Glenn Greenwald | Salon.com | December 8, 2011
When the Center for American Progress’ Think Progress blog recently compiled all of the inspiring foreign policy successes of our nation’s strong and resolute Commander-in-Chief, they listed — alongside the assassination of a U.S. citizen without due process and increased deference to Israel — what they hailed as the President’s having “supported democratic transition in Egypt.” President Obama apparently deserves credit for this notwithstanding the fact that his administration supported President Mubarak up to the very last minute; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in 2009, proclaimed: “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family”; and Obama, once Mubarak’s fall became inevitable, tried to engineer the empowerment of Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s long-time trusted lieutenant most responsible for its torture, brutality and domestic repression. If that’s supporting democracy in Egypt, I would hate to see what opposition entails.
Over the past several weeks, the Egyptian government has used brutal and indiscriminate violence against citizen protesters. On November 21, The Wall Street Journal reported that “Military police used rubber bullets, truncheons and tear gas in a failed attempt to expel protesters from” Tahrir Square and that “at least eight people were killed . . . and 192 people were injured.” The same day, The New York Times reported that “the Health Ministry said at least 23 people had died, and several doctors treating patients at a field clinic and nearby hospital said several had been killed by live ammunition, contrary to denials by the Interior Ministry.” That day, White House spokesman Jay Carney issued a bizarrely neutral statement which called for “restraint on all sides” — a statement that triggered predictable and justifiable anger among Egyptians:
The US attempt to reposition itself as a supporter of democracy and human rights in the Middle East is being undermined by a growing Egyptian perception that Washington will back Egypt’s military junta unreservedly despite its increasing repressiveness.
That perception was reinforced yesterday, when a White House statement on the clashes between protesters and security forces appeared to place the blame equally on both sides for violence that has killed at least 29 protesters since Saturday. . . .
That call for restraint on “all sides,” in the face of days of excessive use of force by police and soldiers, was met with incredulity in Cairo. Security forces have shot not only tear gas and rubber bullets, but bird shot and live ammunition at protesters throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. “Should we stop dying? Is that how we should show restraint?” scoffed protester Salma Ahmed as heavy gunfire echoed through Tahrir Square.
That’s standard fare for the U.S.: when a government it dislikes uses violence against its own citizens, it vehemently denounces that government and depicts itself as the guardians of democracy and protest rights; but when an allied government does exactly the same thing, it simply calls for “restraint on all sides” — as though the protesters being killed by U.S.-backed regimes are on equal moral footing with the regimes doing the killing — or, at best, condemns the deaths while refusing to blame the government.
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