The US, Egypt, Israel and morality

This is one of those situations, is it not, where you read 20 things and you think good point, fair point, hadn't thought of that, interesting way to look at it, and at the end of it all your head is kind of spinning.

Through it all, though, the one thing I'm suspicious of is heavy moral throwdowns by pundits. Obama must do this or that. X or Y or Z proves the absolute hypocrisy of America, or whomever. Nonsense.

Nobody writing those kinds of things knows what's going on inside. Granted, what's going on outside is important: America should send the right signals to the protestors and the rest of the world. But presumably, there's lots going on that none of us knows about. It would be my guess that especially after today, with those massive protests, Washington is telling Cairo privately that violent repression is out of the question and will produce severe consequences. I would hope that Obama makes another statement, a few ticks stronger than his last one, in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, these paragraphs from today's NYT story about Washington sizing up ElBaradei as a potential leader of Egypt rang all too true:

But now, the biggest questions for the Obama administration are Mr. ElBaradei's views on issues related to Israel, Egypt and the United States. For instance, both the United States and Israel have counted on the Egyptians to enforce their part of the blockade of Gaza, which is controlled by the militant Islamist group Hamas.

But in an interview last June with the London-based Al Quds Al-Arabi, Mr. ElBaradei called the Gaza blockade "a brand of shame on the forehead of every Arab, every Egyptian and every human being." He called on his government, and on Israel, to end the blockade, which Israeli and Egyptian officials argue is needed to ensure security.

Ah. Now we're learning something important here. The Times goes on to detail the deep distrust of ElBaradei among neocons. Cirincione, fyi, is a good guy:

Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund and a friend of Mr. ElBaradei, said Monday that Mr. ElBaradei wanted Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Israel, along with India and Pakistan, is not a signatory.

One senior Obama administration official said that it was not lost on the administration that Mr. ElBaradei's contentious relations with the Bush administration helped explain why he was now being viewed by some as a credible face of the opposition in Egypt.

"Ironically, the fact that ElBaradei crossed swords with the Bush administration on Iraq and Iran helps him in Egypt, and God forbid we should do anything to make it seem like we like him," said Philip D. Zelikow, former counselor at the State Department during the Bush years. For all of his tangles with the Bush administration, Mr. ElBaradei, an international bureaucrat well known in diplomatic circles, is someone whom the United States can work with, Mr. Zelikow said.

However, he allowed, "Some people in the administration had a jaundiced view of his work."

Among them was John Bolton, the former Bush administration United States ambassador to the United Nations, who routinely clashed with Mr. ElBaradei on Iran. "He is a political dilettante who is excessively pro-Iran," he complained.

Meanwhile, at The Nation, Ari Berman notes:

ElBaradei's emergence has angered pro-Mubarak neoconservatives, such as Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vide president of the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, which is closely aligned with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. "There is a myth being created that ElBaradei is a human rights activist," Hoenlein told an Orthodox Jewish website on Sunday. "He is a stooge of Iran, and I don't use the term lightly. When he was the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, for which he got a Nobel Peace Prize, he fronted for them, he distorted the reports."

So this is what's going on, probably. The administration is feeling some heat from these kinds of sources. Ultimately, Obama and Clinton do not, I would expect and hope, agree with Bolton and Hoenlein. And ultimately, I would expect and hope, ultimately meaning pretty soon, they will embrace Mubarak's ouster more publicly.

But these are complicated things. I know that this thread is now going to be full of indignant fulmination against Israel. That's not my intent. My intent is to show that there are a lot of factors in play here. I want to be clear that I obviously do not think the administration should sit on its hands here for Israel's sake; what's going on in Tahrir Square is inspiring and quite clearly deserves the support, issued in the right way at the right time, by the United States of America. Rather, I am saying that the US, given its role in the world, has to weigh things more carefully than any other country in the world does before it speaks and acts. I think we'll do the right thing, but the right thing must be done at the right time in this case.

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