Just over a week ago, Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi effectively
precipitated a
palace coup. He sacked his top intelligence chief, the country’s
military leadership, and other key members of the Supreme Council of the
Armed Forces (SCAF) in the space of five days.
A constitutional document limiting his powers was largely scrapped. Meanwhile, the Obama administration deliberately
ignores
the unfolding debacle, a monster of its own creation, and forges ahead
with a policy completely contrary to American security interests. “We
had expected President Morsi at some point to co-ordinate changes in the
military leadership, to name a new team,”
said George
Little, the Pentagon press secretary. “The United States…look[s]
forward to continuing a very close relationship with the SCAF.”
The ostensible basis of that very close relationship was initially
illuminated by the
Washington’s Post’s David
Igantius, who contended that one of the reasons Obama administration
officials “appear to have confidence” in what has occurred is because
Egypt’s newly appointed defense minister, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sissi,
had “extensive contact with United States in his previous post as head
of military intelligence,” and because “he spent a year of professional
training in the United States.”
National Review’s Andrew McCarthy
reveals the nonsense behind such an assessment, noting that even the
Wall Street Journal, which he describes as “stuck on the democracy project dogma,” was forced to
admit that al-Sissi “has a broad reputation within military circles as a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer.” The same
WSJ article
encapsulates the administration’s dogmatic thinking as well, noting
that “U.S. officials expressed confidence that Gen. Sissi will maintain
close ties with the U.S., which provides Egypt with $1.3 billion a year
in military aid, and uphold Egypt’s peace deal with Israel.”
Al-Sissi is hardly an anomaly. As the
New York Times discovered (no
doubt, much to their chagrin), the Egyptian military’s new chief of
staff, Gen. Sedky Sobhi, wrote a paper seven years ago, while attending
the United States Army War College in Pennsylvania as a student. In it
he argued that the United States’s presence in the Middle East, along
with its “one sided” support of Israel, was fueling hatred and miring
the U.S. in an “unwinnable global war” with Islamist militants. Sobhi
further contended that it was wrong to characterize Al Qaeda and other
militant groups as merely “irrational terrorist organizations.” “I
recommend that the permanent withdrawal of United States military forces
from the Middle East and the Gulf should be a goal of U.S. strategy in
this region,” he wrote, adding that the United States should pursue its
objectives through “socioeconomic means and the impartial application of
international law.”
READ MORE
.