[in48092]

American ME studies grad from University of Massachusetts posting from Damascus, Syria.

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As far as I am concerned America should stop all forms of support to Egypt. Egypt is a moderately oppressive pseudo-dictatorship which has the worst of both worlds: a failed socialist system and a militant government. Its amazing how a few weeks here can make you support isolationist policies.

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I agree with you that Mubarak is a complete reprobate. I'd qualify him as pretty much a full on dictator, nothing psuedo about it. I think an interesting track for America to take vis a vis Egypt would be to strongly encourage a democratic transition when that frail [censored] finally dies. I don't mean "encourage" democracy like we did in Iraq, but withold our massive aid package until they hold quasi legitimate parliamentary elections. Allow the Ikhwan to run freely and openly. I'd assume that they would make fairly large gains, possibly even winning a plurality. Let them form a government and continue with our aid package, only witholding if they reneged on Sadats agreeemnt with Israel. The reason the Ikhwan are so popular now is that by and large the secular governments of the last 100 years have been a complete failure in terms of widely raising standards of living/providing services to the general populace. One of two things would happen under an Ikhwan formed government, either they would build on there existing social welfare institutions successfully converting them to a statewide level,or they would fail. Should the latter happen hopefully a moderate secular candidate would emerge, and at worst another military man would emerge and we'd be back where we started only now the Ikhwan would have had a crack at it and failed.

Most of the crazies who have split from the Ikhwan (Islamic Jihad etc...) have done so because of the failed policy of gradualism that have hisotrically been employed in Egypt, Jordan etc...Despite token seats in the Egyptian "parliament" they've never held any real power. Give the mainstream Brothers a chance in the name of democracy. The worst (best) that can happen is that they'll fail.