In Cairo alone yesterday at least 5 deaths. The Pulitzer Prize-winner Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times describes in his blog the aggressiveness of Mubarak supporters. This had been carted in buses and all were armed: with machetes, sharp razor blades, baseball bats and stones. He had experienced no spontaneous protests by regime supporters, but well-organized groups. Paramilitary gangs who operate with weapons and horses against unarmed demonstrators. Machine gun fire.
indicative: The man who has to answer for, is "our man" in Cairo. We supported him because he was in the West as the guardian of stability, some even as a defender of Western values and interests. The freedom for protesting Muslims and Christians, however, which our man can massacre here are the ones who should protect us from those Mubarak for 30 years.
Whether this disgraceful blot ever, whether these are "real political" cynicism is ever forgiven? Of course, foreign policy and the safeguarding of interests, not only the representation of values. But in the given situation is certainly not clear which interests we have in Egypt and is now respected throughout the Arab world. The West had only one interest: stability. Gone!
For the sake of this stability, the West has fed the most disgusting and corrupt potentates. The loss of the democratic West in prestige and moral authority is devastating. Could we blame a new Egyptian government if they are from us - the cynics-turns? Without wishing to stir up fatalism must be given the opportunity that we have lost in the Middle East at the end of everything and nothing preserved. So what was achieved by the cynical realpolitik at all?
The balance sheet is a disaster. The support of the Arab potentates was not a foreign policy that purposefully pursuing our interests and values. Not even good realpolitik, but a fiasco. How things might develop. It will take until we have repaid that debt and it will cost us something. A day of shame for us all!
