Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Egypt

26 Comments

…and “smart diplomacy“:

The demonstrators maintain Morsi has become a power-hungry autocrat who is intent on making the Muslim Brotherhood Egypt’s permanent ruling party.

They also blame the Obama administration and U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson for propping up Morsi and facilitating the Muslim Brotherhood’s power grab.

“We are very critical of the Obama administration because they have been supporting the Brotherhood like no one has ever supported them,” Shadi Al Ghazali Harb, a 24-year-old member of Egypt’s Revolutionary Youth Coalition, told the Washington Free Beacon on Friday afternoon during a telephone interview from Cairo.

The White House is “the main supporter of the Brotherhood,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the American support this president would have fallen months ago.”

Al Ghazali Harb specifically dubbed Patterson “the first enemy of the revolution,” claiming “she is hated even more than Morsi.”

Activists hung pictures of Patterson with a red “X” drawn across her face at Egypt’s Defense Ministry during smaller protests Friday afternoon.

“She’s done a lot to harm our relations with the United States,” Al Ghazali Harb said.

This administration’s done a lot of harm to a lot of countries’ relations with the United States. Not to mention our national security.

But “Bain!!” and “War on women!” (not counting Muslim women, of course), and 47%!!,” and “dog in a crate.”

[Update a few minutes later]

I would assume that the administration’s excuse for not siding with the protesters (despite the biggest protest in the history of the world) is that to remove Morsi (e.g., via military coup) would somehow be “undemocratic.” This ignores the fact that Morsi’s government, regardless of how it came to power, is intrinsically undemocratic. There is no democratic way out of this mess. But at some point, the military knows that it will have to remove these nutjobs if it doesn’t want to get into a war with Israel that it can’t win. These protests will likely embolden the generals.

26 thoughts on “Egypt”

  1. I said elsewhere just this morning, “It looks like the U.S. has changed sides in the War on Terror.”

  2. Like I said here before replacing an autocratic leader like the former leaders of Egypt and Lybia and the current leader of Syria for Al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood is not a good idea.

    Also it is going to get worse before it gets better.

    If Assad gets kicked out the religious minorities in Syria, including the Christians, are going to either get displaced or slaughtered.

    1. Slaughtered and it is already happening. Not looking good for Christians in Egypt either with the state bulldozing churches and shooting at their members.

  3. rickl,
    have you forgotten that there IS no war on terror?
    .
    .
    Godzilla,
    slaughtered, plain and simple.
    .
    .

    Rand,
    if you had written this line, and stopped where I did, it could EASILY have been about us, and that’s spelled U.S.

    “There is no democratic way out of this mess. But at some point, the military knows that it will have to remove these nutjobs”

    I know a lot of people, a majority I feel sure, think we’ll never see rioting, looting, and a military coup here. But the gov’t we currently have, is NOT what most of us took an oath to protect. And having seen what this Admin has done for the last few years, I don’t see them just stepping aside in 2017.

    It’s never been part of Obama’s nature to step aside or take a back seat. So why the h3ll would he do that based simply on some dusty old paper like the Constitution? At least in Egypt, they openly admit and openly tell the people they’ve suspended their Rights and their Constitution.

    1. It’s never been part of Obama’s nature to step aside or take a back seat. So why the h3ll would he do that based simply on some dusty old paper like the Constitution?

      Why did he pass so little legislation when he had majorities in both branches of Congress? My take is that he runs a decent election campaign, but he doesn’t have the power or the competence backing him to extend his presidency past 2017. I think we worry too much about Obama and not enough about who will follow him. A few more presidents like Obama and we will replace democracy such as it is with tyranny.

      1. A few more candidates and campaigns like the GOP has had, and Hillary will win the next one. (That said, while I won’t be ready for Hillary in 2016, I certainly am ready for Hillary right now.)

        And, no, I don’t think for a second that there’s any danger of Obama finding a reason to extend his term into the next one. I remember conspiracy theories in 2000 that Clinton would find a way to void the election. Then in 2008, liberals were saying that Bush would extend his term.

        1. Yeah I was one of those people saying that in 2008. One of my (rare) political prediction mistakes. After the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, etc it seemed to me like the US was sliding towards being a repressive police state and that is quite often the first step before installing an autocrat or totalitarian regime. I guess the US political system is more robust than I thought. But then again when you manage to keep a republic for as long as you did you must be doing something right.

          1. Guantanamo makes us a police state? Holding militants in wartime is fairly common. The critics are acting like we’re holding thousands of families based only on a vague suspicion.

            If you’ll recall, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo is legal. We can hold detainees until the end of the war, or until they are no longer considered a threat. They’ve had tribunals, and had been getting annual reviews ever since.

            Of the 166 still being held, I can’t think of a single one who was ever willing to say that they oppose the jihad. And that includes those cleared for release on condition that their countries can keep an eye on them. Read the statements that had been released by their lawyers, and the stuff said by former detainees. It’s nice-sounding stuff that is strangely missing any expression of clear opposition to jihad.

            Sorry Godzilla, but the anti-GTMO meme needs to be destroyed.

          2. Well to me Guantanamo is an indicator for how much the US government values human life or prisoner treatment.

            The US already has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world as it is.

          3. Yes, it is very much an indicator of the value of human life, but quite the opposite of what you mean.

            A lot of innocent human life (mostly non-American) has been lost at the hands of former detainees. How valuable were their lives?

            The U.S. incarceration rate isn’t related. We’ve captured tens of thousands in Afghanistan (perhaps over 100,000), and yet only about 800 were taken to Guantanamo. With only 166 remaining, we’ve released too many.

          4. Well to me Guantanamo is an indicator for how much the US government values human life or prisoner treatment.

            I agree. The prison in Guantanamo is built just like any US prison, which is to say it is far better than any prison in Afghanistan, Iraq, or where ever the inhabitants originally came.

    2. I agree with Karl and Randy. While I don’t think many in the U.S. military support the Administration’s abuse of power; I also don’t think Obama will extend his Presidency/Leadership beyond 20 days into 2017. Why would he need to do so? Further, the same thoughts have occured, as Randy noted, in 2000 and 2008.

      The real concern is who comes after Obama. I’m not seeing improvements on that front.

      1. Except for material aid in a disaster, all monetary aid should be considered taxation without representation.

        1. Non-disaster relief should be tied to the recipient country relinquishing a 5 mile by 5 mile box on the coastline somewhere. No, I don’t care how crappy the box is.

          Not “lease”. Ownership.

          Then set up an “American Zone” in each of them. Need food? Water? Come visit, we’ll hand it out ourselves.

          Build schools and hospitals there. Lead by example, not by just handing food and money over to people that hate you to hand out.

  5. The outcome of the current Egyptian spat does not matter. Egypt will implode shortly regardless because it can not afford to feed it’s population. It imports about half it’s required food but can no longer pay for anything beyond the earnings from the Suez canal tolls as income. The billions from tourism are now gone and the rats are exiting the sinking ship. 70,000 left via the airport in the last 2 days, for instance. No imported diesel for the tractors, no harvest, no money for food imports or cops. Sad. I expect a big jump in GDP from the production of rubble – as usual in the mideast.

  6. The Muslim Brotherhood has been running a disinformation campaign pretending they’re responsible moderates for a long time now. The Obama Administration apparently decided a while back to at least pretend that they believe this, and has been supporting the Brotherhood to run Egypt on that basis.

    Now, I can’t say whether our leaders are deluded enough to actually believe the Brotherhood’s “moderate” schtick or are just cynically convinced it’s Islamists or chaos. But by supporting the Islamists over the various Egyptian secular, non-moslem, and middle classes, we are supporting the destruction of Egypt – see Bob’s observations about tourist dollars being vital, and consider Morsi’s recent clueless appointment of a tourist-killing fanatic to govern Luxor province.

    To get REALLY incorrect, we repeatedly confuse the benefits of “democracy” with the good governance that actually comes from rule by a (relatively) sensible responsible forethoughtful middle class. What of countries where that sector is still a minority, and the majority is still ignorant tribalist peasants? Sorry, our policy lately is that they get “democracy” anyway – one man one vote – once. (Thus ensuring the majority will stay peasants indefinitely.)

    The traditional solution to disastrously incompetent government in Egypt is that the Army will take over. At this point, that will probably lead to an islamist insurrection as bad as Algeria’s in the 90’s and things will take a long deadly time to get better.

    But if the islamists are left in charge, things will still get deadly, but will never get better. Envision the self-perpetuating mullah kleptocracy that runs Iran for Egypt’s future under the Brotherhood – only much worse, because Egypt doesn’t have oil to make up for the economic incompetence.

  7. I get the incredibly strong sense that this administration is essentially clueless on what’s actually happening in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mali, and, well, pretty much everywhere anything of serious geopolitical import is happening at present.

  8. That’s over 80 million people worth of unrest – almost all within bicycling distance of the Nile, and half in the delta. Population density and strife are a bad combo.

  9. Here’s a question, considering the crowd has a grievance with Amb. Patterson; has Obama and now Kerry learned from Benghazi and made available a QRF nearby to help extract the US Ambassador and embassy staff in case things get ugly?

    Or should we start looking around Youtube and take bets on what video will be blamed for the riot?

      1. That’s a pretty good pick, Alan. I give it 10-1. I never trusted that jerk; he’s a wild and crazy guy.

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