David Adesnik has this odd passage in a post on David Remnick's piece on the future of Egyptian politics that I mentioned here.
I don't doubt that Egyptians hate Bush or even that they hate him much more than they hated Clinton. But is this outpouring of hatred a direct consequence of American behavior, or rather a sublimation of the intense hatred that Egyptians are not allowed to direct at their own government?
Is he seriously asking this question? It is quite obvious that many Egyptians are dissatisfied with both their government and the American government. They resent Mubarak's authoritarian rule and Bush's policies in the region (regarding Israel, Iraq, and for some, American support for Mubarak). To suggest that their disgust with the latter is fundamentally the product of their inability act out against the Mubarak regime betrays a naive view of the level of antagonism against the US that the Bush administration has fostered through a host of its policies.
Posted by armand at July 18, 2004 04:16 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics