Daily Beast: The Right's Egypt Freakout

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by Michelle Goldberg

Store food and prepare for the coming global insurrection: That's the warning Glenn Beck issued Monday. Muslim Brotherhood and American radicals, he informed us, are operating in tandem to bring about "the destruction of the Western world." On his Fox show, Beck presented a clip of Mohamed ElBaradei calling for a "New Egypt that is democratic, that is based on social justice." The phrase "social justice" flashed on the screen, because in Beck's world, it's a code word for a totalitarian leftist agenda, just as the Egyptian protesters' use of the phrase "day of rage" signals their kinship with Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground. "We've shown you tonight that Hamas, Code Pink"—the feminist anti-war group—"and the Muslim Brotherhood are all linked together." With the future bleak, Beck called on his viewers to pray for "our way of life" and for Israel.

Since the war in Iraq, it seems, Beck, like others on the right, has changed his mind about the desirability of Middle Eastern democracy.

It was only a few years ago, you'll remember, that conservatives were crowing about a new birth of freedom in the Muslim world. Gunning for war with Iraq, conservatives attacked earlier generations of foreign-policy realists for propping up Arab dictators, arguing that political oppression and corruption created stultifying societies were terrorism bred. George Bush made the rhetorical championing of Middle Eastern democracy a centerpiece of his presidency. In a 2003 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, he promised that a "liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions."

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Now, as Egyptians pour into the streets and demand control of their political destiny, an interesting divide is opening up on the right. On one side are those who actually took all that democracy stuff seriously. On the other are those who see the Muslim world only as an enemy to be crushed and controlled. With a Republican primary approaching, it remains to be seen which view of Middle Eastern policy will triumph among conservatives.

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Not surprisingly, the politicians closest to the religious right have been the quickest to side with Mubarak. On Tuesday Mike Huckabee, who is in Israel, called into Fox & Friends to criticize the Obama administration for failing to back an ally. In Israel, he said, there's "real shock and surprise… at how quickly the Obama administration abandoned a 30-year ally and a longstanding friend to peace and stability President Mubarak." On Sean Hannity's radio show, Newt Gingrich warned that Egypt "could go the way of Iran."

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This highlights an interesting difference of opinion between neoconservatives and conservative Israelis, who are often thought to move in lockstep. "Israelis aren't on board on the democracy game," says Rubin. "They'd much rather rely on aging dictators to keep things quiet. They're perfectly happy selling out Lebanon to Syria, and perfectly happy selling out the Egyptian people to Hosni Mubarak."Some neoconservatives are even claiming credit for the revolution under way in Egypt's streets. "he revolt in Tunisia, the gigantic wave of demonstrations in Egypt, and the more recent marches in Yemen all make clear that Bush had it right—and that the Obama administration's abandonment of this mind-set is nothing short of a tragedy," Elliott Abrams, Bush's former deputy national security adviser, wrote in The Washington Post.

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More (and how this fits into the "end of days" framework) at:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-02-01/glenn-becks-egypt-freakout-how-the-uprising-splits-us-conservatives/?om_rid=MMBIx0&om_mid=_BNSWFLB8YIC1at

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1. Some Faux viewer claimed only 4% of Egyptians oppose Mubarak.

Was that a Fox statistic?