Deafening silence on democracy

Jackson Diehl, Deputy Editorial Page Editor for the Washington Post, gives the Obama administration a well-deserved dressing down for failing to support democratic reformers in the Middle East. Diehl writes,

Regardless of what the president may have said in Cairo, Obama’s vision for the Middle East doesn’t include “a new beginning” in the old political order.

Supporting the status quo is a dangerous policy when it is likely to change (e.g., the Government of Iran is beating people in the streets, Mubarak is 82).  The US didn’t cause the Soviet Union to collapse, but supporting reformers made it far easier for the US to find friends when it did.  The Obama administration could also take a lesson from the Soviet era: the US was able to engage reformers and negotiate with the leadership at the same time.