By now, any­one who’s surfed the inter­net, turned on a TV, radio or had a dis­cus­sion about world pol­i­tics has heard that Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Hosni Mubarak has stepped down. Really forced out. A peace­ful rev­o­lu­tion that was really a street-side coup d’état to top­ple a cor­rupt gov­ern­ment that was a firm friend of the West. So how do we inter­nal­ize US Pres­i­dent Barak Obama’s treat­ment of our only Mid­dle East ally and Israel’s?  From an Amer­i­can per­spec­tive, it appears that Obama sup­ports democ­racy by denounc­ing Mubarak and sup­port­ing the Egypt­ian peo­ple. On that note, he appears to be on the “right” side of his­tory. Yet, when you look at how the Mid­dle East val­ues honor above all else and how it holds it front and cen­ter, it looks like Obama turned his back on a once-trusted friend. This could end up back­fir­ing on him when he least expects it. In some areas of the world, it’s safe to say it already has. Think about it. It was not that long ago that Mubarak was the lead peace part­ner in Mid­dle East that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion was tout­ing to make head­way in ways that the  US and Israel could not. How many times did you see Clin­ton and Mitchell meet­ing with Mubarak? If we had demen­tia it wouldn’t be a prob­lem but we don’t. When you look at it from Mid­dle East­ern per­spec­tive, Obama used Mubarak then let his trusted friend fry while an upris­ing raged in his own backyard.

When you look at it from a peace per­spec­tive, it looks like the upris­ing may have occurred in the same way that cost Mubarak’s predecessor’s life. We know that Sadat was assas­si­nated by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood for sign­ing a peace treaty with Israel. We also know that this new Egypt could go two ways. Egypt has a chance to become a change-leader for the region and edge toward a real democ­racy or it could become another Islamic regime like total­i­tar­ian Iran. With Iran’s ten­ta­cles now in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and con­tin­u­ally influ­enc­ing Turkey, what will stop the repres­sive regime from infect­ing Egypt? Hon­estly, not much.

The pro­test­ers in Egypt stated over and over on CNN that all they want is oppor­tu­ni­ties, basic free­dom and human rights. But what will those free­doms look like? Will they like free elec­tions in Gaza where Iranian-backed terrorist-regime Hamas rules? Will they look like Lebanon where Iranian-backed Hezbol­lah top­pled the gov­ern­ment and rules? Or will it look like the US and Israel, which most Mid­dle East coun­tries that detest the West describe as the big devil and lit­tle devil? Hard to know but let’s stop being ide­al­is­tic and use his­tory as our guide. While this is a huge oppor­tu­nity for Egypt to be a pace­set­ter this is hardly France before the rev­o­lu­tion. The Mid­dle East has a his­tory of let­ting reli­gion take prece­dence when it comes to gov­er­nance and when Islam is involved “democ­ra­cy” looks more like dic­ta­tor­ship. For the sake Israel and US rela­tions, let’s hope that Obama can say he was on the right side of his­tory instead of the left side of disaster.

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