Despicable conservative liars (an ongoing series)

Here is the premise of what I expect to be an ongoing series of blog posts: A political journalist who harshly condemns a president for having done something that the journalist himself supported at the time, and who does not inform his readers of the fact that he supported it at the time, is a despicable liar.

John Hinderacker writes at Powerline:

[B]ut for Obama’s feckless participation in the overthrow of Egypt’s and Libya’s governments, yesterday’s events would not have happened.

Since Hinderacker thinks that Obama’s toppling of Mubarak was feckless, that must mean that he opposed such toppling at the time, right? In fact, he did not oppose it. In February 2011, Hinderacker quoted an interview with Mubarak conducted by Benjamin Ben-Eliezer of Ha’aretz the day before Mubarak resigned. When Mubarak was asked “what he expects will happen in the Middle East after his fall,” he replied, according to the reporter:

“He contended the snowball (of civil unrest) won’t stop in Egypt and it wouldn’t skip any Arab country in the Middle East and in the Gulf.

“He said ‘I won’t be surprised if in the future you see more extremism and radical Islam and more disturbances—dramatic changes and upheavals.’ ”

Hinderaker said he did not agree with Mubarak’s warnings:

My own guess is that the future foretold by Mubarak is possible but by no means foreordained. [Italics added.] Navigating the transition to some form of real democracy in Egypt will, at best, require careful management. In the event of sudden collapse, the Muslim Brotherhood seems likely to fill the vacuum. It will take time for secular parties and politicians to develop as viable alternatives. In the meantime, whatever influence the U.S. possesses should be directed toward supporting the Egyptian military and opposing any quick transition to a regime that includes the Brotherhood or other radical Muslim groups.

So, according to Hinderacker, a Muslim Brotherhood takeover was only possible. Meaning it was not likely. Meaning it was more likely that the removal of Mubarak would lead to a secular liberal government than to an MB government. Like so many neoconservatives and mainstream conservatives who today claim to have opposed the U.S. toppling of Mubarak and Kaddafi all along, Hinderacker played the Arab Spring down the middle, saying that it could lead to a secular liberal outcome, if we played our cards right. He did not oppose Obama’s toppling of Mubarak.

Like most mainstream conservatives and all neocons, Hinderacker said that he didn’t want democracy to lead to Muslim Brotherhood rule, but that if the U.S. “carefully managed” Egyptian democracy, that bad result could be avoided. There are two absurdities here. First, as I keep saying, it was not in our power to manage Egyptian democracy; once the Egyptians had a democracy, they would inevitably elect Islamists. Second, Hinderacker endorsed Egyptian democracy, and at the same time insisted that the U.S. must carefully manage and control Egypt. Some democracy.

- end of initial entry -

Gintas writes:

What Hinderacker and his kind want is “carefully-managed-by-the-liberal-West democracy,” basically a puppet government compliant to Western liberal wishes, so they are surprised by what really happens. The first deception is the use of the word “democracy,” instead of just saying “we want to install a puppet government, run by a Quisling.” It stinks of the lying methods of Cultural Marxism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 16, 2012 05:23 PM | Send