As a Cairene born and raised in Egypt before being expelled by Gamal Abdel Nasser, another dictator, in 1956 for being Jewish, I still have wonderful memories of this country and follow the news there with great interest. Your news article “Egypt’s protesters digging in” (Jan. 31), shows that events in Egypt are unraveling fast. President Mubarak should have seized the moment a few days ago and declared that he would step down in eight months and ensure that a democratic process inspiring the emergence of political parties toward truly free elections would take place, the first ever in Egypt. Opening the door now to talk with the opposition is too little, too late. Since this did not take place, the next-to-the-best thing for Mubarak– for the sake of Egypt and even his own sake — is to step down now after offering a transitional presidency to Mohamed ElBaradei. The latter would follow up with what Mubarak should have done in the first place. The U.S. should now forcefully and publicly pressure the Egyptian president to take this step.
The disturbing news today is that the army is starting to take control of the situation and opening fire to restore order. Maybe this was Mubarak’s plan all along to first withdraw the police and then let all hell break loose. In this fluid situation, the fear is that the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic jihadist groups would hijack the revolution. They may even be voted on in “free” elections, a process la Iran, propelling the whole Middle East into a jihadist turmoil and threatening the supply of oil and our own strategic interests. We could even see a strange bedfellow alliance with nuclear Iran that would threaten Western civilization.
We may agree or disagree with the politics of Israel but the situation unfurling now shows how important to us and to our Western civilization is the bridgehead that we have in the Middle East with this tiny, though important, ally. If worst comes to worst with the revolution engulfing the Arab World, we should make sure that it knows where we stand in regard to Israel and even consider deploying our Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea. Sam Huntington’s theory of the “Clash of Civilizations” exposed in 1993 comes to the fore now more acutely than ever and we should be poised to confront it, if need be, to protect our own interests. We should keep in mind Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s advice that “the Clash of Civilizations is a classic that should be taught in every international relations and history class until a new world order emerges.”
— Isaac Cohen, Chicago
