Middle East

Wisconsin is home to a multitude of outstanding citizens who have fought for the very fabric of our democratic government against a radicalized Republican Party that has become home to a faction of corrupt, militaristic reactionaries. Here are a few who have fought for freedom and the rule of law:
 
Russ Feingold – Feingold’s dedicated work for the preservation of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights have won him the respect of citizens the world over.
 
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin – In the face of the war on women’s reproductive rights, Planned Parenthood has stood fast in their service to women, and won a landmark legislative achievement for women protecting their right to health care.
 
Attorney Lester Pines and every organization who successfully fought our corrupt Attorney General in the Van Hollen v. WI GAB Voter Suppression Case.
 
Navy veteran Keith Roberts — An innocent victim of the U.S. Dept of Justice and U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (VA), Roberts continues his court battles that have made it greatly more difficult for the VA to actually jail our veterans for receiving benefits to which they are entitled.
 

Here's who you will not see on CBS News, for example, anytime soon as Israel kills innocent Gazan civilians:

-         Jennifer Loewenstein, Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

-         Robert Fisk, columnist from the Independent:

But you should see these people and their analyses that most of the rest of the world takes as obvious.

From Loewenstein in CounterPunch:

The intensity of the bombings on Saturday, which left over 230 people dead and 800 wounded, many seriously, was what struck one witness, R., who claimed never to have heard so many explosions so close together and for such an uninterrupted period of time inside the Gaza Strip. One after another, the explosions sounded, most of them near heavily populated areas; and in one case only 30 meters away from his daughter’s elementary school.

Update: See also J. P. Green's  Challenging the 'Bush Kept Us Safe' Meme - "It's reflection time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. When the inhabitants of the white house and their minions are not milking their fading authority to smash and grab as much as they can, they are busy spinning history to describe their positive accomplishments. All they have is the fact that we have not had a major terrorist incident 'on U.S. soil' since 9-11. For this, they figure, Americans should be expansively grateful to the lamest duck."

In case anyone missed it, Juan Cole tears apart Bush's-impersonation-of-a-Soviet commissar address last week on Bush's Middle East policy at the Saban Forum in Washington, D.C.

Not that anyone with the power of insight exceeding Cokie Roberts takes anything Bush says seriously these days, but Bush's "self-glorifying speech" disrespects the million human beings no longer alive because of his lying foreign policy.

Concludes Cole:

I have been telling a serialized story about Egyptian politics recently, and my friend noemie maxwell, over at the Washblog, left a comment that suggested to me that I had “buried the lead” during the Part One and Part Two conversations.

We’ve been hinting at Joe Biden’s comments about inevitable challenges to the incoming Obama Administration, as well as describing political repression and the Constitutionalization of a “forever” political majority...but what we haven’t been talking about is why all of this, specifically, is important to US interests—and what a problem Big Trouble in Egypt could be for a new Administration.

Today, that’s an oversight we’re going to fix....and as a result, we won’t be resolving the cliffhanger that ended Part Two until Part Four.

So hop in the car, Gentle Reader, because we have a long ride ahead.

Let’s get this conversation started by answering the title question...why does Egypt pose such a significant potential challenge for US foreign policy?