Three weeks after the Cairo uprising began, we learn that the US, through the conventional wisdom of Hillary Clinton and the administration, was wrong to initially support Hosni Mubarak.   What else is new?  The history of US foreign policy for the past century has been a series of dismal failures.  These could not be questioned while in progress, but afterwards it was ok to wonder how things went so badly wrong, without any seeming obligation to fix the problem.  In the interests of time, two things seem self-evident: (1) the outlook of our government is poorly suited to conducting a perceptive and productive dialogue with other nations; and (2) the US will back the current plantation owner, whoever it may be, everytime.

This may be due to US history.  The colonies were not founded to be the land of the free.  They were designed to be the place of bondage, first for generations of European indentured servants, and after they would not take it anymore, for generations of Africans who broken and far from home, could not effectively rise up.  This was done in the name of maximum profits, first for Virginia tobacco, and eventually for southern cotton.  300 years later, it is as though the US has a genetic memory, and continues to support the current plantation owner in foreign policy.  Character and good behavior don’t matter, as long as the farm is really big.  If the latest failure by so called smart people in office unmasks US policy for what it is, so much the better.  RM