EGYPT INTO THE NIGHT – AT 8:57 A.M. ET:  What is it about the Arab world?  They cannot seem to get anything right.  We placed so much hope in the Arab Spring, especially as it sprung in Egypt.   Egypt is the most important Arab country, and the hope is fading each day.  From The Wall Street Journal: 

CAIRO—Mobs of ordinary Egyptians joined with soldiers to drive pro-democracy protesters from their encampment in Tahrir Square here Monday, showing how far the uprising's early heroes have fallen in the eyes of the public.

Six months after young, liberal activists helped lead the popular movement that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, the hard core of these protesters was forcibly dispersed by the troops. Some Egyptians lined the street to applaud the army. Others ganged up on the activists as they retreated from the square that has come to symbolize the Arab Spring.

Squeezed between an assertive military and the country's resurgent Islamist movement, many Internet-savvy, pro-democracy activists are finding it increasingly hard to remain relevant in a post-revolutionary Egypt that is struggling to overcome an economic crisis and restore law and order.

"The liberal and leftist groups that were at the forefront of the revolution have lost touch with the Egyptian people," says Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Institution's Doha Center. "These protesters have alienated much of Egypt. For some time they've been deceiving themselves by saying that the silent majority is on their side—but all evidence points to the contrary, and Monday's events confirm that."

And...

Elections have been pushed to November, but the liberals and the secularists appear not to have taken advantage of the delay. Instead of organizing themselves into a coherent bloc, they have set up minuscule rival parties and feuded among themselves, say analysts and diplomats.

"There is a power game going on—and the liberals and the entire secular movement are the weaker element, while the Islamists and the army are strong," said Laila Soueif, a liberal activist and human-rights campaigner who teaches at Cairo University.

COMMENT:  If Egypt goes Islamist, it will have a profound, and profoundly negative, effect on the region, on American influence, and on Arab-Israeli peace.  It could influence other participants in the Arab Spring, and we can have an even greater mess than we have now. 

However, and get out the seasickness pills for this, don't be shocked if the Western left, first in Europe, then in America, starts to embrace the move toward Islam.  Remember, there is an informal alliance between the left and the Islamists, as both have a common enemy – the United States of America.  An article in The Nation, probably this country's leading leftist magazine, praises the possibility of a new caliphate, a powerful organization of Islamic states.

Polite company will, of course, be barred from discussing any of this, as it will be labeled "racism."  No, it's not racism.  It's good, hard common sense.  We are in danger.

Our current major attention goes to Syria, where citizens are being slaughtered in the streets, with hardly a peep from the usual leftist suspects.  But as bad as the Assad regime is, we really know so little about the protesters.  They really can't be worse than the Assad crowd, but would they be any better?

August 3, 2011