With friends like US, who needs enemies?

Sometimes friends can be like a loyal dog that will love you no matter what and follow you no matter where you go. Some other friends will be like 'Austria friends,' who will be friends when you are together but not keep in touch in the long run. Finally, there are friends like Barack Obama, who will denounce you during the good and be nowhere to be found during the bad.

Perhaps I am being a bit unfair. I shouldn't, insult any bad friends by comparing them to Obama.

In the past weeks, Egypt has seen a revolution of thousands of people because of unhappiness over a whole slew of issues like police brutality, government corruption, rising food prices, shutting down of the internet and disabling phone services. Who can't sympathize with the burden of not being able to tweet "G8t day to punch Anderson Cooper in the head 10 times! #Allahu Akbar."

Through all this turmoil of riots of hundreds of thousands of people, Barack Obama's response to the rioters is simply asking them nicely to protest peacefully. His response to the government is condemnation for not being open to reform. So, Obama has clearly drawn the line in the sand and is on the side of the Egyptian people against the Egyptian government and longtime ally of the United States.

Let us not fall into the pitfall of comparing the rioting in Egypt to the American Revolution. A clear lesson one can learn from history is that 'revolution' is not an unequivocally good thing. The lessons of the Bolshevik, French, and Xinhai Revolutions should echo in our minds. What we ought to learn from these examples is that the tyrant we know is better than the one we don't know. In Russia, they traded off the Czars for people like Stalin. France, the monarchy for Robespierre. Of course, shouting words like freedom, liberty, and fairness are great headlines and can easily incite people to side with the revolt, but we should not fall into this temptation.

The great example set by the American Revolution is that in order for a revolution to be successful, that is creating an ordered government that ensures real freedom, there needs to be defined leaders that are not guided by abstractions. the Egyptian revolution has not demonstrated these two criteria, and is therefore doomed to fail in ensuring justice in Egypt.

Additionally, the United States should not be attacking countries for violating human rights. If we should sanction countries for such actions, we should do so universally. If we pursued such a policy, our nation would not have a single ally. A moralistic approach to international affairs does have its clear pitfalls.