The Washington Free Beacon:
Pro-military Egyptians want to shift to Russian alliance
The Obama administration support for Muslim Brotherhood Islamists in Egypt is driving the powerful military there against the United States and toward Moscow, according to U.S. officials and reports from the region.
The pro-Muslim Brotherhood stance is undermining decades of U.S. policy toward the Middle East state and prompting concerns that the United States is about to “lose” Egypt as a strategic partner, said officials familiar with intelligence reports.
Disclosure of the concern over the administration’s policy failure in Egypt comes as a security crackdown on pro-Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo resulted in scores killed.
“The Obama administration’s blatant Islamist support is risking the decades-long security arrangement with Egypt,” one U.S. official told the Washington Free Beacon.
“The Egyptians are so upset they might very well give up our support,” the official added, noting the military regime is currently leaning toward seeking backing from Russia, and possibly China in the future.
The United States has provided Egypt with more than $49 billion in both military and economic assistance since 1979. Cairo was viewed as a key strategic partner in the region.
However, the 2011 ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a long-time U.S. ally, as part of the pro-democracy Arab Spring movement began a shift in U.S. policy. At that time, the Obama administration began covertly backing the Muslim Brotherhood, an anti-democratic Islamist group.
The policy shift was a marked change from past policy. During the 1970s, the United States successfully diverted Egypt’s alignment with Soviet Union under Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser by developing close ties to Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, and later Mubarak.
“The administration, through a combination of ignorance, incompetence and support for the Islamists is reversing the strategy gains we made in Egypt,” the official said.
I heard on the radio that the Bamster was criticizing Egyptians that were killing one another. We can’t have low information Muslims killing each other. WH help for the victims in Benghazi- dial tone.
Today Obama spoke out of both sides of his mouth….. a not too uncommon occurrence for him.
He wants BOTH inclusion of the racist, religiously intolerant, sexist Muslim Brotherhood AND respect for all under human rights.
You can’t have them both!
It is an inclusive gov’t. the interim gov’t serving right now.
It includes Muslims of all sects, Copts and secularists, atheists and agnostics.
IF the Muslim Brotherhood is allowed another bite at the apple it will be more churches burning, more kidnappings, more defenstrations (as seen on You Tube very recently when young men were tossed off a building’s roof to be kicked to death after they fell thirty feet) and more forced conversions and favoritism.
Obama has to know this.
He Has To.
If he doesn’t he’s a hopeless romantic when it comes to the JAIL BREAKERS who lead the Muslim Brotherhood.
Yes, Morsi and 33 others broke out of prison in 2011.
Or, he has an Islamist agenda.
I wonder how he felt when a Tennessee public school’s ban on pork only lasted one day?
Trust me, it wasn’t to please ”the Jews,” or because of some ”food allergy.”
What U.S. official?
Another unnamed U.S. official told me that what Bill Gertz’s unnamed U.S. official said is a complete load of horse manure. And mine is a more highly placed imaginary official.
Before hooking up with The Washington Free Press—a right-wing propaganda outlet operating under the auspices of the 501(c)4 Center for American Freedom—Bill Gertz spent 27 year as a columnist for The Washington Times—a right-wing propaganda outlet founded by and funded by The Unification Church.
The Obama administration has been supporting a new government that was in place as a result of the first democratic election held in Egypt since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled for 30 years. Who else should the U.S. have been supporting?
Obama has just cancelled U.S./ Egyptian joint military exercises in protest of the recent violence. He also warned Egypt that the U.S. could cancel $1.3 billion in military aid.
I don’t hear any better courses of action being suggested. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have suggested that all aid be cancelled immediately. Rand Paul was quick to jump in with that suggestion.
In doing that immediately, of course, we would instantly give up any influence we might be able to exercise over the course of events in Egypt. A threat ceases to be a useful bargaining chip once you’ve made good on it.
What would we have then? A bidding war with Russia?
Rand Paul just revealed himself as an inept strategist. He’s no chess player. He doesn’t seem to consider the course of the game even a single move ahead. Fortunately for Paul, the next presidential election is far enough off that people will likely forget his bonehead suggestion—assuming that those who might consider voting for him thought it through in the first place.
You want to set that in stone, Greg?
The Muslim Brotherhood leaders (all 34 of them) broke out of prison in 2011 and some got elected/or appointed by 2012.
What did they do once in power?
Were they ”democratic?
Were they open to representation of non-MB and non-Muslim Egyptians?
No, on BOTH accounts.
They took over the media or forced opposing media underground.
When they found an alternate viewpoint being published the MB arrested and beat the publishers.
Women were relegated to 2nd class.
Non-Muslims found no police assistance when their daughters were kidnapped and raped then forced to marry their rapist MB kidnappers.
Copts homes and businesses were LOOTED, their churches burned with them INSIDE!
Pre-Islamic Egyptian antiquities were threatened repeatedly.
Therefore tourism dried up.
But it was the systematic looting, raping, murdering and forced conversions and forced marriages that led to the biggest demonstrations ever seen on earth before.
Those demonstrations were peaceful.
The military heeded the call for human rights on the part of the people (non-MB) on Egypt.
Now YOU think MB ought to simply be put back in power?
It isn’t going to happen.
The criminals who escaped prison only a couple years ago will find themselves back behind bars for the same inhumane beliefs they had before.
But in the intervening year the MB showed they meant what their charter said.
They don’t deserve Obama’s loyalty.
Nor yours.
@Nan G, #4:
The danger of any democratic election is that someone might be elected that we don’t like. I don’t especially like or trust the Muslim Brotherhood, but I’m not a Muslim and Egypt is not my country.
What I find objectionable is that people aren’t respecting the results of their election, and are abandoning the rule of law and resorting to violence rather than working things out in a way that doesn’t threaten to destroy civil order in their nation.
My impression is that the Obama administration would attempt to work constructively with any government that would attempt to bring order, stability, and social progress to Egypt. That’s the result that’s in the best interest of the United States. I think the Obama administration takes a pragmatic approach to foreign policy. We ceased supporting Mubarak, for example, at the point when it became apparent that Mubarak was going to be overthrown.
I am with you NanG…(2 & 4)well put.
Greg @ #3 The MB doesn’t want to “work things out” they want to RULE OVER PEOPLE…why do people like you NOT GET THE INTENTIONS OF THESE (EVIL) PEOPLE ??!!!
Do you live in a bubble??
@FAITH7, #6:
I live in America—a very different place from Egypt.
America has representative democracy.
Egypt tried straight democracy….majority rule…..and got the Muslim Brotherhood because the majority are Muslim and thought the MB would embody that for their country the best.
But the MB has a motto that predicted this entire fiasco:
Add to that the MB leadership had been imprisoned by the previous regime which FAVORED Islam without being Islamist.
The leaders of the MB are all jail breakers.
All they know how to do is loot and steal from others and distribute amongst themselves.
The overthrow was inevitable.
A new gov’t, after the interim and the new ballot will be more representative rather than straight majority rule.
A proportion will be atheists, agnostics, Coptics, Jews, Sunnis Shiites and so on.
If Obama doesn’t like it, what’s he going to do?
His buddies in the MB had their chance and they blew it.
GREG
in AMERICA, THE DEMOCRACY IS FADING ALSO SINCE OBAMA IS THERE,
JUST ONE STEP AT THE TIME, BUT SURELY,
WE MUST BE VIGILANT,
OR ARE WE TOO LATE,
THE MILITARY ARE DOING THE RIGHT THING AND THEY MUST PROTECT THEMSELVES
AND THE OTHER PEACEFUL CITIZENS, WHICH ARE BEING KILLED ALSO BY THE BROTHERHOOD FANATICS, THEY ALREADY KILLED SOME CHRISTIANS AND BURNED THEIR SITE OF PRAYER, AND OBAMA IS OKAY WITH THAT?
GREG
NOW YOU SEE WHY PEOPLE WANTED TO CHANGE MORSI suppose democracy,
THEY WHERE THE ONE BEING BEATED AND STARVED,
AND THAT’S WHY THE MILITARY TOOK OVER, THEY KNEW BETTER THAN YOU,
THAT IT COULDN’T GET BETTER,
and you are spitting on RAND PAUL FOR FOLLOWING
THE LAW OF THE LAND,
IT SHOW HOW UN-AMERICAN YOU AND YOUR OWN CLICK FROM TOP TO BOTTOM,
HAVE BECOME,
@Greg
Rule of law? Hahahahahahahaha!
No surprise that you think Morsi followed the RoL, considering you are an Obamaite.
The first things Morsi did was to start violating the Egyptian Constitution by Executive decree and fiat.
Kinda like Barry, huh?
Rule of Law, my ass.