The American Dream

The greatest thing about watching twenty-four hour rolling news is that it lets you watch the collapse of the world without interruption. Recently, BBC News 24 has regressed back to Roman times, offering the viewer an experience that is not dissimilar to front row seat at the Christian's vs Lions Cup Final.

So, if you have not been watching the news recently, you won't know that the Arab world is beginning to come apart at the seams. There as been an alleged "Jasmin Revolution" in Tunisia, unrest in Yemen and a few other nations, but the big one is Egypt, where things have gone distinctly ploin-shaped for President Mubarak.

Next they'll go for the eyes.

Basically, in a teapot, Egypt is in a very bad way. On a scale of "how-bad-is-it" - when the police abandon the city of Suez, you are led to believe that things could probably be going better for Mubarak. He did respond by firing his entire government, which seems to be rather missing the point. The army is on the streets, at the moment, caught in a weird limbo where they don't really want to do anything that will result in people being shot, even if the end result is President Mubarak being torn apart by a pack of angry jackals.

Anyway, forget that guy. There is another Barrak who has a massive headache over the whole crisis, and that is Barrak Obama, the President of the United States of America, which also goes by a variety of pseudonyms such as "Land of the Free", "Land of Opportunity", "The New World" and other nauseatingly optimistic projections. And the thing you have to remember about America is that it is more than just a state. America is an ideology.

There is a set of criteria that all people possess, and is espoused by what it is to "be American". To be American is to live in a land of meritocracy and unparalleled freedom. It is to be a keeper of peace and a defender of the weak. Everyone wants to be an American, secretly. America left behind a decadent old Europe and became a shining beacon of hope. An exemplar of democracy. A bastion of liberty.

There are no words. Except "intensely creepy".

Flowery language aside, this is where the problem comes for Barrak Obama. America loves democracy. It really does. It can't get enough of democracy, or at least the sort of warped version of democracy that exists in most 'Western' nations. It exports democracy, either in the form of cultural hegemony, economic and diplomatic pressure, or occasionally, by bombing the shit out of people to guarantee their freedom - because "inside every Gook there is an American, trying to get out".

Democracy. Too much of a good thing.

The problem for Obama results from a clash between American idealism and and American realpolitik. Idealism demands that democracy is a good thing, and whilst Egyptian democracy would just be a sham imitation of American awesomeness, it is good and right and progressive. Realpolitik demands that American doesn't say or do anything that would be construed as taking a side, especially since Egypt is a key actor in the Middle East and a crucial American ally.

"America, said Robert Malley, a Middle East expert at the International Crisis Group, is in an impossible hole. “Every time we open our mouth, it runs a risk of hurting the objective we’re pursuing,” he said. “The more we appear to be backing the regimes we’ve been backing for decades, the more we place ourselves on the wrong side of history and the more we alienate the constituencies who could be coming to power.”

But, Mr. Malley added, “the more we side with the protesters, the more we’re hurting the existing relationships and appearing to be fickle.” For instance, the Obama administration’s latest distancing of itself from Mr. Mubarak may not go over well. “It’s not clear to me that the protesters will take seriously expressions of solidarity from a country that’s been backing autocratic regimes,”"

From the NYT

Indeed, the best America can seem to muster is a "deep concern" for Egypt, which translated for non-politico's reads more like "a mild disinterest in stuff that is happening somewhere else", although that is not strictly true. However, I'd be more tempted to cut the cheap rhetoric and call out all this fence sitting for what it is. President Mubarak has a "deep concern", albeit that he may be dismembered by angry proles, while the Saudi King also has a "deep concern" and is looking rather nervously at his own minions and deciding he'd probably better speak up for his old mate before everything goes South for him as well.

So what's happening in Egypt, curiously, is much closer to an American Nightmare than an idealist's dream. There are going to be some big winners and some big losers, and for America, any outcome is going to be a bad one.