Egypt’s most powerful military man, Field Marshall Mohammed Tantawi (on the right with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2002) has exchanged his allies in Washington  for allies in the Muslim Brotherhood.

The difference between democracy and liberalism is on display in the new Egypt.

Yaemine el Rashidi, writing in the New York Review of Books, is pessimistic, saying an alliance of of Islamists and military men is prevailing at the expense of pluralism.

Since its rise to power, the ruling military council, headed by Mubarak’s close friend Field Marshal Tantawi, has increasingly been criticized for its biased and repressive handling of the country’s affairs. Youth protesters and bloggers have been prosecuted and given jail sentences of several years; yet Tantawi’s regime has repeatedly stalled trials for corrupt government officials, who are sent to civilian courts with private lawyers or released on bail. The trial of Mubarak, and his transfer to Tora Prison where his sons are, have consistently been postponed, allegedly due to his fluctuating health. Few believe the trial—now set for August 3—or the transfer will happen.

Bobby Ghosh of Time is less negative, describing the ascendant Muslim Brotherhood as “Egypt’s best democrats”

The Brotherhood, meanwhile, is sitting pretty. It has offered to form a broad coalition with liberals and leftists in the elections, and promises that there will be no attempt to hijack the constitutional reform process afterward. “The new constitution has to be written by all Egyptians,” says Essam Erian, a top Brotherhood leader. “No one group should have a louder voice than the others.” This makes the Islamists look responsible and conciliatory, and is likely to play well with voters.”

Its hard not suspect the gender of the analyst plays a role in these differing liberal perspectives. Egypt’s new democracy may be a good thing, but it may be better for men than for women.

While Goldstone defends his controversial report on many counts, he concedes to his critics on the central issue of whether the Israeli Defense Forces intentionally killed Palestinian citizens in its efforts to suppress Hamas missiles aimed at Israeli civilian areas. At a time when Israel feels besieged by democratic revolution in the Arab, Goldstone’s mea culpa will provide a measure of vindication. In Washington, it will disarm critics of the Israeli government and discourage those in the Obama administration who have doubts about the wisdom of the U.S.-Israeli alliance.

Just as his report had impact, so too will his change of mind.

Goldstone writes:

“We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.”

You can’t see he was misquoted or pressurized to change his tune. He seems to have been persuaded by the work of another U.N. commission, tasked with following up on his report.

Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.

Goldstone blames lack of Israeli cooperation for his initial mistake.

The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

Like it or not, this seems like the honest conclusion of a fair-minded man, and a vindication of the Israeli Defense Forces tactics. It doesn’t change the reality of the situation on the ground where Palestinian survivors can take little comfort in the conclusion that Israel did not intended to kill their loved ones. It   doesn’t change reality of Washington where pro-Israeli forces are dominant. It changes the reality of Israel’s critics.

“We’ve long tended to assume that foreign policy drives Arab public opinion, but the uprisings in Egypt and Syria may show us otherwise,” says the Atlantic editor.

The “we” who have long done that assuming were presumably people like Fisher (and me), people who live in the intersecting Washington worlds of politics, policy, and journalism. But not everybody held or holds that view even in the capital. On the right, people tended to assume  hatred of America and its freedoms dr0ve Arab  public opinion. On the secular left, people tended to assume that religiously fundamentalist clerics drove Arab public opinion.

Everybody’s learning these days, even the self-satisfied Washington center, where Fisher is correct, the consensual view, from neoconservative right to progressive left, was that Arab public opinion was driven by hostility to Israel and its alliance with the United States. Fisher is somewhat surprised to discover that our perceptions of the Arab world have been proven thoroughly inaccurate. Obviously, our Washington-centric focus on governments, NGOs, diplomacy, and publications–has served to hide the social and cultural and political realities that are now burgeoning everywhere.

But as the Syrian dicatatorship, one of the most anti-Israeli governments, faces a popular uprising, Fisher is oddly reassured.

Anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism remain real social forces in the region, as anyone who’s spent time there can tell you, as do nationalism, legitimate concerns over the plight of Palestinians, and the angry legacy of anti-colonialism. But none of those appeared to be at all driving the popular, massive uprisings so forceful they could oust some of the world’s most entrenched regimes.”

Whew. They don’t hate us, he seems to be saying. They just have (chaste phrase) “legitimate concerns over the plight of the Palestinians.” In his effort to reassure,  Fisher has to avoid dwelling on the uncomfortable (for Washington) reality that one of the entrenched autocratic regimes in the region facing massive, popular discontent is the U.S.-backed government of Israel.

That is is not too surprising. In my experience, the people here in Washington who  assume(d) that “foreign policy drove Arab public opinion” are the same people who assume(d) that Israeli democracy (and its occupation, reluctant or justified, of the Palestinians) deserves defending. The idea that Netanyahu may be as deluded and cruel as Mubarak (or Qadaffi) is still not quite kosher here.

A common thread throughout Obama’s responses has been his belief that the U.S. image across the region is so toxic that it could undermine the change it seeks by embracing it too closely.

Prudence means deference to actors close to the scene.

“In Egypt, Obama deferred to local protesters; in Libya, he allowed France and England to drive the international debate toward military intervention—and only publicly joined them once the Arab League had signed on. By stepping back, Obama has effectively denied the region’s autocrats the opportunity to discredit indigenous demands for change as a U.S. plot.”

The downside of caution: “Delay, mixed messages, and his unilateral renunciation of the weapon of ringing rhetorical inspiration,” says Brownstein. “There’s been no Kennedyesque ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ moment for Obama.”

Which may also be a good thing. Brownstein is referring to a famous speech JFK made in Germany in June 1963 –in which he proclaimed in German, “I am a Berliner too.” As the Western half of the city resisted the Soviet Union’s efforts to impose a blockade, JFK expressed his simple human solidarity. Words worked because they spoke to a stalemate in the world’s thinking and defined an alternative, as only words could.

The democratization of the Arab world is the antithesis of mental stasis, an almost physical transformation in popular thinking about political participation whose ultimate political forms are just beginning to take shape. Eloquence from Washington at this moment might be formative. It was equally likely to be received as empty or arrogant. To the extent, Obama could wax idealistic, he would be called hypocritical. Words might be inspiring. They might be premature. They might be meaningless. Obama’s reticence is a sign of respect.

Which is not to say that presidential eloquence might not help some time soon

If and when Egypt holds elections this August, the reality of the country’s transition to democracy and its implications for peace in Israel/Palestine, will require U.S. response. Obama will have to confront the stalemate of the Israeli occupation and Palestinian resistance,  the irrelevance of  the two-state diplomatic dance, and the ugly reality of a wall of Occupation built to enforce racial and religious differences.

The opportunity for eloquence is obvious. Obama could go back to Cairo next fall or next year and say to the Israelis, a la Reagan to Soviets in 1987, “Tear this wall down.” But the White House staff will worry about the losing the Jewish base, while the National Security Council will counsel against setting expectations too high. Behind the scenes, AIPAC will sponsor Congressional resolutions to condemn the idea, duly approved by large congressional majorities, and the Obama’ 2012 reelection campaign’s fundraising goals will suffer. The Sunday morning experts will caution against pandering to the liberal base and the Arab Street. The birthers and loonier neoconservatives will say the very idea is proof the man is a closet Muslim.In short, Obama could pull a JFK or Reagan but only at the price of crossing the combined forces of the  Israel lobby and the right-wing noise machine, just in time for Election Day 2012. There seems slight chance of that.

Our chief executive seems most  likely to do like Ike: manage the status quo with mostly muted commentary.  Is that such a bad example? Eisenhower authored one of the most effective public rebukes of Israel ever to emanate from the White House. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, Eisenhower declined to participate in the Anglo-French-Israeli effort to snatch the Suez Canal from Egypt’s nationalist president Gamal Nasser. Such a nakedly colonialist venture did not deserve U.S. support, and it failed. Eisenhower did not make a speech. He waited for everybody to exhaust themselves and then he made a decision–and made it stick. Sometimes that’s better.

McAfee Inc., acquired last month by Intel Corp., has provided content-filtering software used by Internet-service providers in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, according to interviews with buyers and a regional reseller. Blue Coat Systems Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., has sold hardware and technology in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar that has been used in conjunction with McAfee’s Web-filtering software and sometimes to block websites on its own, according to interviews with people working at or with ISPs in the region.

Yes, sir: U.S Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (left) and his attentive Egyptian counterpart Mohamed Tantawi in happier days in 2002 (U.S. Department of Defense)

As popular protest engulfed the country in late January, the 75-year old soldier, spoke with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. When embattled President Hosni Mubarak responded to the unrest by shuffling his cabinet, he promoted the loyal Tantawi to the job of  deputy prime minister. On Friday, Reuters reported  that “the US government views Tantawi as a key player in any post-Mubarak administration.”

U.S. officials were not always so favorable. According to a September 2008 Wikileaks cable, independent Egyptian sources (whom the U.S. Embassy described as “valuable interlocutors”)  reported  that many  mid-level Egyptian military officers described Tantawi as “Mubarak’s poodle.” Under his tenure, these observers said, a “culture of blind obedience” dominated the Egyptian army.

A similarly skeptical tone pervaded a March 2008 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo in which the “courtly and charming” Tantawi was described as “aged and change resistant.” Six months later, Ambassador Margaret Scobey advised Washington that Tantawi’s ministry did not “hesitate to fire officers it perceives as being ‘too competent’ and who therefore potentially pose a threat to the regime.” Said the Embassy’s source, “Tantawi has become increasingly intolerant of intellectual freedom.” He reportedly decreed that the Egyptian military was “off-limits” as a subject for research.

As a U.S. ally, Tantawi is not nearly so prominent as controversial Vice President and intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. Nonetheless, Tantawi is almost as central to the Mubarak government’s bid to blunt the burgeoning popular opposition. He visited Tahrir Square on Friday, where according to Emirates 24/7, he “appealed to the crowd to give up their protest in the light of Mubarak’s pledge not to seek re-election in September.”

Tantawi is incapable of promoting change in Egypt, U.S. ambassador Francis Ricciardone concluded in early 2008. Neither he nor Mubarak had “the energy, inclination or world view to do anything differently.” The only benefit of a meeting with Tantawi, Ricciardone told Washington, was to engage his numerous aides on “how to operate as strategic partners.”

While dog-lovers worldwide object,  the “poodle” epithet  continues to plague politicians deemed slavishly loyal to dubious masters. Opponents of British prime minister Tony Blair assailed him as “Bush’s poodle” for his support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Whatever his canine qualities, Mohamed Tantawi, unlike Tony Blair, remains in power.

“… This is the great fear, in Israel and in Washington, too: that revolution in Egypt will reveal the despotism of the existing order for the Palestinian people, who have seen their rights and properties and security and water taken from them during an endless peace process that Egypt has helped sustain.

The grimness on the faces of American Establishment figures reflects the greatest threat to any authority, the crumbling of the existing order….”

Any new Egyptian government is unlikely to maintain Mubarak’s alliance with Tel Aviv in controlling Gaza. As Israeli analyst Yoni Ben-Menachem told VOA:

“This can create the domino effect, and this fall of the regime in Egypt can also continue to Jordan, and also with Jordan we have another peace treaty…. And if this will happen, if there will be a strategic change in the Middle East, that will not be for the benefit of the State of Israel.”

Note how Israeli’s much-vaunted doctrine of “deterrence,”  the attendant war crimes, and Washington’s longstanding alliances with Arab dicatatorships have finally served to isolate the Jewish state. Enormous military strength has turned profound political weakness.

“This could be the most important moment for American diplomacy since the toppling of the Berlin Wall.”