Egypt’s President, Hosni Mubarak, is a worried man. After 24 years of despotism, he’s just announced his country will be holding a real election. In a sense, of course, this is nothing new. Egyptians have been voting every six years since Mubarak took power in 1981 — The difference this time is that there will be other names on the ballot paper beside his own.

Here’s the BBC, still trying to make the old swine sound relevant:

The surprise announcement followed US and domestic pressure for reform in the Arab world’s most populous nation.
Mr Mubarak said the move was aimed at bringing the law ‘in line with this stage of our nation’s history’.

Well, although al-Beeb feign surprise, anyone listening to E.U. Foreign Policy Scumbag Javier Solana’s truly breathtaking anti-American rant last week wouldn’t be quite so shocked by this news. Solana, we must remember, has been sucking up to Arab dictators for decades, so when he offers an opinion on their state of mind, he likely knows what he’s talking about:

But Solana said it was too early for Washington to predict the future for Iraq.

‘Think about it. What kind of regime will emerge? It is too early to say. You don’t know what is going to happen in Iraq,’ adding that he was basing his assessment on his discussions with leaders in the region.

‘I can tell you, if you go to Jordan and talk to the king of Jordan, he is in panic.’ Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, too, Solana said, ‘is in panic.’

This is interesting, not least because it puts a whole, new spin on Mubarak’s announcement. For ‘in line with this stage of our nation’s history’ read: ‘Oh crap. I am so screwed.’

And, yes, it’s really, *really* good to watch a creature like Mubarak squirm.

For decades now across the Middle East, men like him have been playing everyone. They take power, and to hang on to it, commit innumerable crimes against their own people. Rob them, rape them, torture them, kill them — You name it, scum like Mubarak are guilty of doing it … Which creates a problem in that they also need to come up with a way of diverting the attention of their poor, huddled masses away from the reason they’re, well, poor and huddled in the first place.

The solution for these sociopaths has always been to point the finger at Israel and the West. Of course, they don’t do the pointing themselves — as Saddam and the Taliban found out, that isn’t so good for business. Much easier to push a little cash into the hands of some religious crazies and let them disseminate the message of hate on your behalf.

As plans go, this has a brutal, brilliant simplicity to it. The dictators keep power, do as they please, and if any rage or violence should arise from their behaviour, the Israelis and the U.S. are the ones who suffer for it.

There are, of course, a couple of problems arising from this system of government:

First, some madman might actually believe, or half-believe, the lies you keep spinning. When that happens, you get Bin Ladens, Hezbollahs, and the tens of thousands of other Islamonazi head-hackers currently polluting the world with violence. If they weren’t so damned evil, they’d cut tragic figures; men who’ve dedicated their lives to fighting for a tyrant’s propaganda. Even more pathetic, this ‘noble cause’ they’re serving isn’t even taken seriously by the very people who created it — the Mubaraks of this world view their terrorist spawnings as a kind of toxic by-product of the process that keeps them in power, nothing more.

… Which brings us to the second, major flaw in Middle Eastern politics. You see, most dictators have the decency to actually believe the propaganda they put out. Hitler really hated Jews. Stalin really hated capitalism. This old-fashioned, sincere-style tyranny at least meant the tyrants walked in lock-step with the people they oppressed.

In the Middle East, they don’t even have the moral integrity to do that. Instead, having created monsters like Bin Laden, the likes of House Saud and Mubarak wash their hands of them in order court the U.S. for petro-dollars and humanitarian aid.

The problem, which would be poetic if it hadn’t cost so many innocent lives, is that if you don’t keep your monsters on a tight enough leash, they might well run completely out of your control.

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, this was just what happened.

That day was the tipping-point in the fortunes of Mubarak and his ilk. Up until then, Islamonazis had been nothing more than a local annoyance — not damaging enough to cause serious problems in the world at large, and certainly not so damaging as to offset the value anti-Americanism was to maintaining the power of Middle Eastern dictators.

But on 9/11 these crazies did the unthinkable by committing an atrocity serious enough to be described as an act of war. And they did it on the watch of perhaps the most conservative President in U.S. history. Not. Smart.

So fast-forward four years. Courtesy of George Bush, the people of the Middle East have just been treated to their first representative democracy. No matter, not anymore, that the elections in Iraq took place after an invasion. The point is that, finally, a part of the region has moved forward, and in defiance of the threats Zarqawi, who went from sounding threatening to sounding like a loser virtually overnight. The spell of tyranny, it is to be hoped, has been broken.

And not just in Iraq. Over in Egypt, which is easily the region’s most populous country, Mubarak (depending on who you believe) is either making ’surprise announcements’ or is ‘in a panic’. Either way, he’s just made the only mistake a tyrant can never afford.

You see, while democratically-elected leaders are allowed the odd u-turn on policy, the whole point of being a dictator is that you never have to admit you were wrong. This is Lesson Number One in despot-school, and something even Saddam understood. That was why he had his little, trained minion stand up in front of the world’s media and announce there were no infidels at Baghdad airport. By that point, everyone apart from Robert Fisk was sniggering.

Only, Saddam did, at least, stay in character to the very end. Like a Victorian-era ship’s captain snapping to a salute as the waters rose around his ears, he played the role of ‘invincible’ tyrant to the very end.

Over in Tehran, they’re doing the same thing, ranting about U.S. weakness and rivers of infidel blood. It’s the same story in Syria, where, in defiance of George Bush’s inaugural speech, they’ve got crazies self-detonating in all directions.

Mubarak, though, has lost his nerve, and is the first to buckle. If Solana’s right, King Abdullah of Jordan will be next.

Whatever. Fight or flee, it won’t save any of them. Right on cue, the dominoes are starting to fall.

Said RottyPup @ 4:56 am | Permalink   

1. And the world is watching! It should be very interesting to see what the Guardian and Le Monde are going to say when their crying and complaining on behalf of the Ba’athists becomes outright ridiculous because of the turning tides in the Middle East.

   Comment by Cao — 2/27/2005 @ 6:53 am

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2. At least they are finally doing it right, lets offer kudos to them for the attempt even if it is a little late n the game. I guess they see the writing on the wall.

   Comment by RichardNixon — 2/27/2005 @ 9:20 am

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3. Oh, the left will just make up some lie about how none of the democratic changes that are taking place in the Middle East have anything to do with Bush’s foreign policy. It’ll be just like the way they lie about Reagan, saying that the Berlin Wall coming down really had nothing to do with him and would’ve come down anyway.

   Comment by Eye Doc — 2/27/2005 @ 1:29 pm

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4. Isn’t it amazing that the very countries that bitch and moan about the US are only still speaking their native languages because of the US? I say next time we let them hack it on their own. After all, we wouldn’t want to be even more warmongering than we already are, would we? At least the majority of the Iraqis have the decency to quit calling us the Great Satan.

   Comment by SilverBubble — 2/27/2005 @ 3:48 pm

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5. Mubarak squirming is always a good thing, but you seem unaware that the US has been his biggest backer all these years. The idea that somehow we didn’t have a direct hand in creating this entire scenario is laughable. I hope the Iraq turns into a flourishing democracy, but Solana isn’t wrong to say it’s too early to tell. Unless you’re clairvoyant, it’s too early to tell.

   Comment by Rob — 2/27/2005 @ 5:10 pm

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6. Speaking of the left making up stuff. Where are all the reports on Afghanistan?

   And have you noticed that we see less and less headlines on Iraq and more and more headlines on Iran?

   The great thing is that they can’t even keep their agenda a secret anymore.

   Comment by Morg — 2/27/2005 @ 5:23 pm

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7. Agenda? Plenty of reporters are biased, but in general the “MSM” goes where the latest story–meaning conflict–is. I’m sure you’ve heard the old saw “if it bleeds, it leads.” Well, it’s true. Remember, these are businesses. They’re trying to sell papers–or advertising. And if the newest threat, as declared by the Bush Administration, is Iran, then they’ll go to it.

   And lest anyone forget, thanks to some UK funny business in the early 1950’s, we overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran–along with a few other democratically elected governments elsewhere on the globe.

   So it’s no thanks to us that we’re dealing with this yet again. Remember, we’re the people who backed some of the nastiest regimes that slaughtered their own citizens, including Saddam Hussein. We may not do that now–or not like we used to–but it’s no wonder that we’re called the Great Satan.

   Does that mean that we want Iran to have nukes? No. But it does mean that we should be careful how we approach issues like this, and jingoistic declarations of patriotism serve only to obscure the issues.

   Comment by Rob — 2/28/2005 @ 1:33 am

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8. ‘If it bleeds it leads.’ Hey! What a great policy! So let’s have stories about thousands of bleeding head-hackers on the lead pages of the Guardian … Because, you know what most of us here think? We think that the media, quite apart from running a business, are also horribly biased, and concerned with making a successful war look like a failure.

   As the familiar whining about our past policies in the Middle East — This just won’t cut it. Consider Japan. The U.S. actually nuked them. Twice. Are the Japanese calling us the Great Satan? Hardly. They’re more interested in the latest baseball scores. Ditto Germany, who the U.S. and Britain absolutely flattened 60 years ago. No one considers Germans a threat (an annoyance, yes, but not at threat).

   So what’s the difference between these countries and those in the Middle East? Simple. While Japan and Germany are stable and sane democracies, the Middle East has always been run by unstable crazies. These governments create problems, foster hatreds, stoke ill-feelings as a way of maintaining their grip on power. This was part of the point I was making.

   What we do about this, how we respond, depends on the level of threat they pose. Precisely because we’re civilised, we don’t take it upon ourselves to invade every country we take exception to. To make war, we need a justification, which 9/11 provided. Before that day, the Middle East was something we did our best to handle, but without direct intervention. This is why Saddam was allowed to buy weapons from us, and why Egypt got humanitarian aid (which I did mention).

   Was this an ideal situation? If the alternative is open warfare, then, yes, absolutely. Because civilised nations don’t make war unless they have to, and, given that until 9/11 we didn’t have to, trying to make the best of a bad situation by propping up the more stable of the Middle East’s regimes was definitely the way to go.

   Comment by RottyPup — 2/28/2005 @ 9:41 am

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9. RottyPup has hit the nerve. Additionally, Ted Turner’s theme song should be Don Henley’s song Dirty Laundry”

   I make my living off the evening news
   Just give me something-something I can use
   People love it when you lose,
   They love dirty laundry

   Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
   I just have to look good, I don’t have to be clear
   Come and whisper in my ear
   Give us dirty laundry

   Kick ’em when they’re up…
   Kick ’em all around

   We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
   Comes on at five
   She can tell you ’bout the plane crash with a gleam
   In her eye
   It’s interesting when people die-
   Give us dirty laundry

   Can we film the operation?
   Is the head dead yet?
   You know, the boys in the newsroom got a
   Running bet
   Get the widow on the set!
   We need dirty laundry

   You don’t really need to find out what’s going on
   You don’t really want to know just how far it’s gone
   Just leave well enough alone
   Eat your dirty laundry

   Comment by Pi Man — 2/28/2005 @ 10:30 am

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