Millions of people are in motion through Arabic speaking countries, with calls for freedom and justice. On our blog, the Communist Party of Egypt, representing a responsible left, has called for the end to the dictatorship of Mubarek, a coaliltion government, a constituent asssembly to draft a democratic constitution, and the establishment of economic and social rights for the people.
Other Communist parties in the region, declaring solidarity with the Egyptian people have made similar statements. These are the positions that are closest to what the great majority of Americans would like to see and what would clearly be in the interests of the American people.
I don't expect President Obama to endorse the positions of the Communist Party of Egypt, alhough if we were really in a post cold war world he might suggest that those positions make some sense, However, the U.S. government does have significant responsibilities here because the countries where masses of people are in the streets, Tunisia, Egypt, possibly Jordan are for the most part the "orphans" of the collapsing British and French empires "adopted" by the U.S. as part of its cold war strategy at the beginning of hte 1950s. Egypt ran away from the U.S. NATO bloc under Nasser but returned with Sadat and his successor Mubarek (three authoritarian leaders, albeit with different relations to the U.S. NATO bloc) have been in power in Egypt for the last fifty six years.
The U.S. can and must play a role in supporting democratic and labor forces in Egypt, by far the largest of all Arabic speaking countries. It is also imperative that the U.S. do everything in its power to pressure Israel into a legitimate peace settlement with the Palestinian Authority, one that will see the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Many Israelis fear that the rightwing Muslim brotherhood will somehow emerge victorious in Egypt--a fear that however one criticizes Isreali policies is real in that the Brotherhood, which goes back to British colonial times, has consistently opposed democratic and pro labor forces in Egypt and has used theology to cloak its reactionary economic and political agenda. But a policy that in effect supports the Mubarek regime and lets it use force in the hope that the crisis will be defused, only helps a group like the Muslim Brotherhood, in that it will be the secular democratic forces leading the movement who will suffer the repression, permitting the Brotherhood, which has long co-existed with Mubarek and his predecessors, to further consolidate its power.
There are as I see it both great dangers, meaning widespread state repression and even the possibility of a fifth Arab-Israeli War , in the crisis. But there are also great opportunities for the advance of the only real policy that offers hope for the regime--a policy of economic development with political and social rights for the people, rather than the policy that both Democratic and Republican administrations in the U.S have advanced since the beginning of the cold war--that is support for anti-working class rightwing regimes in order as protectors of the regions oil and, when that policy was undermined by nationalist movements in the 1950s and 1960s, an alliance with Israel and the active support of its most reactionary elements in order to use it as a military middleman to protect the oil of the region for transnational oil companies.
