by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
The U.S. corporate media put on a display of great concern for the situation in Egypt, but “the needs of the Egyptian people are never even mentioned in these discussions.” For Egyptians, Mubarak’s ouster would be an unmitigated good – which is all that should matter – but U.S. policy demands that American and Israeli geopolitical ambitions supersede all else. Which is the same policy that dismisses the actual needs and desires of the American people.
Freedom Rider: Mubarak’s Fall is Good News
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“It is literally none of our business what Egyptians choose to do with and in their own country.”
It is a good thing when puppet governments beholden to America collapse. These governments are rarely democratic and serve only the needs of a small internal elite and the interests of the United States government.
Egypt is an excellent case in point. Hosni Mubarak is a president for whom the title is actually a misnomer. Mubarak has been in power for thirty years and had already named his son as his successor. He should be called a king.
The popular uprising against Mubarak is a positive development and the commentary from the American corporate media is all the proof that one needs to reach that conclusion. American networks show much hand wringing from talking heads worrying about “Islamists” and “Muslim Extremists.” They go on endlessly about whether or not this uprising is good for “us.“ They are in fact referring to our government and its military and diplomatic dictates and not to any needs which the American people have.
The needs of the Egyptian people are never even mentioned in these discussions. Egypt is their country after all, and they should have a government that responds to their needs and demands. Whether or not that government is “Islamist“ or not is beside the point. It is literally none of our business what Egyptians choose to do with and in their own country.
“The American corporate media go on endlessly about whether or not this uprising is good for ‘us.’“
President Obama claimed to have urged Mubarak to be more democratic. It is hard to know if he did or not, but that too is irrelevant. Whatever his feelings about Mubarak’s administration, he and his predecessors happily kept Mubarak on the United States payroll. In exchange for receiving two billion dollars every year, Mubarak assisted Israel in strangling the people of Gaza while he and his cronies live off the largesse of Washington. The dirty dealing comes at the expense of the political aspirations of the Egyptian people.
Mubarak’s subservience to American interests allowed Israel to massacre more than 2,000 Gazans with impunity in 2008 and 2009. Had there been a truly independent Egyptian regime, Israel would not have dared to commit its atrocities or to continue keeping Gaza as a prison inhabited by one million people.
The feelings of anger and humiliation that this war crime engendered in the Egyptians are obviously still resonating. Egyptians are Arab and mostly Muslim, and the anger brought about because their nation participated in an atrocity against people like themselves was silently festering. Now that the silence has ended, there are concrete lessons for Americans who have the ability to think for themselves and not in line with the corporate media or mealy mouthed politicians.
The “American interests” endlessly invoked by television pundits and politicians almost always mean disaster for the rest of the world. It is the height of arrogance to publicly proclaim that one government has the right to makes its desires sovereign over those of the rest of the planet. America’s so-called interests are now killing people in countries as varied as Haiti, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia.
“Had there been a truly independent Egyptian regime, Israel would not have dared to commit its atrocities or to continue keeping Gaza as a prison inhabited by one million people.”
Nor are these interests those of the American people. Israel’s ability to terrorize Gazans has nothing to do with the lives of the average person here. No one gets or keeps a job or a home because Israel kills people with the help of the Egyptian government. Yet we are propagandized into making the rulers’ needs synonymous with our own.
The most important interest to Americans would be having a government that met their individual needs. It cannot for precisely the same reason that it involves itself in the affairs of the rest of the world, dominating wherever possible, and subjugating millions of people with the help of eager puppet regimes.
Americans do not have a decent health care system, a safety net, good schools or a strong infrastructure and it is precisely because their nation’s military budget is larger than that of the rest of the world’s nations combined. Supporting compliant governments in Egypt with billions of dollars means that the people of this country suffer with an ever lowering quality of life.
If more of us were aware of these facts, we might join the Egyptian people as they find a new way to live and to be governed. We might think of new possibilities for ourselves. We just might think that having a government that didn’t try to govern the rest of the world was in our best national interest.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.
This week’s featured author is Biko Mandela Gray. Gray is Assistant Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. His book is Black Life Matter: Blackness, Religion, and the Subject.
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