Carter lost Iran. Now it looks like Obama may lose Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt as the middle east crumbles. http://www.haaretz.com/print-editio...tory-as-the-president-who-lost-egypt-1.340057
bush lost egypt. he went into iraq with one of his goals as stabilizing the middle east and blew the whole place up.
One reason Bush went into Iraq was to spark democracy in the middle east. Obama never pushed that idea. Obama has not supported street movements especially in Iran, this has led to more conflict.
Neither did anyone else. Egypt has been a powder keg for decades. Don't forget, mubarek came to power after Nobel Peace Prize winner Anwar Sadat was gunned down. Obama faces a choice between two bad alternatives. One, encourage mubarak to do whatever is necessary to retain power. That buys temporary stability at the cost of more anti-americanism on the famed "Arab street." Since they danced on joy after 9/11, I don't really see how that hurts all that much. The other choice is to ease him out. Give democracy a chance. Pay more than lip sevice to human rights. Of course, the likely outcome is the Egyptian Brotherhood takes power.
It seem once again the US looks to be caught flat-footed. Egypt is so important to the US the middle east and Israel you would think somewhere plans would be in motion or least on the shelf to deal with a succession issue. Mubarak is an 82 year old dictator with health problems and lots of enemies. it would be ignorant not to have expected something to happen in the near future.
Obama has a secret plan. He's going to put Biden on the stump to talk up Mubarak. That should get us some points. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...t-a-dictator-protests-not-like-eastern-europe