Choose wisely, U.S.

Opinion: February 3, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

By Moustafa Bayoumi

McClatchy-Tribune

I’m Egyptian, and like every other Egyptian person I know, I have been mesmerized and inspired by the images of the Egyptian people rising up.

We all knew this day would come, but the mobilization of people power in Tunisia, which led to the departure of the autocrat there, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, has accelerated the inevitable. Tyranny simply cannot last forever.

In Egypt today, the people are loudly saying no.

They are saying no to dictatorship, no to political oppression, no to police brutality, no to systematic torture, no to rigged elections, no to 30 years of emergency rule, no to runaway inflation, no to cronyism, no to corruption, no to sectarianism, and no to hopelessness.

But they are also saying yes.

They are cheering on a new Egypt — an Egypt defined by the whole of its people rather than the interests of a few. They are demanding an open political system and real economic opportunities.

This is a diverse and pluralistic movement, initially driven by the youth from across the country, but now encompassing people of all ages. Labor movements, youth associations, professional unions, judges and journalists, opposition parties, bloggers and their followers, the middle class and the poor, men and women, Muslim and Christians — all are uniting for a new Egypt.

This is far from an Islamist takeover of Egypt.

This is a delicate moment for U.S. foreign policy.

Egyptians know how the United States supported dictator Hosni Mubarak all along. Washington lavished $1.5 billion of foreign aid a year to the Egyptian regime, with a whopping $1.3 billion of that in direct military aid.

And this funding supported a true police state.

Image problem

In recent days, a popular image circulating among the demonstrators in Egypt has been of a spent tear gas canister shot at the demonstrators. The image has focused on the line that reads: “Made in the USA.” The United States now needs to establish the Egyptian people’s trust. Years of admonishing Arab states for their lack of democracy while propping up their dictators has left the United States with little credibility among the Arab masses.

Moustafa Bayoumi, a professor of English at Brooklyn College, is author of “How Does It Feel to be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America” (The Penguin Press). He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.