Obama gets good marks on Egypt

WASHINGTON – He often appeared one step behind events. He changed his message. He appeared to be flying blind at times. And he still has a long way to go before knowing how Egypt will turn out.

But President Barack Obama is getting good marks from experts for his response to the first major foreign crisis of his presidency, the popular uprising in Egypt that led to President Hosni Mubarak’s decision to step down Friday.

Analysts said he managed to navigate through two competing U.S. interests: the yearning for democracy among the people in the streets of Cairo, and the need to stand by – or at least not be too quick to dump – an ally, lest it foment instability in a vital and dangerous region.

“They have done relatively well,” said Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a center-right think tank.

The first key to analyzing Obama’s performance, he and others said, is recognizing that Obama didn’t have the power to stop the popular movement against Mubarak once it was unleashed.

Nor did Obama have much power to force Mubarak to abdicate – as suggested when Mubarak on Thursday backed off the expected announcement that he’d step down.

“There are many people who wanted the president to wave a magic wand,” Cordesman said. “But the fact is, we haven’t got the wand and certainly don’t have the magic.”

Another central fact is that Obama didn’t have clear intelligence on what was happening inside the Egyptian government, particularly in the last several days.

As events built toward a crescendo Thursday, CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress that there was a “high likelihood” that Mubarak would be gone by Thursday night. He wasn’t.

Surprised when Mubarak didn’t resign, Obama huddled with his top national security aides for almost four hours, then issued his strongest statement of the crisis, leaning hard on Mubarak.

“The Egyptian government must put forward a credible, concrete and unequivocal path toward genuine democracy,” Obama’s statement said. “And they have not yet seized that opportunity.”

He didn’t start that forcefully.

When Egyptians took to the streets in January to protest Mubarak’s dictatorial rule, Obama and his administration at first leaned toward supporting a friend who had maintained peace with Israel and been an ally in the fight against al-Qaida terrorists.

In following days, Obama’s White House declined to criticize Mubarak directly, but urged the Egyptian government and its army to refrain from violence against the people.

Advocates of human rights complained that Obama was too timid, urging him to side with democracy.

He did. When Egyptian authorities arrested journalists, he urged that they be freed. When pro-Mubarak forces in plain clothes roughed up demonstrators, he urged restraint. But he did not urge Mubarak to step down.

“The U.S. was hearing from many parts of the Arab world, ‘What are you doing?’ Friendly governments were saying, ‘Why are you throwing Mr. Mubarak overboard? What kind of friend are you?’ ” said Robert Danin, a former Middle East representative for British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The result was a White House message that evolved over time, moving more toward siding with the demonstrators and against Mubarak, albeit in fits and starts.