Balance

In the past week, I've seen musings, mostly from conservative bloggers, that have looked at the Middle East and said things like, "What about Egypt?" and "What about Saudi Arabia?" and which have the advocated a harder line on those autocratic Middle Eastern nations. They bring up good points about the situations in those other countries, but they ignore something. Yes, our current foreign policy favors creating a new environment in the Middle East whereby the people are invested in their governance, but doing so creates instability until such time that new, more open governments are fully on their feet. We have enough on our plate with Iraq and Iran right now, so we don't need to go about creating instability across the entire region. That will not serve our purposes or the those of the citizens of Middle Eastern nations. This is a long process that will hopefully bring more stability and prosperity to those in the Middle East, and it can only be taken one or two steps at a time. The U.S. tolerating an Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or a Libya is not a sign of hypocrisy, but an admission that even we cannot help better an entire region over night.