seems to be every columnist ever employed by The New York Times — has neglected what’s been going on in the rest of the country. Al Jazeera’s wanton exaggeration of the number of people on the square, which I saw with my own eyes, reflects that channel’s particular agenda.

I’ve been thinking about something I was told when I was in Cairo the day after hundreds of thousands of people flocked to the square. That night, Mubarak went on TV for one of his speeches, in which he said he would go, but not until September. That remains his position, as we saw again in his rambling and self-deluded address yesterday.

Note: Stoddard is a regular columnist for The Hill. For her latest piece, see here.

Reports out of Egypt indicate that President Hosni Mubarak could go tonight. This is a sudden reversal from a protest movement that was facing long odds just 48 hours ago.

All week, protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo have watched as their new vice president, Omar Suleiman, went through the motions of "negotiations" with opposition leaders that participants dismissed as inadequate and insincere. They watched as the United States provided quiet consent. President Obama even used the word "progress" to describe the talks in which Suleiman affirmed that President Mubarak would never resign and also insisted there was no need to lift the state of emergency Egyptians have lived under for 30 years under the Mubarak regime.

There’s plenty of free advice for the Obama administration over its Middle East policies at the annual Herzliya conference in Israel, where policymakers and other security experts are meeting to discuss the strategic challenges of the day.

In the past dominated by Iran and its nuclear program, this year’s conference has been marked by angst about the turmoil in Egypt. The Israelis are particularly worried about the authoritarian government of President Hosni Mubarak being replaced after elections by a government where the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood could have a role.

Unlike Egypt, America was blessed with the opportunity to grow and mature in “splendid isolation.”

We enjoyed an abundant land and a wide sea separating us from the political intrigue and factiousness of Europe and Asia. We had time to develop our nation — time Egypt and the Arab world, unfortunately, may not have.

The world is so interconnected that nascent democracies will be instantly burdened with the demands placed on mature nations. This is not yesterday’s American Revolution.

We know he broke the law. He even admits he broke the law. And finally George W. Bush was forced to face the music — almost!

In a deliciously ironic twist, the former president has been forced to cancel a long-planned trip to Switzerland next weekend, to give a speech and sell books — because he risked being slapped in handcuffs the minute he walked off the plane.

Amnesty International and other human rights organizations had petitioned the government of Switzerland to seize Bush and hold him responsible for war crimes, including torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

OMG, Sarah “I can see Russia from my house” Palin is about to give a major speech tonight in California at the Ronald Reagan Ranch Center. For all of you who are waiting with bated breath to hear her views, maybe on Egypt, which she has not said a peep about, you will have to wait until near midnight East Coast time. 

Why have we not heard a Twitter from Sarah? Not a Facebook posting? Not a ghostwritten piece in The Wall Street Journal or even a quick comment on Fox News?  Read more...

I've been covering the events today from Tahrir Square in Cairo for NHK.

And the situation now is like the following:

Youth protesters do believe that there's NO WAY that Mubarak can stay for a single day, as his revenge will be furious, and the problem now is that there's no serious or popular alternative for him, as he never allowed any other voice in the street for decades …

Now the most accepted idea is for Mubarak to step down and his vice to take over for 60 days until some real presidential elections can start. During the 60 days, the parliament needs to change the constitution of Egypt to allow more people to be elected ...  Read more...

The hysterical reaction here in Israel to the dramatic events unfolding in Egypt is predictably based on this country’s obsession with Iran, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning all over the place that Egypt risks an Islamic takeover if President Mubarak goes.

Today’s Israeli newspapers are full of similar warnings about the Muslim Brotherhood, which remains the only organized opposition party in Egypt. But I would offer a different model: Don’t think Iran, think Turkey. In Ankara there is a stable, democratically elected pro-Islamic government with aspirations to join the European Union and where the army still sees itself as the guarantor of the secular state. Indeed, Turkey and Israel had friendly relations until the Israeli raid on the Turkish flotilla that tried to break the Gaza blockade last spring.

A closer look at China in the post-Cold War years reveals a much different picture: a country facing inward to develop the brains, heart and courage to make the most of the modern world.

While China’s inexorable economic advance over the past two decades has made it now a force to be reckoned with, doubts about its true strength have remained prevalent. Despite evidence to the contrary, Westerners assumed that China’s economy would not really thrive unless it began to adopt Western-style democracy, observe international human-rights conventions and develop the technological proficiency to begin producing specialized, non-commodity goods.