Said Qutb's American Connection

Folks, we are in trouble. We cannot long survive a broad social and political upheaval all over the middle east. Read that; elevated prices of everything based on our inability to get the oil we need to produce and move goods, to eat, and stay warm, in this country.

It is here that we should be "thanking" those who have prevented the mining, drilling, and building of nuclear facilities. Such foresight we could have lived without.For them worst-case scenarios were just exercises of imagination...an attribute they clearly had too little of.

It cannot be over stated that Said Qutb was radicalized by his stay in America. Before that visit he was pro-western and a fan, you might say, of the United States.
His stay was in the period before the racial inequalities in the US were fully addressed, and I'm sure that, as a dark skinned man, he was treated in ways he had never dreamed possible while in Egypt. He was appalled by that, and by other "degeneracies" in our society, and went back to Egypt bitter, and ready to develop anti-american, anti-western doctrines.

His work with the Brotherhood sent him to prison, and eventually to his death by hanging...a fate he could nave escaped, but instead embraced.

There is hope that cooler secular heads will prevail. There is hope in the Egyptian military,tight with the US military for decades.Hope yes, but no certainty.

Revolutions have a way of getting out of hand, and the Brotherhood has much to gain if this one does. They also stand to gain simply by their inclusion in a new elected government, but for us, that would offer time ...and hope.

We need both.