Sympathies

Egypt's government is, by American standards, an authoritarian mess. The Mubarak government has cozied up to the United States since Camp David, largely out of self-preservation, squeezed as it has been between two Marxist militocracies iin Libya and the Sudan, and the Israelis on their eastern frontier.

And yet in the wake of the Afghan and Iraqi elections and the Green Revolution in Lebanon, Mubarak has made baby steps toward liberalizing his nation - and as we saw in Eastern Europe (and as we see now in Iraq) democracy is not something you can dole out in bits and pieces; it's like potato chips, you can't eat just one.

I've said it for years, especially on this blog - the most dangerous thing to be in this world is a moderate moslem. The moderates who seek rapprochement between Islam and the West are the first targets of the radicals and the terrorists, and have been for nearly a century - the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the father of anti-semitic Palestinian nationalism, put moderate Palestinians to the sword with as much gusto as he did Jews (although his capacity for attacking Jews earned him the admiration of Hitler himself).

It's true in Iraq today, as it's been in Israel and Jordan and the camps before that; the moderate Moslem's life is among the most dangerous in the region.

As it was last week in Egypt, for Egyptians and for their nation.