I agree with those who say that cultures are different, but I am very enthusiastic about the current revolution nonetheless. I think that there are indeed chasms between the values of this or that set of people, but they are still people and tend to converge (sometimes in surprising ways) when similar inputs and constraints come into play. Egypt, for all the Islamic pretensions of 80% of its population, is actually not living life using some peculiarly Islamic economics, or Islamic politics or Islamic sociology (not to speak of nonsense like “Islamic science” and “Islamic technology”).
Their Islamic history and its good and bad elements have a role in all these things, but still, a man’s got to eat. With many detours and disasters along the way, they will still converge towards some similar notions of individual autonomy, personal property, democratic governance, rule of law…the whole shebang. They will enjoy even more of the same philosophers, the same novelists, the same poets, the same musicians, the same artists…I know some deep seated Marxism is leaking through my brain right now, but I think we are heading for one world, just more slowly and tortuously than most one-worlders realize (one world does not mean totally homogenous on all scales, just one interconnected whole with many similar features endlessly repeated…fractally weird, so to speak)..
I dont deny that vast gulfs still exist. Just that there IS convergence and an increasing interdependence and intermixing..one step at a time.
The future is already here, its just not evenly distributed (William Gibson)

To the extent that the US has any influence, it has done what it has done in Egypt because of Israel, period. Everything else pales into insignificance. If there were no Israeli occupation and no Israeli lobby pushing the US to support/bribe people on its behalf, I cannot see how or why the US would spend 3 billion a year on bribes to Mubarak.
And I think what the US does or does not do is not necessarily decisive. So the US should take a chill pill in most cases. Stop worrying. The world will go on more or less the same. Even Israel will probably survive without the herculean exertions the US does on its behalf. It will just have to adjust its aims a little and treat some people with a little more respect.
Oil? What will they do with all that oil? drink it? I have never figured out why the US has to spend billions to ensure access to oil that everyone else can apparently just buy in the market. Again, if its doing so as part of some planetary level law-enforcement function (worldcop), then the planet should be taxed for it and the planet should get to have a say in how the cop does his job. No taxation without representation. Otherwise, it seems to me that the cost of maintaining order exceeds the benefits the american taxpayer derives from any such exercise.