“Egyptian Tea Partiers”

Leslie H. Gelb makes a tenuous analogy to urge American caution with the “unknown” Egyptian protestors:

Perhaps many [demonstrators] are not so democratic. Perhaps many are Egyptian Tea Partiers who want every Egyptian to have Islamic guns like the Founding Pharaohs. Or perhaps many are just furious and poor and unknowledgeable. My guess is no one really knows a great deal about the protesters.

After the above silliness, he focuses on his real target, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). He makes the case that America should be very weary of them:

Baloney and wishful thinking aside, the MB would be calamitous for U.S. security. What’s more, their current defenders don’t really argue that point, as much as they seem to dismiss it as not important or something we can live with. The MB supports Hamas and other terrorist groups, makes friendly noises to Iranian dictators and torturers, would be uncertain landlords of the critical Suez Canal, and opposes the Egyptian-Israeli agreement of 1979, widely regarded as the foundation of peace in the Mideast. Above all, the MB would endanger counterterrorism efforts in the region and worldwide. That is a very big deal.

Perhaps he should have named his article: “Why democracy is bad for America.”