Egypt, the U.S., Mubarak, 9/11, Arab democracy

Ross Douthat, in what might just be his best column ever, completes a circle of sorts by reminding us that the U.S.'s continued propping up of Mubarak was surely a major factor in 9/11. Remember, mastermind Mohamed Atta, among others, was Egyptian. He notes that the thuggish nature of Mubarak's crackdown on the Muslim Brotehrhood, as we turned a blind eye to that, caused people like Atta to develop.

The column is good enough, as far as it goes.

But, it gets better, as he calls out the neocons and other democracy-promoting idealists who lose their idealism when Islamic political parties become part of the mix. Or, when other things don't go according to the plans on paper.

I'm making a long, deserved, quote:

The memory of Nasser is a reminder that even if post-Mubarak Egypt doesn’t descend into religious dictatorship, it’s still likely to lurch in a more anti-American direction. The long-term consequences of a more populist and nationalistic Egypt might be better for the United States than the stasis of the Mubarak era, and the terrorism that it helped inspire. But then again they might be worse. There are devils behind every door.

Americans don’t like to admit this. We take refuge in foreign policy systems: liberal internationalism or realpolitik, neoconservatism or noninterventionism. We have theories, and expect the facts to fall into line behind them. Support democracy, and stability will take care of itself. Don’t meddle, and nobody will meddle with you. International institutions will keep the peace. No, balance-of-power politics will do it.

But history makes fools of us all. We make deals with dictators, and reap the whirlwind of terrorism. We promote democracy, and watch Islamists gain power from Iraq to Palestine. We leap into humanitarian interventions, and get bloodied in Somalia. We stay out, and watch genocide engulf Rwanda. We intervene in Afghanistan and then depart, and watch the Taliban take over. We intervene in Afghanistan and stay, and end up trapped there, with no end in sight.

Sooner or later, the theories always fail. The world is too complicated for them, and too tragic. History has its upward arcs, but most crises require weighing unknowns against unknowns, and choosing between competing evils.

To me, this is another part of American exceptionalism — the idea that American politics, and foreign policy, is so great that other nations should just automatically line up. It's also another part of American exceptionalism — that the general public, as well as the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, can maintain directly contradictory ideas in place at the same time, because we're America, dammit.