Foreign Confidential ™

Leslie Gelb's article--click here to access it--is must reading, a desperately needed dose of common sense from an important, veteran journalist who dares to analyze the Egyptian upheaval from the standpoint of the U.S. national interest (a despised concept in liberal/left-wing eyes).

So far, the protesters number in the thousands, or tens of thousands, notwithstanding the opposition's call for a "march of millions" tomorrow to bring down the government.

Fawning and fainting liberal reporters have interviewed, as Gelb points out, at most, just a few hundred protesters.

Who are they, really? From which social and economic classes--and political movements--do they come? What are their beliefs? Does their notion of democracy match our own? Iran, too, claims to be a democracy, an "Islamic republic."

The questions are far from academic given the strong support among Egyptians for barbaric Islamic law.

The key point is that nobody, except, perhaps, the leaders of the uprising, has the answers. Yet, the liberal media pundits are salivating for the overthrow of the government--for the overnight sweeping away of a regime that has served America's interests in the Middle for more than three decades, preserved a peace treaty with Israel--for which the present Egyptian president's predecessor gave his life--and maintained stability in a complex, densely populated Third World nation menaced by fascistic fundamentalism in addition to all the other problems that plague developing nations.

Incredible. Thirty-two years after the catastrophic Islamist takeover of Iran and its transformation from an ally into an enemy of the United States, and nine years after 9/11, the liberal elite is ready, eager, can't wait to bet on ... the Unknown ... on mysterious forces most likely to be manipulated or eclipsed by the same movement that spawned Anwar Sadat's assassins--and Al Qaeda.