Not white hats vs. black

As usual. As Reynolds says, the fall of Mubarak is not the fall of the Berlin Wall. This is, after all, the Arab Mideast. Mubarak is a cocktail of bad and good. Whoever follows him will be another cocktail of bad and good. In that part of the world, it's always a matter of identifying the lesser evil. Was Ayatollah Khomeini a lesser evil than the Shah? Is Ahmadinejad a lesser evil than the Ayatollah?

"Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown." Only worse. My bet is that Egypt goes with the tide of history, in a distinctly Islamic direction.

Byron

Instapundit --

THIS PASSAGE HAS RELEVANCE for those who are excessively optimistic about a “fight the power” revolution in Egypt:

Nine out of ten Egyptian women suffer genital mutilation. US President Barack Obama said Jan. 29, “The right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny … are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere.” Does Obama think that genital mutilation is a human rights violation? To expect Egypt to leap from the intimate violence of traditional society to the full rights of a modern democracy seems whimsical.

In fact, the vast majority of Egyptians has practiced civil disobedience against the Mubarak regime for years. The Mubarak government announced a “complete” ban on genital mutilation in 2007, the second time it has done so – without success, for the Egyptian population ignored the enlightened pronouncements of its government. Do Western liberals cheer at this quiet revolt against Mubarak’s authority?

Suzanne Mubarak, Egypt’s First Lady, continues to campaign against the practice, which she has denounced as “physical and psychological violence against children.” Last May 1, she appeared at Aswan City alongside the provincial governor and other local officials to declare the province free of it. And on October 28, Mrs Mubarak inaugurated an African conference on stopping genital mutilation.

The most authoritative Egyptian Muslim scholars continue to recommend genital mutilation.

It’s not the fall of the Berlin Wall.