Friday, January 28, 2011

WaPo Calls for Obama to Break With Mubarak

The Washington Post isn't pulling punches.   It calls for President Obama to break with Egypt's Mubarak and, instead, reach out to ElBaradei and for the Pentagon to put their Egyptian counterparts on notice not to turn on the protesters:

Rather than calling on an intransigent ruler to implement "reforms," the administration should be attempting to prepare for the peaceful implementation of the opposition platform. It should be reaching out to Mr. ElBaradei - who Friday was reported to be under house arrest - and other mainstream opposition leaders. And it should be telling the Egyptian army, with no qualification, that the violent suppression of the uprising will rupture its relationship with the United States.
The one place WikiLeaks' document dump has truly wounded Washington is in the Middle East.  These documents revealed American perfidy in its dealings with Israel and the Palestinian Authority to essentially sell the Palestinians down the river.  They also revealed America's steadfast support for the hopelessly corrupt regime of Ben Ali in Tunisia.  Worse still they laid bare America's knowledge of widespread torture by the Mubarak regime to suppress any dissent while America sat mute.  It's too late now for the White House to be calling for reform.  They've lost the moral highground throughout the Arab world and they're going to have to get ahead of events if American prestige and influence is going to be maintained in that region.  The Obama administration, aping its predecessors, has an awful lot of catching up to do.

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