Sunday opinion. For ongoing coverage of the uprising in Egypt, see the mothership diary.
WaPo:
The Muslim Brotherhood reversed course in Egypt early Sunday and said it would send representatives later in the day to begin talks on a government transition.
Frank Rich:
Perhaps the most revealing window into America’s media-fed isolation from this crisis — small an example as it may seem — is the default assumption that the Egyptian uprising, like every other paroxysm in the region since the Green Revolution in Iran 18 months ago, must be powered by the twin American-born phenomena of Twitter and Facebook. Television news — at once threatened by the power of the Internet and fearful of appearing unhip — can’t get enough of this cliché...
Al Jazeera English, run by a 35-year veteran of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, is routinely available in Israel and Canada. It provided coverage of the 2009 Gaza war and this year’s Tunisian revolt when no other television networks would or could. Yet in America, it can be found only in Washington, D.C., and on small cable systems in Ohio and Vermont. None of the biggest American cable and satellite companies — Comcast, DirecTV and Time Warner — offer it.
The noxious domestic political atmosphere fostering this near-blackout is obvious to all. It was made vivid last week when Bill O’Reilly of Fox News went on a tear about how Al Jazeera English is "anti-American." This is the same "We report, you decide" Fox News that last week broke away from Cairo just as the confrontations turned violent so that viewers could watch Rupert Murdoch promote his new tablet news product at a publicity event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
It's why Americans hunger for BBC World and Al Jazeera. Our media coverage of international affairs is dreadful.
Larry Diamond:
Two decades after the fall of Soviet-bloc dictatorships, popular movements for democracy are erupting in the last regional bastion of authoritarianism: the Arab world.
So far, only Tunisia's dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, has been toppled, while Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak - who has ruled that ancient land longer than many pharaohs - announced Tuesday that he will step down in September. But other Arab autocrats are bound to go. From Algeria to Syria to Jordan, people are fed up with stagnation and injustice, and are mobilizing for democratic change.
Nicholas Kristof:
When Westerners watched television images of the popular uprising against President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, they winced at the government’s thuggery toward protesters. But some also flinched at the idea of a popular democracy that might give greater voice to Islamic fundamentalism.
In 1979, a grass-roots uprising in Iran led to an undemocratic regime that oppresses women and minorities and destabilizes the region. In 1989, uprisings in Eastern Europe led to the rise of stable democracies. So if Egyptian protesters overcome the government, would this be 1979 or 1989?
No one can predict with certainty. But let me try to offer a dose of reassurance.
Adam Kushner:
Here is a truism: American foreign policy has always been torn between interests and ideals. That dichotomy long predates the popular uprisings roiling Egypt and Tunisia. It animated the Cold War debates over whether we should support democratically elected socialists or Western-aligned autocrats. Policymakers usually settled those disputes by judging what would be most advantageous to the United States, but even when Washington made a noble choice, as when Americans helped push out Filipino kleptocrat Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, things mostly worked out for us in the end. The world is filled with relatively stable nations we once meddled in, still friendly enough to the United States. They do not continue, in perpetuity, to serve up diplomatic, social, economic, and military crises.
The Middle East is, and has always been, a special problem; Egypt is only the latest reminder. Successive presidents have tested both approaches there. The architects of realpolitik tried to balance powers, fabricate stability, and secure natural resources. These realists, alarmed by the unpredictability of democracy, have generally controlled American foreign policy. In the Middle East, they propped up authoritarian leaders, often tolerating economic stagnation and political repression—a story that ends in anti-Western sentiment and Islamism (a strain of which sparked the transnational jihad we are battling today).
David Cameron:
Speaking at a security conference in Munich on Saturday, Mr. Cameron condemned what he called the "hands-off tolerance" in Britain and other European nations that had encouraged Muslims and other immigrant groups "to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream."
He said that the policy had allowed Islamic militants leeway to radicalize young Muslims, some of whom went on to "the next level" by becoming terrorists, and that Europe could not defeat terrorism "simply by the actions we take outside our borders," with military actions like the war in Afghanistan.
"Europe needs to wake up to what is happening in our own countries," he said. "We have to get to the root of the problem."
Sounds like he wants to run for Governor of Arizona.
Karen Tumulty:
These days, no Republican with national ambitions will miss an opportunity to remind us of his or her Reaganesque bona fides. Reagan's precepts of a smaller government, a bigger military, lower taxes and conservative social policies demand absolute fealty.
The irony is that Reagan would not have become such a transformational figure if he had not challenged the political orthodoxy of his own time. His self-declared legatees invoke his name as a pledge to do the opposite, a reassurance that they will not venture beyond what has become conventional thinking in the GOP. What starts as a touchstone, however, can become a millstone, if history is any indication.
Whatever you think of Reagan, today's mean-spirited, misogynist and and racist Republicans pale by comparison.