"...one leader who fits Obama's description of the 'wrong side of History', is President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.."

link

REUTERS, here

"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."....

As for those on the wrong side of history, one leader who fits Obama's description is President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, from where the U.S. president is scheduled to make a high-profile speech to the Muslim world early in June.

A long-time U.S. ally, Mubarak has been in power since 1981. He won uncontested elections four times. The fifth and latest, in 2005, featured charges of vote-rigging and the arrest of his main opponent. ........... No unclenched fist here.

TARNISHED INMAGE

That did not keep the U.S. from overthrowing democratically-elected leaders it did not like (Chile's Salvador Allende, Guatemala's Jacobo Arbenz) and propping up dictators it did (the Shah of Iran, Congo's Mobutu Sese Seko, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines). Saying one thing and doing another earned the U.S. an enduring reputation for hypocrisy.

The Bush administration's enthusiasm for democracy promotion in the Middle East fizzled rapidly after the Islamist group Hamas, shunned as a terrorist group by the West, won a resounding electoral victory in Gaza in 2006. Since then, part of the American foreign policy establishment has framed the alternatives in the region as Islamists or authoritarians.

If there were free elections today in Egypt, many experts predict that the Muslim Brotherhood, whose aim is the establishment of an Islamic state, would win easily, an uncomfortable prospect for Washington.....

The plan was first floated by Saudi Arabia, another staunch U.S. ally far from democracy and prone to silence dissent.

How (and whether) Obama intends to persuade countries on the wrong side of history to switch to the right side should become clear in his speech to the Muslim world....

The goal he set himself for the speech, spelt out before he took office, is ambitious: "Reboot America's image" in the Muslim world. Words alone won't do it, but they are a start."

Posted by G, Z, & or B at 7:22 PM