Eric Witte August 23rd, 2008

With the departure of Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, the Bush administration lost one dictatorial “ally” in the Muslim world, but it still has Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.  I’m a little late to this, but noting an Egyptian court’s sentencing in-absentia this month of dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim to two years of jail and hard labor, on Thursday a Washington Post editorial took the administration to task for its embrace of Mubarak.  The whole thing is worth reading, but this is the crux:

The fact that Mr. Ibrahim faces imprisonment — or worse — if he sets foot in Egypt speaks to the tightening grip of tyranny in that country. It is also testament to the Bush administration’s failure to hold Mr. Mubarak to his commitment to further freedom and democratic institutions there.

There was a time when President Bush spoke openly, eloquently and forcefully about his sense of solidarity with Mr. Ibrahim, so much so that the president referred to himself as a fellow dissident. There was a time, only a few years ago, when he withheld millions of dollars in aid to Egypt until the country released Mr. Ibrahim from an unjust incarceration. Now, the administration can only muster an official, feeble “expression of disappointment” through an organ of the State Department as it continues to funnel billions to Egypt, enabling Mr. Mubarak to run an increasingly repressive police state.

A strong relationship with Egypt and continuing financial assistance to the country are most likely in the interest of the United States. But the relationship need not be exclusively with a regime that is on the wrong side of history; the United States should support those many Egyptians who believe in reform. At the very least, it should not continue to freely subsidize a regime that abuses its bravest citizens. Or, as Mr. Ibrahim succinctly put it in an interview this week: “Don’t give dictators money to oppress us.

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