The current revolt in Egypt seems unlikely to be calmed or suppressed given that Egypt's troops have by and large refused to engage those involved in the popular uprising. This is hardly surprising because it appears that the troops are largely from the same places as the protesters, and are reluctant to kill their fellow Egyptians to support a dictatorship. Bully for them. After Tunisia, if Egypt goes then the United States is possibly going to see uprisings in many more of the repressive countries it is in bed with politically and economically in the name of expediency and profitable trade.

This is going to require some creativity from Hillary Clinton's State Department (and I do hope that whoever is in charge of the CIA now has the dogs on a firm leash: we wouldn't want to cause the wrong kind of political instability, now would we?) at a time when the USA has not been phenomenally impressive itself. Clinton saw fit to lecture the world on Internet freedoms. Here's a part of what she had to say at the Newseum on January 21:

Now, we are reinvigorating the Global Internet Freedom Task Force as a forum for addressing threats to internet freedom around the world, and we are urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments’ demands for censorship and surveillance. The private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression. And when their business dealings threaten to undermine this freedom, they need to consider what’s right, not simply what’s a quick profit. 

And yet domestic legislation is being prepared to allow the US government to turn off the Internet in much the same way that the Egyptian government has. The proponents of the Bill argue that only critical infrastructure will be covered by the legislation, which leads us to another rather interesting point: the President's choice of the systems (whether public or private) making up the critical infrastructure is specifically barred from judicial review. Yet another example of suspending the operation of the constitution in order to protect ... the operation of the constitution.

Those are brave and interesting words from the Secretary of State of an administration whose Vice President was rolled out to ceremoniously deny that Mubarak is a dictator and appease him in the most ingratiating way shortly before he cut off almost all Internet links to the outside world. One might have thought that such censorship would have brought some protest, but as yet there appears to be no chink in the facade that Hosni Mubarak is a paid-up member of the good ole boys' club. Is it likely American businesses all over the country reconsidering their commercial links with Egypt: "Gee, Harry, they cut off the Internet in Egypt. That's not right. Maybe we should stop selling them tear gas?" You can probably put that down as an episode of "things that will never happen". Oh, sorry, only media companies are supposed to worry about their business dealings undermining freedom.

Anyway, assuming that the Egyptian government falls and the American government realizes that it can no longer continue to bury its head in the sand, what might be the best policy for dealing with the states that were formerly "good friends" but whose people have now taken this democracy idea way too far and actually incited the kind of revolution that in 1776 started America down the path to becoming the imperialist giant it now is? So far there has been little hostility to the US -- the discontent has been purely internal. Of course back in the 1970's the CIA (remember that leash?) would simply have conspired with the opposition to stage a coup. Strange, isn't it, how a country that professes to love democracy finds it expedient to suppress it using all the tools of state repression that they fashion to deplore in others when the policies of a democratically-elected government don't suit them? Salvador Allende would have been a far better ruler for the Chilean people than Augusto Pinochet, who was a brutal dictator of the worst kind and deserves, if there is such a place, to burn in Hell. Yet the CIA funded and conspired in his coup d'etat. Good for business, don't you know.

So the question as I see it is whether US foreign policy can be finally placed on a level footing, with rules and relationships clearly stated and maintained under public scrutiny. If not then it will continue to be the shady, underhanded skullduggery that encourages people like Pinochet and Mubarak. It seems that we have learned nothing from the mistakes we made in arming the Afghani "rebels" to fight Russia in the 1980s only to see those same weapons deployed against American troops when our good friends became our sworn enemies.  Sadly, it seems that professional politicians and diplomats now have such a stranglehold on the whole process that "the people" don't get a look in. This is a great shame, since when individual people from conflicting nations are allowed to mix socially they almost always realize that the humanity they share far outweighs any differences between them. I am sorry to say that, as a country, you just can't trust America.

It's time for the American people, and people of all other developed nations, to use whatever education they have to answer some simple questions like: "Whose interests does this incessant conflict serve?" and "Why does the US spend almost as much on war* as the rest of the world put together?" Each cruise missile costs over half a million dollars. They are way too profitable to just stay in the armory, but of course the only way the DoD is going to need more is if it uses the ones it has. So the armaments and munitions companies certainly aren't going to complain about America's gunboat diplomacy: it is just too good for the bottom line**. As always, "follow the money" is a good rule of thumb.

Since Ms. Clinton appears from the speech I quoted above to feel that public scrutiny (what we used to naively refer to as "the oxygen of publicity") will help to avoid bad government, I should like to challenge her to open up the workings of her own department to scrutiny by the citizenry. As she herself points out, we now have the technology to make this eminently practical, just as it would for public accounting scrutiny. Alas, there are I fear just too many dirty deals, too many situations where duplicity is going to be the chosen way to relate to other countries, so I don't see such openness arriving any time soon.

Let's hope I am wrong.

* They call it "defense", of course. This is mealy-mouthed bullshit of the worst kind. It's all about aggression.
** At least we are now spared the feeble bleatings that weapons profits will contribute to some people's pension schemes since it has become perfectly obvious that the banks will rob the citizenry of any wealth they might happen to accumulate.