As the Egyptian revolution began to unfold in late January, the response of the Obama administration was appalling, yet predictable. The American government seemed perpetually one step behind the rapidly unfolding movement on the streets of Cairo, as each reluctant escalation of their rhetoric was rendered inoperative by events on the ground. Obama was calling for “restraint” on both sides even as Mubarak’s one-sided brutality became obvious, before moving on to make favorable gestures toward vice-dictator Omar Suleiman even as Tahrir Square signaled that he was equally tainted by his central role in the Mubarak police state. As events built toward the climactic moment of February 11, American officials seemed to be rhetorically trapped, as they continually chanted the phrase “deeply concerned” as if in a kind of repetitive-compulsive trance.

The uprising in Libya similarly befuddled the American regime, although by this time “deeply concerned” had been traded in for “strongly condemn” — a necessary concession to a dictator so brutal and delusional as to make the farcical nature of the previous talk about “concern” and “restraint” obvious to all. Once again, the administration seemed at a loss, unsure what to do even as it faced demands for forceful action from all sides.

American leftists and liberals have a familiar script to read from in times like these, and initially many of us returned to it in reaction to Obama’s vacillation. In one respect, both left anti-imperialists and liberal humanitarian interventionists have a similar critique of American foreign policy, as it is traditionally practiced: democracy and human rights abroad are perpetually sacrificed in the service of the “national interest.” Liberal interventionists tend to believe that narrow calculations of American interest should be supplemented with a more idealist commitment to universal humanitarian norms, while anti-imperialists argue that such idealism is itself typically a cover for the projection of imperial power, and that the best thing America can do for the countries of the periphery is to stop meddling in their affairs. Either way, Obama’s response failed to measure up and both critiques could be heard in the midst of events in Egypt.