Sunday, February 06, 2011

Current Analysis of Egypt--Statecraft Being a Multilayered Chessgame.

You can't explain Iraq, then, and Egypt today, using what the people said at the time. Politics and has always been a multi-layered game, and the understanding of which has to be parsed at different perceptual levels to be fully understood. What was said about Iraq at the time by the different politicians was and is like a multi-level chess game. How these statements would be perceived at the different levels was taken into account. For example, one of the main reasons we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan was to keep Iran surrounded so as to contain it. No one could say this out loud, though, but I can assure you Iran knew it.

I'm not saying that people who "aren't in the know" are less sophisticated or ignorant or just peons who have to be manipulated. I'm saying that the actors in the game all and each have their own perception frameworks and those are taken into account. And, explaining what you are doing in the game of political statecraft makes all levels aware, and frustrates the design of the play.

In today's current events, the activities in and around Egypt are also multilayered, which I've tried to point out in my posts for the last 14 days.

The real danger with Egypt is that the democracy protestors do not grow in their perceptions and hang to their demands without taking changing fact patterns into account. One area of big change--Since the beginning, the protestors have demanded that Mubarak step down. After yesterday's diplomatic events which I pointed out, and the activities of the secret police in the last few days of arresting media, opposition, and foreign human rights groups, it is apparant that Mubarak's retirement is no longer the important thing.

US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton said that Suleiman is the one in power; I quoted her from BBC yesterday on my wall. Suleiman was Intelligence minister, and is now Vice President and ostensively second in command. The Secret Police are run by the Intelligence Ministry, not the Interior Ministry that runs the street police. Mubarak is now just a figurehead, kept there by the cult of personality that is known in Egypt as "Pharoh Worship". Suleiman is the one articulating official government policy, negotiating with the opposition leaders and the Western leadership, and picking and choosing who he'll negotiate with, and what he'll negotiate about. The Western leaders and Israel want him there because security and stability are their Number One values---NOT FREEDOM.

It is more dangerous now than ever. The world leadership does NOT want freedom. It does NOT want an independent Egypt. It does NOT want individuals to communicate with each other independent of established, transperant networks that can be monitored and spied upon.  The danger lies in not continually assessing who it is that we are dealing with, on what level, and knowing what they want and what they say they want are two or more different things.

It is incumbant upon us to get very much more sophisticated in our perceptions and in our playing of the game, growing in our knowledge and in our play. Otherwise, change won't happen. It'll just be different butts in the chairs, while someone else calls the tune. And that someone will not be us.

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