Crucial Mid-East Questions
1.) President Hosni Mubarak is a goner. The only question is: does he leave on a private jet to enjoy the American aid money he undoubtedly squirreled away overseas for his private use—or does he try to hang on and thus leave in a body bag?
2.) Who and what comes next? Do the radicals—i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood—use this opportunity to seize power in the next national elections? (And, if they do gain power, do they then cancel/rig future elections so as to keep power?)
3.) Will Jimmy Carter and other like-minded types come into Egypt to certify that the next national elections are “honest”?
4.) Does the post-Mubarak Egyptian government honor the 30-year old Camp David Accords and thus continue to collect billions in aid from DC?
5.) Does this anti-government fervor spread to Jordan? To Saudi Arabia? To Syria? To Yemen? And what of the ongoing revolt in Tunisia?
6.) What does this portend for Israel? Are they militarily prepared to once again be surrounded by hostile Arab neighbors—with the militant Tehran regime fueling the fires of anti-Israel sentiment?
7.) In DC, does the Obama Administration have a handle of the Arab and Muslim world possibly crumbling in front of our eyes? Does Obama have a clear-cut American strategy? Does anyone believe that Obama and Hillary really know what they are doing in foreign policy?
8.) Can this anti-establishment fervor in the Arab world possibly topple the nuclear-armed government of Pakistan? Or is this a country-by-country phenomenon?
9.) What does this ongoing ferment do to the terrorist element inside Islam? Does it embolden them? Does it unleash more acts of terror?
10.) Or is this primarily a middle class revolt over horrid economic conditions and poverty for so many Arab youth?
11.) What can new Egyptian leaders do to alleviate the rotten economic conditions in the world’s biggest Arab nation? Yes, they can eliminate official corruption which is tolerated when the economy works reasonably well but is blamed when the economy falters. But what to do to get millions of Egyptians back to work? (What a task facing the next government!)
12.) A year from now what will the Arab world look like? More—or less—peaceful? Are we about to see a more secular, economics-driven Arab ruling mentality? Or are we going to see them retreat from modernity into Islamic fundamentalism, which doesn’t pay the bills but surely causes a lot of trouble?