Just now on MSNBC, neocon Dan Senor, former Iraq occupation spokesman, raised the possibility of intervention in Egypt.
Host Chris Jansing asked Senor, more or less, why Americans should care about what’s going on in Egypt. What are the implications for our country and economy?
Senor, as he is trained to do, conjured a dangerous false dichotomy that continues to embroil the US in pointless, expensive, deadly conflicts decade after decade.
“There are two directions it could go. If the Egyptian government — and other governments for that matter — is replaced by moderate secular, pro-American governments that actually want to truly partner with us in fighting terror and fostering some modicum of liberal democracy, progressive government, representative government throughout the region, that’s important for the United States’ security. If things go the other direction, and those governments are replaced by Islamist governments, you could have regimes there that actually incubate terrorists– that directly affect the West, the geopolitical and economic implications are enormous.
“Oil prices could really start spiraling… commodity price inflation… so this could really hit us at home economically — there’s a lot at stake right now. American forces are deployed in Afgfhanistan and Iraq today. If we have a failed state in the Middle East — a total collapse of a government with no real infrastructure that we can work with to actually succeed whatever government it replaces — we will have to deploy American resources at a time that we are pretty stretched thinly right now.”
Two options, says Senor. Egypt can only have a Renfield government that obsessively seeks to please its master to curry its continued favor, or it must descend into a benighted Islamic nutocracy and probably also somehow devolve into an undeveloped facsimile of Afghanistan. The “liberal, progressive, representative” bit is odd since Mubarak and many others like him including the recently deposed Ben Ali of Tunisia are staunch and valued allies of Washington — none embody any of those qualities.
But never mind that. IF Egypt, or the other states who are without doubt in the same line of teetering dominoes, falls, Senor raises the non-negotiable need to “deploy resources” — that’s code for invasion. In case any doubt remains, though, the mention of America’s strained “resources” makes it crystal clear. He’s testing the waters for a US attack on the most populous Arab country.
Egyptians — right now very angry with the US — are not likely to sit back, after ousting a powerful dictator, and allow this to happen. And frankly, the US doesn’t have the ability or resources to take it on, anyhow, as its utter failures in Iraq and Afghanistan prove, not to mention its perpetually botched foreign policy that consists entirely of threats and bribes everywhere else.
America’s foreign policy is still informed by the disproven — by reality, mind you — philosophy of the neoconservatives. Only the debt-fueled collapse of our own system, the Military-Industrial Complex, will end the madness. Since more elections clearly can’t.