The New York Times and others are reporting that the Obama administration is working on a plan to get Mubarak out and usher in his Vice President, Omar Suleiman, the former head of Egypt’s feared intelligence service. That Suleiman is the embodiment of the torture regime the Egyptian people have suffered under for thirty years doesn’t seem to enter into Washington’s calculations. The administration wants to buy time — time to soften up the opposition, time to buy up the opposition, time to create their own pet opposition which will follow orders. Above all, they want to stop the example of a mass mobilization that pitched a dictator from power in spite of massive US support, because the uprising is bound to spread beyond Egypt — perhaps to the United States itself.
The idea is to isolate the protesters, make it seem like they’r radical maximalists who don’t care about the fate of the country, and wear them out to the point where they’ll just give up and go home.
That isn’t going to happen. The Egyptians aren’t going to exchange one torturer for another — not after all they’ve been through. Washington’s strategy is typical of the soul-less opportunists in the Obama White House, of which Obama is the epitome.
Sorry, guys — it won’t work. Back to the drawing board you go.
