Obama in Cairo

A couple of links about Obama's scheduled trip to Egypt to address the Muslim world. First, the Wall Street Journal says the choice of Egypt showcases its importance not only in Islam but also in the Middle East, which is a similar point to that you both made on Sunday. There is an accompanying video here.

The NYTimes also weighs in, claiming that by choosing Egypt, the Obama administration is signaling support to President Mubarak after 8 years of feeling 'unappreciated and bullied' by the Bush admin. It also highlights some of the possible domesetic concerns in choosing Egypt from an American point of view, namely how Obama will address - if at all - human rights and democracy.

The main section of the article:

But even if Mr. Obama manages to satisfy on the Palestinian question, he will have to step carefully around the issue of human rights and democracy. It is a treacherous subject, almost a no-win situation for any outsider.

If he presses Cairo on freedom issues, he risks alienating a government he needs for strategic reasons. He could also incite anger among average Egyptians who almost instinctively recoil at outsiders’ telling them what to do. And yet, if he does not raise the issues, he could be taken to task for conveniently overlooking a serious point.

“We have not seen any American commitments in supporting democracy and respecting the wishes of Arab and Muslim people,” said Essam el-Arian, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but tolerated organization that is the only real opposition movement in the country and supports the application of Islamic law. “It can be summed by measuring American interests with American values.”

There is, however, a way to navigate the issue of human rights, said Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian democracy advocate living in self-imposed exile because the government has threatened to jail him. He said he recently spoke with Mr. Obama’s advisers and suggested that the speech address the “infrastructure of democracy, which to us is the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, free media, autonomous civil society and gender equality.”

“If those five things are emphasized without talking about democracy as such, we democrats in nondemocratic countries would be more than happy,” he said.