Ryan Tice – 2/13/11

This page was last updated on February 13, 2011.

Egypt can start on road to reform; Ryan Tice; Beaver County Times; February 13, 2011.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“I am in full support of the people of Egypt bringing down their leader, Hosni Mubarak, especially after learning about the economic problems they have.

“After reading about the protests in Egypt, I learned that a majority of Egyptian people live on as much as $2 a day, while Egypt’s first family, according to the British news site The Guardian, is worth billions, and he got his wealth through corruption and kickbacks.

“Now with him hopefully standing down, the people of Egypt can begin the long road to reforming their nation for the better.”

[RWC] I hope the best for Egyptians and the world, but Middle East history in not in our favor.

In 1979 something similar happened in Iran. What the U.S. got was over 50 hostages held for 444 days, the people of Iran got an Islamic “republic” that’s a democracy in name only, and the world got a state sponsor of Islamist terrorism and a soon-to-be nuclear power run by Islamists. The Supreme Leader of Iran is elected not by the people but by something called the Assembly of Experts. The people elect the members of the Assembly of Experts, but they get to choose only from a list of candidates approved by the government.

In 2006, citizens of the Gaza Strip got the right to vote and elected Hamas – a terrorist group – to run the government. When a terrorist group is on the ballot, who but another terrorist group would even dare to run for office?

A player in the Egypt uprising is the Muslim Brotherhood. Members of this freedom-loving group – not - include the designer of the 9/11 attack on the U.S. and Osama bin Laden’s #2 man. Historically the Muslim Brotherhood has pushed for Sharia (Islamic) law and recently advised Egyptians to “prepare for war against Israel.” The Brotherhood and Mohamed ElBaradei, another player in this situation, have formed a mutual admiration society. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, during an ABC News interview Mr. ElBaradei asserted, “This is total bogus that the Muslim Brotherhood are religiously conservative. They are no way extremists.” It would be interesting to know Mr. ElBaradei’s definitions of “religiously conservative” and “extremist.” You may recall Mr. ElBaradei is the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who for years claimed Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon until it got beyond the point even Mr. Magoo could have seen the evidence. At this point we need to question if Mr. ElBaradei was that incompetent or if he was covering for Iran as long as he could. In fairness to Mr. ElBaradei, a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate in 2007 told us “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program” and “We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.”

If you paid close attention to some of the TV coverage, you saw the communist hammer-and-sickle symbol on banners and flags waved by some of the protesters. When was it ever a good thing for people when their country went communist?

I hope this isn’t the case this time, but sometimes the devil you know is better than his replacement.