Hindsight About U.S. Being Blindsided by Egypt
What happened in Egypt was a long time coming and who of us was not moved by the unbridled joy?
The crowd's heartwarming response to our own Harry Smith said it all, as when one young man yelled, "Thank you, everybody in the world!"
This was not just a great day but a wonderful moment in history
Yet, for all the joy we are now in uncharted territory. Nothing underlines that so much as how U.S. policy makers were blindsided on all of this.
We never saw it coming, nor as it progressed could we do much about it.
In one side of my mind's eye I kept seeing our intelligence agents monitoring it with the latest tools of modern spycraft, but behind the curtain, just a bunch of people watching events unfold on TV like the rest of us.
In the end, U.S. policy came out about right - maybe because by then there was not much we could do about it.
We sided with those who wanted freedom but were not seen as either publicly driving Mubarak from power - or, worse, trying to prop him up. That is not all bad.
Mubarak's crimes can never be justified, but for 30 years he brought a certain stability to a dangerous part of the world and was a reliable ally in maintaining Israel's security and fighting terrorism.
If the past days have taught us anything, it is that no one can really say right now what the impact of his leaving will be. The President rightly said, "This is the beginning, not the end" of this story, and he could have added, "And this is, after all, the Middle East."
