Yesterday afternoon, I was really hoping that the occasional chill I was feeling was because my former student, Andy, was doing that good a job during his bar mitzvah service. Well, he was doing a good job, but that’s not what it was.
Sigh. Virus. I have had exactly nothing to eat all day. And while I feel somewhat more human, I have no energy but to stare at the TV for an hour or two before returning to bed.
At least the nausea is mostly gone. I’m going to try to eat a little, do some work that I usually save for Sunday nights that I don’t have virii, and go to bed.
CNN is apparently all-Egypt, all the time. It made the visit to the doctor’s office that much worse. Except that I learned more than 90% of all the world’s shipping goes through the Suez Canal. Oh. Now I know why we supported Mubarak all these years.
Update: Surprise! CNN was wrong (or I heard 90% and it was actually 9%, as I was feverish, nauseous, and wanting to die even without having to suffer through listening to CNN analysts). Brother Eric points out that supertankers can’t fit through the canal.
Just got over a killer sore throat, sinus headache combo. Feel for you.
Get to feeling better.
Hope you feel better soon, Meryl.
I wonder what all those people saying that we’re bad for having dealings with Mubarak for so long would have had us do? Should we have invaded Egypt and overthrown his government? Imposed sanctions? Cut off all dealings with what was the established government of Egypt? Most of those criticizing us for dealing with his government threw a hissy fit when we overthrew Saddam, calling it immoral. They said that Saddam was a force for stability, this dictator who started two wars, the same “realist” argument for dealing with Mubarak. In Egypt 95 percent of Egyptians also demonized us for overthrowing an Arab tyrant. I guess they like dictators so long as they don’t have to live under them and they are Arabs who gratuitously shoot missiles at Israel.
I’m a Neocon, one who thinks that most of the problems of the Middle East are due to lack of liberty there. Letting their people be free is the one strategy of development the rulers of the region have never tried. All others, including Islamism, have failed miserably. So I favor more freedom for Arabs and Persians and others there. But I think the people there need to approach it carefully. We would have done well trying to push Mubarak into gradual liberalization over many years. Who knows, maybe among those Wikileaks cables there are some that show that we tried to do just that, and Mubarak refused to listen.
As far as I can tell Mubarak suppressed the secular liberalization advocates while allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to organize and expand, so long as it did not commit any violence against the regime or challenge it too directly. If it got too far out of line he came down on it, but never as hard as Nasser did. Since the Brotherhood eschewed violence he let it alone.
We’ll see if Mubarak rides the whirlwinds that are now blowing. I doubt he’ll be able to pass on the throne to Gamal, even if he does ride it out. It looks to me like the probable outcome, after a time, will be either a new military-backed autocrat, or the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood ruling. Given that I’ve read that the Brotherhood has great influence in the army, it might amount to the same thing.