In thinking about what is next for Hosni Mubarak, it pays to familiarize yourself with the long, sad odyssey of the Shah’s exile (pdf) which saw him go from Teheran to Egypt to Morocco to the Bahamas to Mexico to New York (for cancer surgery) to Lackland Air Base’s psych ward in San Antonio to Panama and back to Egypt, where he died.
Reading about the political considerations the led the Shah to get bounced around like a basketball, it’s easy to see the political dangers the present administration has had to, and will have to, navigate.
The Shah’s exile can really be broken up into many parts, but the most important of them are prior to learning he had cancer, and after he learned that he had cancer. Before the Shah learned that he had cancer and needed surgery, Jimmy Carter stood almost alone in not wanting him to settle in the United States. Henry Kissinger was going all over the country saying that it was our duty to be loyal to a man who had been our staunch ally for thirty-five years. His view was shared by pretty much everyone on Carter’s foreign policy team, despite plenty of concern that accepting him would endanger our embassy personnel in Iran, and our bilateral relations with Iran. But even Carter caved when he realized that the Shah needed surgery.
When the Iranians responded by taking over our embassy and holding our staff hostage, Carter became desperate to find some other country to take the Shah. Eventually Panama agreed, but when the Shah needed additional surgery, he left for Egypt to get it.
Hosni Mubarak hasn’t fled Egypt yet (as far as I know) but it’s doubtful that the Egyptian people will want to continue to tolerate his presence in his luxurious compound in Sharm el-Sheikh on the Red Sea (let alone pay for it). One thing that Mubarak has going for him is that he did not engage in a two year battle with the protestors or kill them by the hundreds on an ongoing basis, as the Shah’s forces did throughout 1978-79.
The Egyptians haven’t been calling for his head, only for his resignation from office. In that sense, Mubarak may be rewarded with reciprocal leniency for his comparative restraint.
But in all other respects, from his brutal internal security forces, to his close ties to the United States, to his friendliness to Israel, to his theft of billions, he finds himself in the exact same situation that the Shah found himself. One asset he might have up his sleeve is that he can probably settle in Saudi Arabia, which was never an option for the Shah.
And we also find ourselves in a similar situation. Obama discovered that the old hands in his administration were more interested in honoring Mubarak’s loyal service to our country than they were in honoring the legitimate aspirations of his “subjects.” When Carter faced the same situation, he became paralyzed. He was unwilling until it was too late to condemn the Shah’s violent crackdowns and force him to abdicate. And, though his instincts were right, and his mistake was born of his humanitarianism, when he finally did allow the Shah on U.S. soil, we all paid dearly for it.
Meanwhile, we have John Boltons and Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks running around saying that we ought to have backed Mubarak’s regime and encouraged him to repeat the Shah’s strategies.
The Egyptians will eventually have some form of Truth and Reconciliation. When they do, they’ll confront the torture that went on during Mubarak’s reign, and they’ll confront America’s complicity and participation in that torture. When that happens, we won’t want Hosni Mubarak playing tennis on Hilton Head Island.
