Middle East

[randolph]

Originally Posted by smc

I said "U.S. policy" -- which is what you wrote of in your initial post. Further, I stated that the Palestinian question has been used to keep Arabs focused on something other than their own regimes; this does not mean that they are incapable of so focusing, as the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen demonstrate.

In Egypt specifically, while the demonstrators clamor for human rights, economic justice, and so on, the position of their government -- i.e., its power, the arms it posses thanks to billions in U.S. military aid each year, etc. -- are directly linked to the Palestinian question.

So, they cannot be teased apart so simply.

No question the Middle east is a sea of complex issues. I suspect we desperately want Mubarak to hang in there. If he bails it will provide a powerful motivation for the youth in other Middle East countries to rise up.
Did we ever realize that the cellphone, facebook and the internet would replace our foreign policy?
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