The facile triumphant attitude of some Americans with these Egypt revolutionaries is starting to get on my nerves. For anyone with a connection to Egypt, of course this is life-changing news. Celebrate and enjoy. Hopefully it will lead to better things. Now is a moment for hope.
But for Americans, perhaps now is a time for introspection, rather than celebration. The United States has been giving money and weapons to Mubarak for decades. And now we're cheering his removal from office? Wha? That's like cheering for a baseball team when they're winning, and then turning around and cheering when they lose. He's been our sonofabitch for three decades. Not sure we get to act as bastions of democratic principles in his departure when we have been the ones responsible for ignoring them on his behalf since 1981.
What's more, the United States still supports anti-democratic dictatorships throughout the region, most notably in Saudi Arabia. We have supported moderate to right-wing, pro-American dictatorships over anti-American democratic states since the days of Vietnam, Allende in Chile, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Cyprus.
And these countries don't forget. So when they do depose their anti-democratic tyrants, they tend not to have a pro-American point of view. That's not a prediction. Rather, a point of logic and probability.
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