Monday, February 14, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

The battle for democracy is not yet over in Egypt or Tunisia, and just beginning in Yemen, Algeria, Bahrain and other Middle East countries. In Egypt, the fall of Mubarak is no guarantee of democracy. The military, without whose assent this revolution would not have happened, is now in charge of governing the country, but its Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is an opaque and unanswerable group of generals with unlimited power. True, they dissolved parliament yesterday, one of the protesters’ demands, but they have yet to abolish the hated Emergency Law and today they told the thousands of protesters remaining in Tahrir Square to leave or face arrest and ordered the media to stop filming there, not a good sign. Most Egyptians however, place trust in their army, confident they will do the right thing and so, the protest there is essentially over, the barricades down, the people themselves cleaning Tahrir Square – the people, that beautiful, amorphous, anarchic outpouring of love and communal bond – clearing the debris and graffiti of the past 18 days. Here at home a lethargic inattentive populace sits idly by as our government takes away our own liberties and freedoms, one by one – the Patriot Act, illegal wiretaps, renditions and torture, suspension of habeas corpus, the order to assassinate its own citizens in the name of national security – each of these eats away at our freedom. Even, Mr. President, your unwillingness to stand firmly with the protesters in Tahrir Square is a diminution of our own democracy. I read this morning where, behind the scenes, you urged Mubarak to leave, but urging is not enough and silence in the face of brutality is a moral lapse. Your timidity and vacillation, your failure to practice what you preach about democracy is also reflected here at home as conservatives and Tea Party fanatics seek to dismantle social programs and foster hatred, suspicion and injustice in many guises, tearing at the very fabric of democracy. The outcome, if they succeed, is obvious: an unjust society skewed in favor of the rich and powerful, cronyism and gross inequality, some version of the nightmare Egypt has suffered for the past 30 years. While we witness Hope in the birth of democracy abroad, we are living through a long-term erosion of democracy here at home. You were the voice of Hope, Change and Transformation but the past two years have shown those words to be empty political slogans, false promises. I mourn that loss.