Stuart Varney's Egyptian Disaster

                Today I listened to Stuart Varney interview his Fox correspondent and other guests in Cairo. Every question was designed to push the interviewee for signs that the fall of the Mubarak regime meant bad news for America and the entire Middle East. He posited to one guest that foreign aid payments to Mubarak’s regime over the past 30 years “was a bargain”. We had thirty years of free flow of oil through the Suez Canal, we had peace in the largest Arab nation in the Middle East. To her credit the guest pointed out that the peace was illusory, as the ongoing turmoil shows. But it also undermined America’s credibility as a proponent of democracy and freedom.

But Varney didn’t buy it, and every question to his next two guests was framed along the lines of “Would you say that X means trouble for America in the future?” Although they could have answered his questions with a single word, some guests tried to point out that America now has a unique opportunity to support a peaceful overthrow of a brutal Arab regime, but Varney would have none of it. “Well, isn’t the Muslim Brotherhood fiercely anti-America?”

“Will the Muslim Brotherhood win the next election and that will be the last election Egypt has?”

                Then he broadened the scope of the spin, asking “Are you seeing signs of the end of America’s ability to influence events in the world?”

                Then Mike Huckabee came on and proved himself to be almost as obtuse and uninformed as Sarah Palin. He compared President Obama’s response to the Green protests in Iran last year to his handling of the current Egyptian unrest as though they were identical situations. Obama offered almost no support to those who were protesting an Iranian regime that hates America. Yet protests against a friendly leader in Egypt got his immediate support, thus proving that President Obama is anti-American.

                Never mind that any overt American support for the Iranian Green Revolution would have given the mullahs an immediate excuse to brutally crush the protesters. The regime’s response was bad enough, but had America chimed in with total backing, it could have easily been Prague, 1968. The mullahs would have painted the Greens as American sympathizers and wiped them out.

                In Egypt, by contrast, the protests were far more widespread, and had the complete neutrality, or even tacit support, of the military, with whom America has much better relations than with the Mubarak regime. In short, the two situation were totally dissimilar, yet Huckabee seemed to want the same response to each. Mike Huckabee is only slightly more informed than Sarah Palin, but is far more articulate. That makes him far more dangerous to America’s interests.

                The news for me is that Stuart Varney is as disgustingly partisan as everyone else on Fox “News”. He should have stuck with economic and business news, as he did on CNN.