“inexplicable enrichment”

That’s actually a crime in Mexico: inexplicable enrichment. (One of my favorite crimes on the books in any country.) It sounds like ex-President Mubarak has some highly inexplicable riches as well:

“Judge Timor Mustafa Kamel, head of the administrative prosecution court, confirmed on Tuesday that the investigation into Mubarak’s finances revealed that his official salary as Egypt’s president was LE 12 thousand ($2 thousand), with benefits: a total of LE24 thousand ($4,100) The judge added that by law the president is not allowed to own a business or engage in any private business ventures.”

(source: Ahram Online)

Mubarak would have had any number of ways to take money, of course. But one of the ways I’ve heard about specifically was that he charged a “commission fee” when using U.S. aid to buy weapons from U.S. contractors. Essentially, the U.S. was paying Mubarak a huge personal bribe in the form of a kickback, and one would think that we knew or at least suspected as much.

The lesson of 9/11 was supposed to be that Wilsonian idealism was over and it was time for cold, ruthless Realpolitik again. (I realize that’s an oversimplification, since it elides the difference between realists and neo-cons, who see themselves as a different sort of idealist.) But that view has been largely shamed by the past 6 weeks. Analyses of Egypt may differ, but one thing I no longer doubt personally is that Mubarak wasn’t a bulwark against a bigger problem: he was the problem.

I wouldn’t have said that in such uncompromising form a few months ago. What changed my mind were the facts as they unfolded. If you had told me in December 2010 that Egypt would have a revolution starting on January 25, I would have predicted a state vs. fundamentalism conflict with barbarities on both sides. That’s not what happened at all. It turned out to be a state vs. people conflict with all the barbarities on just one side. It turns out that Egypt was just a mafia protection racket, with the U.S. benefitting, and Egypt’s people were the losers. The U.S. was in the wrong here, and I’m not the sort of person who automatically says that every time anything happens.