Flag of Egypt
I said at the time it was a bad idea for two reasons:
(1) It's none of our business - unless a foreign situation involves a threat to our national security or an attack against the United States, we have no business getting involved, regardless of how pure and well-intentioned our motives are. There are human rights violations across the entire globe, but it's not our duty or right to interfere in any of them absent a connection to our national security. Is the new rule that the U.S. should get involved whenever there are injustices being committed somewhere in the world? If so, we'll face a never-ending, absurdly expensive, and unpredictable foreign do-good campaign. Evil will never be eliminated from the earth, so if we're inclined to fight it on behalf of non-Americans whenever it rears its ugly head, we won't have time to do anything else but run around the globe interfering in other countries' affairs. Egypt presented no threat to our national security, and it had not attacked us. Our involvement was solely designed to help the Egyptian people wrest control of their nation from a ruthless dictator. But Mubarak was in power for decades, and it wasn't until recently that we got all excited about the notion of deposing him.
(2) If and when Mubarak was ousted, it would leave a power vacuum and subsequent fight among a myriad of political factions across Egypt, most of which were disorganized and ill-equipped to step in and take over. There was (is) one political group in Egypt, however, that was fairly organized, and it was apparent to me that once Mubarak was removed from power, this group had the best chance of taking over. That group was the Muslim Brotherhood, an islamic extremist group more interested in sharia law and destruction of the West than fostering equal rights and democracy in Egypt. We didn't face a national security threat from Egypt under Mubarak, but we very may well under the Muslim Brotherhood's rule, as they support terrorists and islamic extremists hell bent on defeating the infidels through jihad. Democracy is not a one-size-fits-all solution to every nation's problems - many nations have thousands of years of culture, values, and religion that don't allow for proper democracy to be practiced. Muslim nations in particular fall into this group, and I feared that once Egypt fell under the Muslim Brotherhood's rule, democracy would never take hold and we'd have assisted in creating yet another Muslim nation that hates us.
Well, Mubarak is long gone, a new Egyptian constitution has been written, and democratic elections have been held. It's no surprise to me that the Muslim Brotherhood now holds a majority of political positions of power in the new Egypt. We have helped create this calamity, and going forward we will now have to deal with Egypt as an antagonistic islamic extremist nation as the Muslim Brotherhood continues to gain more power, rather than as a non-threatening, neutral islamic nation like it was under Mubarak.
The lesson to be learned is, if it's not broken don't fix it. And by "not broken" I mean "presents no threat to the U.S., and is not treating the U.S. as an enemy." Egypt wasn't broken before (it was, perhaps, for Egyptian citizens wanting freedom, but not from a U.S. national security perspective), but thanks to our zealous interference in the revolution and Mubarak's downfall, it is now.
Read about the Muslim Brotherhood's consolidation of power in the new Egypt:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/muslim-brotherhoods-political-party-consolidates-power-in-parliament/2012/02/28/gIQA70sMgR_story.html?wprss=rss_middle-east
Read about the Muslim Brotherhood generally:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_brotherhood
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