TPM Editor’s Blog

Caution v. Celebration

TPM Reader DH strenuously objects:

I wrote earlier but I can’t help but write again given David’s latest post. As a longtime reader, I’m embarrassed that a website I love so much and recommend to so many people is peddling the idea that we need to be cautious about supporting an extraordinary uprising from all quarters of Egyptian society that is calling for the end to a 30-year dictatorship.
The idea that we ought to reserve judgement because there might be something “worse than Mubarak” in store, strikes me as utterly cynical, playing into a kind of Kissengerian “realism” that entirely discounts the real nature of power while using a supposedly sober assessment of it to justify violence and repression and being cosy with dictators.

The idea that something new will be worse is exactly the argument the British used against Gandhi’s efforts in India, and the the idea that it is supposedly in our security interests to support a dictator at this moment is utterly backward. What exactly are we securing again?

Why exactly does TPM fashion itself to be a liberal website if this is an event to be wary of as opposed to celebrate?


David Kurtz

David Kurtz is Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Talking Points Memo where he oversees the news operations of TPM and its sister sites.

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