Well, This Is A Steaming Pile Of Bullshit

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/is_egypts_blood_on_americas_hands/

There are a number of problems with this analysis.

The basic historical premise: that America has at times subsumed democratic aspirations is inarguable, but O'Hehir only gives examples up until the overthrow of Allende.  I mean he starts with the damned Tripolitan wars of the early 19th century.

Yes, we propped up Mubarak.  And so did many others both globally and within Egypt.  Mubarak fell, because his regime could no longer provide basic services.  Same goes for Morsi's government. These dynamics are Egyptian first, last and in between.  Yes, we have ties to the Egyptian military, but it's pretty clear that we don't have control over them, based on the bloodshed of the last few days.  Or maybe we ordered the bloodshed, because....

Ironically, O'Hehir is falling into the same bullshit trap that McCain, Graham and the neo-cons fall into: Everything in the world is done with America's direct supervision or permission.

This is the logic of 9/11 being an inside job, because how could anyone possibly attack us without our knowing?  This is the logic that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen.  This is the "logic" of the sweaty conspiracy theorist.

For several decades we had a coherent foreign policy of containing communism, with a little detente thrown in.  Opposition to Moscow was a unifying and bi-partisan position.  After 1991, we had a brief moment of global hegemony.  Iraq destroyed that.  It demonstrated conclusively the limits of our power.  Combine that with the financial collapse in 2008 and you have a clear delineation of the limits of American power.

But in the minds of Americans, we still retain some sort of global hegemony.  We still call all the shots.

As long as we are in thrall to that ridiculous vision, our foreign policy will be bound on two sides by idiocy.