Son of a Pharaoh

US support for sundry dictators around the world has generally relied on the so-called "son-of-a-bitch" theory: President X may be a son-of-a-bitch, but at least he's our SOB. It's only when President X comes under pressure at home that the flipside of the theory becomes apparent: he may be ours, but as far as his people are concerned, he's a US-sponsored SOB and they want him gone.

Hosni Mubarak is hardly the worst SOB in today's world -- heck, he's not even the worst in his own neighbourhood. But he's clearly on his way out now, and as ever the US State Department is panicking because it seems to have no good options in dealing with the crisis. That's the thing with the SOB theory, of course. Because your guy is an SOB, and because you're encouraging him, he tends to get rid of all possible competitors. When he takes the inevitable fall, you can't even find another biddable SOB to replace him with. This means that the "Iran-II" scenario that the Obama administration is now terrified of in Egypt has in fact been made much more likely by Washington's decades-long support of Mubarak. When the Shah was forced out of Iran, the only opposition group ready to fill the vacuum turned out to be the Islamists; in Cairo, it may turn out to be the Moslem Brotherhood, even if that's not what most of the crowds protesting in Tahrir Square want.

There really is no gratitude in the world, is there? Egypt is the second-largest recipient of US military aid, behind only.....Israel, of course! In the event that those two countries had gone to war in the past twenty years, they would have been pelting each other with US-made, US taxpayer-funded ordnance (though it has to be said that the Israelis always got the fanciest stuff). And if the Moslem Brotherhood really does emerge on top in Cairo, that's the weaponry that they'll be brandishing across the Sinai peninsula. Result!

The Republicans are already positioning themselves to brand President Obama as "the man who lost Egypt", just as Jimmy Carter was "the man who lost Iran". That mud may stick, but the sad truth is that the son-of-a-bitch approach to foreign policy is one of the few things that has commanded bipartisan support in Washington through the years, even though it always seems to end up the same way.