Obama's Alzheimer's makes him forget "democracy" in Egypt!

Yes, a follow-up to an earlier post on how President Obama and his administration have erred, perhaps way beyond any possible face-saving tactics, in their explicit and coded support of Mubarak, while trying to discourage the protesters.

Suppose the protesters in Egypt were to pose the President the same question the previous President asked of the world community in a different context: "are you with us, or against us?" ... it is clear so far that President Obama is against the protesters.  And, as President, he essentially states that America is against the protesters who are seeking to oust a dictator and bring in democracy.

I can only imagine that the otherwise rhetorical President is tongue-tied because of Alzheimer's, or some kind of selective amnesia.

A retired senior CIA official says that the US has become irrelevant in the Middle East:

The first is the extent to which successive US administrations have consistently betrayed a lack of faith in the efficacy of America's democratic creed, the extent to which the US government has denied the essentially moderating influence of democratic accountability to the people, whether in Algeria in 1992 or in Palestine in 2006.
The failure of the US to uphold its stated commitment to democratic values therefore goes beyond a simple surface hypocrisy, beyond the exigencies of great-power interests, to suggest a fundamental lack of belief in democracy as a means of promoting enlightened, long-term US interests in peace and stability.
The second is the extent to which the US has simply become irrelevant in the Middle East.

A professor of history at the University of California writes that the US has become way too shy to use the "D word"--democracy:

Instead of embracing the push for real democratic change, however, surface reforms that would preserve the system intact are all that's recommended. Instead of declaring loud and clear a support for a real democracy agenda, the president speaks only of "disrupting plots and securing our cities and skies" and "tak[ing] the fight to al-Qaeda and their allies", as he declared in his State of the Union address.
Obama doesn't seem to understand that the US doesn't need to "take the fight" to al-Qaeda, or even fire a single shot, to score its greatest victory in the "war on terror". Supporting real democratisation will do more to downgrade al-Qaeda's capabilities than any number of military attacks. He had better gain this understanding quickly because in the next hours or days the Egypt's revolution will likely face its moment of truth. And right behind Egypt are Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, and who knows what other countries, all looking to free themselves of governments that the US and its European allies have uncritically supported for decades.
If president Obama has the courage to support genuine democracy, even at the expense of immediate American policy interests, he could well go down in history as one of the heroes of the Middle East's Jasmine winter. If he chooses platitudes and the status quo, the harm to America's standing in the region will likely take decades to repair.

Ah, lofty rhetoric and platitudes when nothing is at stake.  But, when the real situation presents itself, same old tired songs.  And then we wonder why the US doesn't get any respect on the "Arab Street"