To be as polite about it as possible, the Obama administration hasn't had a good Egyptian Revolution. The onset of the crisis was a surprise to Washington; as events unfolded in Tahrir Square, the President and his spokespeople were torn between fear of the unknown and enthusiasm for democracy; ahead of Mubarak's third speech of the crisis, the White House was confident that he was about to resign, except he didn't; and when Mubarak finally did go, the President was en route from Detroit to DC aboard Air Force One, with the result that the US was, embarrassingly, almost the last to offer an official reaction, prompting a withering on-air reaction from AlJazeera: "you can practically hear the tumbleweeds blowing down the hallways in Washington".
President Obama's eloquent statement to the press when he finally got back to Washington may have repaired some of the damage (and his inability to master the aspirated "H" sound in Tahrir may have helped to dispel the suspicion that he is a secret Muslim!). Even so, the US remains unsure how to react and who to deal with in post-revolutionary Cairo, and still gives the impression of being more concerned about the impact on Israel and the "peace" process than about the fate of the Egyptians themselves.
Over on the US right, the confusion is even greater. Attempts to paint Obama as "the man who lost Egypt" seem to have died down for now, and there are even some attempts by Republicans to portray themselves as the country's liberators. Former Defense Secretary William Cohen (a GOP man even though he served under President Clinton) came right out and told Wolf Blitzer on CNN that the 2003 invasion of Iraq had set the ball rolling for democracy in the Middle East -- a gratuitous insult to the millions rallying all across Egypt, one might think. However, it seems unlikely that many other Republicans will want to take any of the credit just yet, because it's far to soon to be sure whether Hosni Mubarak will be replaced by a pro-Western democracy, or by something much more inimical to US interests. The precedent of Palestine, where the introduction of democracy in response to US pressure resulted in a Hamas government in Gaza, is not comforting for those who think foreigners should vote for what suits the US rather than for what they themselves really want.
Out on the further reaches of the US right, among the media rabble-rousers who do so much to form public opinion, some people have had no hesitation in rushing to judgment: the fall of Mubarak is a disaster. See, for example, this astoundingly mean-spirited piece by Mark Steyn. As often happens with Steyn, it's impossible to tell what he would prefer to see happening, but he leaves little doubt that he'd be content to see Egyptians living under a dictator for countless millenia if that was in the interests of the United States. (It's often hard to believe that Steyn himself is in fact Canadian). Steyn thinks it's significant that the popular uprisings are taking place only in countries that might be considered friendly to the US; Messrs Gadhafi and Assad, he suggests, are sleeping soundly in their beds. Does Steyn sees any causal connection there, and can he suggest any changes in US policy to address it? Maybe he's saving those topics for another article.
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