However, when Obama gave that speech, he could not have anticipated how events would unfold in Iran, Egypt, and other nations in which the young people he had addressed as part of the Islamic world would begin to demand their rights. Obama and the mainstream representatives of the Democratic Party were criticized by many on both the right and the left for an insufficiently aggressive response to the demands for democratic enfranchisement. "For decades, the United States has prioritized a now clearly illusory stability over American ideals" (Hamid 2010). The U.S. had exerted relatively little pressure upon the de facto dictator of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, to ensure a stable regime in the nation with a reasonably pro-American leader. However, the Obama Administration's response can be read less as an endorsement of decades of previous administrations' complacency regarding right-wing dictators as it was a fear of seeming to endorse the actions...
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