The dickishness of Jon Kyl

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

With the exception of Neoconservative commentators at FAUX News, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and right-wing bloggers who have alternatively argued for U.S. support of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak or a U.S. invasion of Egypt, American politicians have been remarkably uniformly supportive of the Obama administration's careful approach to the uprising in Egypt. Politics stops at the water's edge in American foreign policy. America speaks with one voice.

And then there is Sen. Jon Kyl, whose dickishness just couldn't contain itself. Steve Benen reports at The Washington Monthly:

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), last seen screwing up over New START, seems to have decided yesterday that a day without Obama criticism is like a day without sunshine.

A top Senate Republican leader accused the Obama administration Monday of failing to promote democracy around the world with the same vigor of President George W. Bush, possibly leaving Egyptian protestors wondering if the U.S. really stands with them.

"We might be in a better position if we had more closely followed President Bush's prescription for support of greater democracy in all parts of the world," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, said as he stepped off the Senate floor Monday. "If we had maintained that position and had that reputation in the world…then our calls today for restraint would have more credibility because the people of Egypt would know our heart was with their desire for greater representation." 

This strikes me as a great example of a Republican criticizing just for the sake of doing so. There's no real coherence to Kyl's concerns, or even much of a point. U.S. officials called for the Mubarak regime to show restraint, and for the most part, it has. Does Kyl really believe Egyptian officials — or Egyptian protestors — are making decisions based on their perceptions about White House rhetoric on democracy promotion?

Indeed, his finger waving notwithstanding, Kyl, who's never demonstrated any expertise on foreign policy, didn't articulate a competing policy at odds with Obama's approach, he just wanted to complain about the departure from Bush's rhetoric and professed agenda.

Kyl may not have noticed, but as Matt Duss explained, Bush was wrong: "Bush's democracy agenda was a huge failure for a number of reasons, but not least because it featured as its main advertisement the smoking ruins and charred bodies of Iraq. There was also the Bush administration's tendency to pull the plug when it became obvious that democracy might mean the political victory of people the U.S. didn't like, as happened in Egypt. Or, as in Gaza, to try to reverse the outcome through a coup."