Imperial hypocrisies | SocialistWorker.org
Imperial hypocrisies | SocialistWorker.org
THE DAY before Hosni Mubarak officially became Egypt's ex-president, John Negroponte, the U.S. diplomat who has been deployed to war zones from Honduras to Iraq, took to the airwaves to defend his community.
The U.S. intelligence community, that is.
Foreign policy analysts were asking why CIA chief Leon Panetta had spread the word on Thursday, February 10, that Mubarak was about to step down, only to be embarrassed hours later when Mubarak announced his intention to stay, bringing an abrupt end to the celebration that had already begun in Tahrir Square.
Negroponte had just come from the region--in fact, from Cairo just before the demonstrations against Mubarak began on January 25. But Negroponte's full-throated defense of intelligence agencies is interesting because it offers a glimpse into the world view of the ruthless characters who make up the U.S. foreign policy establishment:
When I was in Egypt three weeks ago, it wasn't at all obvious that this was going to happen. Events were occurring in Tunisia...Tunisia was the spark...I don't think this is some kind of an intelligence failure. I think it's a problem that the people and the government of Egypt have with the adequacy of their government, which has been in power for 30 years--an authoritarian regime which they would like to see changed. And what we are watching is a rather messy process by which this now seems to be unfolding.
So Negroponte, who was director of national intelligence just four years ago, was in Cairo as a popular uprising brought the Tunisian dictatorship to its knees--yet he had no idea that a similar movement could develop in Egypt where the bulk of the population has felt nothing but hatred for a regime notorious for harassment and torture. Now there's a public employee who truly is overpaid!
But the really remarkable aspect of Negroponte's "analysis" is the idea that the Egyptian revolution is nothing more than a matter between the people of Egypt and the government of Egypt--as if every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter hasn't had a smiling photograph snapped with Mubarak. The U.S. government is very much a part of what's taken place in Egypt, having backed every last repressive act of the regime with money, guns and other military hardware.
THE DAY before Hosni Mubarak officially became Egypt's ex-president, John Negroponte, the U.S. diplomat who has been deployed to war zones from Honduras to Iraq, took to the airwaves to defend his community.
The U.S. intelligence community, that is.
Foreign policy analysts were asking why CIA chief Leon Panetta had spread the word on Thursday, February 10, that Mubarak was about to step down, only to be embarrassed hours later when Mubarak announced his intention to stay, bringing an abrupt end to the celebration that had already begun in Tahrir Square.
Negroponte had just come from the region--in fact, from Cairo just before the demonstrations against Mubarak began on January 25. But Negroponte's full-throated defense of intelligence agencies is interesting because it offers a glimpse into the world view of the ruthless characters who make up the U.S. foreign policy establishment:
When I was in Egypt three weeks ago, it wasn't at all obvious that this was going to happen. Events were occurring in Tunisia...Tunisia was the spark...I don't think this is some kind of an intelligence failure. I think it's a problem that the people and the government of Egypt have with the adequacy of their government, which has been in power for 30 years--an authoritarian regime which they would like to see changed. And what we are watching is a rather messy process by which this now seems to be unfolding.
So Negroponte, who was director of national intelligence just four years ago, was in Cairo as a popular uprising brought the Tunisian dictatorship to its knees--yet he had no idea that a similar movement could develop in Egypt where the bulk of the population has felt nothing but hatred for a regime notorious for harassment and torture. Now there's a public employee who truly is overpaid!
But the really remarkable aspect of Negroponte's "analysis" is the idea that the Egyptian revolution is nothing more than a matter between the people of Egypt and the government of Egypt--as if every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter hasn't had a smiling photograph snapped with Mubarak. The U.S. government is very much a part of what's taken place in Egypt, having backed every last repressive act of the regime with money, guns and other military hardware.
posted by Jay at
12:28 PM
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