Muslim Brotherhood

Long War: The Muslim Brotherhood is joining the anti-government protests in Egypt, reversing an earlier stance of neutrality. This is incredibly bad news. The Brotherhood arose in the 1920s from the carnage of the Sudanese Civil War. It invented the concept of political Islam. All jihadist groups owe their origins to the Brotherhood. Specifically, the intellectual underpinnings of Al-Qaeda come directly from the Brotherhood. It is centered in Egypt but has branches in 70 different countries.
With the Brotherhood engaged the demonstrations in Egypt have turned deadly. The unrest in the region started with protests against inflation, not a lack of democracy. The main causes of emerging market inflation is loose US monetary and fiscal policy. The US is exporting inflation to the emerging world. So the US is the problem. And the US has to be the answer in the form of cutting government spending and stopping QE2.
The price of oil is soaring today and global stock markets are crashing; all because of the Muslim Brotherhood. The US needs to become vastly more engaged with events on the ground in the Mideast and it must address loose economic policies at home and it should immediately open up the strategic petroleum reserve to knock down the price of oil.
If none of these things occur, it could get really hairy in the financial markets. There is no easy button to press, however. Elections in the Arab world must follow the format proposed by Tunisian PM Ghannouchi, i.e. Islamic political parties like the Muslim Brotherhood must be excluded from office. The quick and easy answer of opening up the political field to all comers in Arab elections will put America on the same path that Russia has been on in the Chechen Wars. We can declare victory now by pressing the easy button, but this will create a much bigger war down the line.