Les Gelb, please stop giving Egypt advice

Les Gelb, I hate to see see you like this. Whence this tone, as though from the crypt of American-heyday diplomacy, warning in Cheney-like fashion of the dark forces that should make us afraid? You’re better than that. Yes, the world’s a scary place. You’ve been a senior mandarin of US foreign policy over many decades and evidently believe it your duty to remind everyone Just. How. Scary.

But I’m sorry, it’s inconceivable that anyone who understands the world today could recommend that the US stand on the WRONG side of the brightly-defined issue, what to do about Egypt. Yes, the Muslim Brotherhood could turn out to be really really bad and yes, Eypt will face a dangerous vacuum of political and civil institutions if and when this hated regime falls. But it’s not only the character of the Egyptian regime that’s laid bare for the world to see right now. It is a defining moment for the United States, too. The US cannot choose alliance here with brutal and loathsome governance.

I’ve heard your cranky kind of advice before. Many pundits made cautionary arguments about the US losing the Philippines back in 1986.( I covered the story.) But Ronald Reagan knew when to fold ‘em – he had Orrin Hatch call Ferdinand Marcos and tell him the jig was up. Remember, Les? American helicopters landed on the roof of Malacanang Palace and took him and his family away. And like Egypt, Manila was a strategic ally, too: the US had a naval and an army base there for decades, including at the moment Reagan made his fateful decision.

Reagan had the ability to call bad things bad; like Bush, he did not shrink from grand moral argument, even from using the tendentious term “evil.” And that’s a word that could surely apply to Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Please remember that the Egyptian government routinely and systematically uses torture to silence its critics (and even just its ordinary criminals). The whole world knows it now – foreign journalists plucked off the streets of Cairo have themselves heard the screams inside the detention centers. Let’s not lose sight of how utterly disgusting that is.

There are moments when American policy needs to sing in the world, to strike a long, clear note that everyone hears and understands. This is one of those moments. It calls for leaders who do more than “craft policy,” but who act as a beacon for future generations.

You’re probably relishing your curmudgeonhood, Les. You’re putting “universal rights” in quotation marks to show off your hard-headedness. You’re loving being the not-Nick Kristof. But you’re wrong here. And millions of Americans wil live for decades with the mess you’ll make if the Obama administration follows your advice.