Moreover, the role of the Egyptian regime as the "stalwart ally" of both the US and Israel has facilitated massive violence, from the US invasion of Iraq to the Israeli wars in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
This is the objective and historical context in which Obama's prayer for an end to violence and his crocodile tears over the repression in Egypt must be evaluated.
Behind its pseudo-democratic posturing, the US administration is playing for time. Within ruling circles and the US military-intelligence apparatus, there no doubt exist divisions and conflicting assessments over whether Mubarak can succeed in suppressing the masses or whether immediate steps must be taken to refurbish the regime.
What concerns every section of the US ruling elite, however, is what Senator John McCain referred to recently as the "Lenin scenario," i.e., that the mass demonstrations against Mubarak will develop into a direct revolutionary challenge to imperialist domination and capitalist rule in Egypt.
All the talk from Washington about a "transition to a democratic regime" is aimed at forestalling this threat. Such a US-backed "transition" has no credibility whatsoever. It sole purpose would be to re-stabilize the existing military dictatorship so that it can continue enforcing policies that benefit US imperialism and a narrow and corrupt Egyptian financial elite, while subjecting the masses of workers and oppressed to unemployment, poverty and repression.
Egyptian workers and youth should reject both Obama's hypocritical expressions of concern and US promises of a "democratic transition" with the contempt they deserve. The burning need is for the development of an independent revolutionary movement of the working class to effect the transfer of power to the workers and the oppressed and organize the socialist transformation of Egyptian society. A genuine democratic transformation of Egypt, an end to oppression and social inequality, can be achieved only by means of socialist revolution.
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