Regime-Changers’ Report Card

The regime-change machine is humming – and picking up speed

by Justin Raimondo, June 25, 2012

"....The neoconservative regime-changers’ were never shy about proclaiming their grandiose goal, which was to “drain the swamp” of the Middle East and achieve some fundamental “transformation,” presumably in a secular liberal-democratic direction. What this meant, in terms of real power relations, was redrawing the map of the Middle East. So, how’re they doing so far?......

One has to wade all the way to the end of a long and dreary New York Times piece on Mohammed Morsi’s victory to read about the press conference given by a coalition of liberal democratic and secular parties, which hailed the junta’s dissolution of parliament and accused the US of aiding the Brotherhood. Indeed, the National Democratic Institute has openly admitted giving some kind of assistance to Brotherhood candidates and electoral activities. One has to wonder about the extent and nature of this aid.

The disqualification of the original Brotherhood candidate, and the substitution of Morsi, a former assistant professor at Cal State Northridge, sets the stage for a post-Mubarak Egypt organized along Turkish lines. As in Turkey, the military will step in when the Islamists threaten to get out of hand, but will otherwise be allowed to rule as long as they don’t try to pursue an independent foreign policy or offend the delicate sensibilities of Western liberals too often.

While Egypt often seems to teeter on the brink of chaos, so far at least it has been controlled chaos – with most of the strings being pulled from Washington, D.C. Continuing a policy inherited from the Bush administration, the Obama administration is playing the Sunni card for all its worth, using its influence and resources to build “democratic” Islamist movements as a counterweight to both al Qaeda and the alleged Iranian threat. ....."