A great article by the literary editor of The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier, who chastises Obama and the left for their response to events in Egypt:

The administration's predicament, it must be said, is strategically complicated: since Mubarak may fall, it cannot afford to alienate the protestors, but since the protestors may fail, it cannot afford to alienate Mubarak. Our officials have been improvising, not altogether brilliantly. Joe Biden fatuously declared that "I would not refer to [Mubarak] as a dictator." Robert Gibbs said that "this is not about taking sides." Hillary Clinton, who used to speak warmly of Mubarak as "family," has called for "restraint" and "reform" and "dialogue," and warned that a crackdown could affect American aid to Egypt-as if anything but a crackdown is to be expected from Mubarak. And Barack Obama is also trying to finesse things, urging Mubarak to transform "a moment of volatility" into "a moment of promise"-the eloquence is irritating: there are times when the power of language is not the power that is needed-and proclaiming that "the United States will continue to stand up for the rights of the Egyptian people."

Continue? There is nothing wrong with crisis management in a crisis, but the problem that the Obama administration now confronts is precisely that it has not been a cornerstone of American policy toward Egypt to stand up for the rights of the Egyptian people. It has preferred cronyism with the regime occasionally punctuated by some stirring remarks. What we are witnessing, in the confusion and the dread of the administration, are the consequences of its demotion of democratization as one of the central purposes of American foreign policy, particularly toward the Muslim world. There were two reasons for the new liberal diffidence about human rights. The first was the Bush doctrine, the second was the Obama doctrine. The wholesale repudiation of Bush's foreign policy included the rejection of anything resembling his "freedom agenda," which looked mainly like an excuse for war. But whatever one's views of the Iraq war, it really does not seem too much to ask of American liberals that they think a little less crudely about democratization-not only about its moral significance but also about its strategic significance.

This is why it appears oftentimes that American liberals side with the Islamists. Their naivete about the agenda of the Islamic extremists is shocking; all they seem to care about is if they are "legitimate" or not. As long as the people seem to support Hamas, or the Muslim Brotherhood, it doesn't seem to matter to the left whether the establishment of such a government would be a huge blow to American interests.

That's what Wieseltier is saying in this piece. Rather than thinking irrationally about democracy, the left should be thinking strategically about what a Muslim Brotherhood victory would mean to America and the region.

Read the whole thing.

Hat Tip: Rich Baehr