printI hope the failed assassination attempt on Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s vice president, recently appointed to quell the unrest in that country, is not a harbinger of things to come. I am thinking of the vulgar cellphone images that circulated the Internet, in which a stoic Saddam Hussein, noose about his neck, is heckled by a hooded Shiite executioner. Even more repugnant than the hasty hanging carried out under US auspices were the US-sponsored legal proceedings that preceded it. (All the obligatory denunciations of Hussein obtain here, naturally. Bad man. Bad man. Bad man.) That Tribunal, which was branded “made-in-America,” had more in common with the French Revolutionary Assembly (See “No Due Process For A Despot”).
Similarly, such a barbaric specter in Egypt (conjuring the French, and not the American, Revolution), will have been greatly inspired, like in Iraq, by American media screeches.
I worry because the US is not necessarily averse to hasty hangings, considering that the strongmen we betray may turn around and tell all: You know; the stuff about how they helped the U.S. with its rendition and torture programs.
Unlike Christiane Amanpour, there are some who are a tad more skeptical of “freedom” and “democracy” Egypt-style:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/02/egypt-may-well-go-route-iran
namely Diana West…
As for the US – well, we have disposed of “puppets” when they ceased to be useful. Look of Ngo Dinh Diem and the coup (a real plus to the 4 million that subsequently died in Indochina – thank you JFK and CIA!!!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_South_Vietnamese_coup
Rendition, torture, all part of America spreading Democracy to the world and making us more free – a great example of the rule of law. Glad that we don’t act like a bunch of lawless thugs, eh!!!
Our “kindler gentler Mubarak” VP Suleiman was the torturer-in-chief.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/hentoff020911.php3
By the way, thanks to Al-Libi “confessing” to a link between Sadddam Hussein and Al Queda (so that they would stop pummeling his face!), the US got to spend over $ 1 Trillion and waste thousands of lives and drive 4 million Iraqis from their homes.
Give that man (Suleiman) a cigar!