Empire burlesque, February 2, 2011
I must agree with As’ad AbuKhalil: The violence we are seeing in Egypt today (Wednesday) is a direct result of a green-light from Washington to "do what it takes" to preserve the Cairo regime. Today we have suddenly seen hundreds of "pro-Mubarak" goons pouring into the public squares to attack the non-violent demonstrators. The Egyptian Army – whom most of the demonstrators had lauded and looked to for protection from the police – is now apparently refusing to interfere with the attacks by the goon squads against the unarmed protestors. The UN reports that at least 300 people have already been killed in violence against the demonstrators since the uprising began: this number will now rise, perhaps sharply.
What is happening seems clear: Mubarak, backed by Obama, has decided to foment a storm of bloodshed, chaos and fear in order to provide a justification for "restoring order" – i.e., crushing the uprising by force. This course could not have been adopted without the support of the Cairo regime’s patrons and paymasters in Washington. None of this should come as a surprise. From the very beginning, the administration of Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been killing people – most of them defenseless civilians – all over the world to advance a brutal agenda of militarist domination and the enrichment of corrupt elites.
For decades, a pliant regime in Egypt has been a linchpin of this thoroughly bipartisan agenda. Obama’s task now is to preserve this arrangement if at all possible. Mubarak himself doesn’t matter; he’s now become a liability to the operation of business as usual. But the power structures in Washington and Cairo can’t afford to have him simply forced from office by popular will; what kind of example would that set? Instead they will seek to use the months until Mubarak’s envisaged retirement in September to beat down the uprising by overt means – as we are seeing on the streets of Egypt’s cities today – and covert means, with the piecemeal arrest of various dissident leaders and other crackdowns on activities that might "threaten public order."
Whether they will succeed in this is still an open question; but things have taken a decidedly darker turn in Egypt. And a great deal of that darkness is being cast by the ever-looming shadow of Washington’s Domination Machine. *AbuKhalil has provided some of the most insightful and informed observations on the uprising in Egypt. Below are a few excerpts from several of his recent posts that throw light on the current situation.
A Western correspondent in Cairo told me that Mubarak goons targeted many reporters and that they also sexually harassed female protesters. Those goons and criminals are the linchpin of Obama's Middle East policy. ...
There are a lot of similarities already between Iran of 1953 and Egypt of 2011. Don't forget what happened in 1953 in Iran. The CIA then hired armed goons and thugs to defeat the pro-democracy movement. This time around, the armed goons are hired by the regime itself. ...
... I just read the speech by Obama: it confirmed my suspicion, that basically Mubarak was permitted by the US to do with the Egyptian people as he would like. Every drop of blood that is spilled in Egypt from this day onwards should be blamed on Obama because he has embraced this new strategy of letting Mubarak defy the popular will of the Egyptian people.
I don't trust the Egyptian army: the top brass is hand picked by the US/Israel [coalition] and can be easily bought off by a combination of bribes, gadgets, and perks. They could care less about the Egyptian people. This is part of the ruling group of this tyrant. ..
The US is now arranging for a coup against the will of the Egyptian people. ... This move by Obama towards Egypt can be described as criminal because it will lead to blood on the streets. I wonder if Obama during his talk with Mubarak discussed numbers like: just don't kill more than 50 or 60 a day, or something like that. His unprincipled cynicism reminds me of the conspiracies of the 1950s. I am so glad that I resisted all efforts by my liberal and leftist friends who were urging me to vote for this personification of the Bush Doctrine.
