The Cairo Canard

This week, Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak said the following in an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper:

"There is unemployment. Battling unemployment requires investment. With these demonstrations that we're seeing, the investor will flee, meaning unemployment will spread. It's obvious that the unjustified demonstrations have no program. They are staged just to create a state of unrest that drives out the foreign investor."

And this, in reference to the protestors calling for reform:

"Some people want to rule through rabble-rousing and to impose (their) views and enjoy the current freedom to impose dictatorship. This will not happen."

We can put this last comment in the fall-off-my-chair-in-stunned-disbelief file. Enjoy the current freedom? Dictatorship? If it was at least an honest one, it would be an improvement over what Egyptians have endured for several decades now. As for Mubarak's contention that the democracy movement in Egypt is scaring away investors, maybe President Bush should give Mubarak a jingle to chat about one of his favorite authors. A central tenet of Natan Sharansky's writing is the high correlation between personal freedom and economic growth. Democracy attracts capital--not the other way around. The economic malaise in Egypt is a direct effect of its corrupt, incompetent authoritarianism.

Here's a holiday gift idea: Along with the next check we write to Mubarak, President Bush should include a copy of Sharansky's The Case for Democracy. He might even subtly bookmark the section in which Sharansky debunks the myth that Muslim societies are unsuitable for democracy.

Or would that stray from the definition of "coddling"?