Boys with Toys That Are Just a Little Too Grown Up for Them

The GOP loves freedom, but not for Egypt

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Why don't conservatives love freedom?

Remember when Liberals said that questioning another party’s patriotism was beyond the pale? That took place amidst the war in Iraq, which actually did bring freedom to the Middle East.

Judging by last week's Conservative Political Action Conference, that's a fair question.

Thank you for adjudicating the fairness of your own questions to yourself. I was very worried that you were going to get railroaded by your own prosecutorial zeal.

As Egyptians overthrew the three-decade rule of Hosni Mubarak,

That dude is old like whoa.

politicians who spoke at the annual CPAC gabfest in Washington ranged from silent to grumpy on the subject.

There’s plenty to be grumpy about. Our President, head of the largest and best-funded intelligence apparatus in the world learned of Mubarak’s resignation on TV.

Mitt Romney, perhaps the leading Republican presidential contender,

Based on what?

gave a speech without once mentioning the upheaval in Cairo that may signal the most important geopolitical shift since the end of the Cold War.

Egypt is a minor regional power that fell to rabble. The USSR was a global counterbalance to the West and a flag-bearer for an entire ideology. 

You'd think that anyone who wanted to be president would be paying attention and might have an opinion or two.

We thought similarly of Barack Obama’s voting record in 2008, but he just kept voting “present.”

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, also believed to be considering a presidential run, likewise seemed not to have noticed that the world was changing.

The world is most certainly not changing—unless it’s in the IBM commercial type of “the world is changing” sort of way. Egypt is changing. Areas of the Middle East might be changing.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty confined himself to criticizing President Obama for somehow appeasing "Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood."

Objections that tame certainly are confining.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who won the CPAC presidential straw poll, was at least forthright: He said the United States has no "moral responsibility to spread our goodness around the world"

That’s because Paul is a libertarian, not a conservative. This is what we mean by a “big tent” in the GOP. Nowhere is the schism between libertarians and conservatives more broad than on foreign policy.

Also, he’s wrong.

and urged the administration "to do a lot less a lot sooner, not only in Egypt but around the world."

I’d have to ask a federal worker how to do a lot less than nothing.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was all over the map. At CPAC, he mentioned "what's happening in Egypt" without commenting further.

He made the very relevant point that political unrest in the Middle East impacts our energy policy. Why that’s downright sane!

On Saturday, he told the Associated Press that Mubarak's resignation was "good for the future"

Which is, of course, in direct contention with his previous “no comment.”

but criticized Obama for publicly supporting the dictator's ouster.

This has a lot more to do with President Obama being demonstrably clueless during the entire ordeal and his senior administration being actively wrong about the facts. It was embarrassing.

On Sunday, Gingrich explained on ABC's "This Week" that Obama was right to side with the freedom-loving protesters in Tahrir Square

There were six of them. The rest were Islamists.

but should have done so privately - as if whispered encouragement, of which there was plenty, had a prayer of making a difference.

Is this laying the groundwork for the claim that Obama in any way, shape, manner, or form played a role in Egypt? He didn’t. He bungled the whole thing.

Meanwhile, protests sparked by the Egypt uprising are raging across the Arab world - Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain.

Literally all of which are equally radical societies as Egypt. Scratch that. I know nothing about Bahrain, so refuse to comment one way or the other.

On Monday, the clamor for democracy surfaced in Iran with the first consequential street demonstrations against theocratic rule since 2009.

You mean the other major protests in the Arab world that the President woefully mismanaged? Isn’t it strange that he supported the protesters against an ally but undermined the protesters of an enemy?

House Speaker John Boehner, at least, has come out forcefully on the side of freedom. But why the ambivalence from so many prominent conservatives?

It’s not ambivalence; it’s tepid optimism. Free elections are a great thing for societies who understand and love freedom. Egypt has shown no indication that they value freedom above Islam or that they prefer liberty to Sharia. There is no developed opposition in Egypt, mostly because of the oppression of the Mubarak regime. That does not, however, mean that the leaders springing up right now are ready to govern a nation that controls one of the greatest thoroughfares for commodities in the world. Nor does it mean that they will yield their personal aspirations to the will of the people. Why aren’t conservatives celebrating? Because we know that in ten years, Egypt is more likely to be an enemy than an ally.

For one thing - and I think this applies to most of the tongue-tied potential candidates - there's the fact that all of this is happening on Obama's watch. If everything turns out well, heaven forbid that the president get any credit.

This is called projection. We saw this during the Iraq War. We as conservatives are not that petty. (Even me.) This is mostly because we love our country. If I recall, questioning the patriotism of dissent was a no-no when a Republican was in office. This whole line of snarky innuendo would be repellent if it weren’t so expected.

The administration's public comments as the Egyptian revolution unfolded seemed to take two steps forward and one step back,

There were steps forward?

but there was never any real question about Obama's sentiments.

Which is undoubtedly relevant because every effective foreign policy is built around sentiments. Sometimes, it’s also built around holding hands, watching Love Actually, and sharing your feelings.

The United States was by no means in control of events,

The United States government didn’t even know about certain events.

but the White House used whatever influence it had

[null set]

to push for a transition.

The conservative mantra has been: Obama Is Always Wrong.

Give us more credit than that; we aim high. The conservative mantra is “liberalism I always wrong.”

Therefore there must be something wrong with the way he handled Egypt –

Those blinders are for the horses, champ. Egypt was the quintessence of mismanaged foreign policy.

even if it appears, from what we've seen so far, that the result is a historic opening for democracy in the world's most troubled region.

No, that happened about six years ago in Iraq. Egypt is far more likely to start a nuclear program than to become a stable democracy. (Keep in mind, even Venezuela votes.)

The other possible explanation for the lukewarm conservative reaction is a lack of faith in our most cherished democratic values - at least where majority-Islam countries are concerned.

Democratic values are incompatible with religious law that includes unconscionable constraints on freedom. This refers not only to the marginalization of women in the Muslim world, but also the theocracy, the temperament for brutal punishments, and the relative comfort with death as a vehicle for change.

There is no democracy in voting for a choice between unconstrained tyrants. There is no merit to voting yourself the right to impinge the freedoms of others. There is no virtue in democracy without freedom.

I'm not talking about Glenn Beck's paranoid fantasy of a vast leftist-Islamist conspiracy for world domination;

Not a conspiracy. Our enemies say as much. Time and time again. To ignore their rhetoric is akin to claiming that anticommunists bought into the “conspiracy” of a worldwide proletarian revolution. It is demonstrably part of the core ideology of our enemy. It is their mission statement.

that's a job for a licensed professional with a prescription pad.

Good idea! He could teach you all about projection!

I'm talking about people such as former U.N. ambassador John Bolton,

Be fair. John Bolton is a spokesperson for his own mustache. Which is awesome.

who told CPAC that "democracy as we see it" in Egypt would be all right

Seriously, that’s how you’re going to paraphrase it? I can’t find the transcript, but I’m fairly certain that John Bolton wasn’t the rhetorical equivalent of a noncommittal emo kid that describes his malaise as “ennui.”

but grumbled that "a democratic election can produce illiberal results."

Excellent verbiage. See why I didn’t buy the inelegant paraphrasing above?

In other words, some Egyptians might vote for candidates put forth by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In other words, a terrorist-supporting organization could run the country’s future parliament and marshal Egypt’s resources towards financing terrorism against the United States and our allies.

It is unlikely that the group would win a majority in free and fair elections

Really? Based on what?

 - or even that a government headed by the Muslim Brotherhood, if it came to that, would necessarily be more dangerous or hostile than the Mubarak regime.

Really? Based on what? Is this guy getting his briefings from James Clapper?

But Bolton and some others seem to believe that only political parties of which the United States approves should be allowed to participate in Egyptian elections.

Bolton and I believe that before shucking a reliable American ally for a military junta bleeding into anarchy, we need reasonable assurances that the change has a reasonable chance of ending favorably for the United States. Failing to receive those assurances belies woeful impotence in the Obama Administration.

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, another presidential contender, used his CPAC speech to blast Obama's handling of Egypt; for weeks, Santorum has been claiming that elections there would lead straight to "sharia law."

Again, the paraphrasing is flagrantly disjointed, but even in this inelegant mangling, Santorum’s assertion is not an unreasonable conclusion.

Pam Geller, the conservative blogger who led opposition to the Lower Manhattan mosque, crashed the CPAC conference and told an interviewer from Mother Jones magazine that Mubarak's fall was "catastrophic" and would lead to sharia law throughout the Middle East.

Well, the parts that don’t already have it. You can’t simultaneously laud the revolution for being a watershed moment for democracy in the region and dismiss opponents who believe that it is equally likely to spread unfavorable politics throughout the region.

These conservatives are arguing that the world's 1.2 billion Muslims cannot be trusted to govern themselves.

True.

That's not what I call loving freedom.

That’s like saying that a father that refuses to give a Ferrari to a toddler doesn’t love sports cars—or toddlers for that matter. The point is that the child is going to hurt himself, and probably us too if he is allowed on the road.