To date, US President Barack Obama’s efforts to appease or engage Islamists have either failed or backfired. US influence in the Mideast is at an all-time low and Islamic fundamentalism continues to gain strength at an alarming pace.
Egypt, which until a year ago was regarded by the US as an ally, is perhaps the most dramatic example of Obama’s complete failure to understand the nature of the region and the steps that must be taken to stabilize it. The current horrors and barbarism in Syria should not divert attention from events in Egypt, the outcome of which is likely to have a major impact on the entire region.
Obama’s first blunder in Egypt was the antagonism he displayed toward President Hosni Mubarak. Immediately following his first election, Obama insisted on inviting members of the outlawed Moslem Brotherhood to his Cairo address. As a result, Mubarak boycotted the event.
Obama displayed the full extent of his contempt for Mubarak when the public riots first erupted against the Egyptian regime when he called on him to step down immediately. This provided an opening to the Islamists and sent shock waves throughout those Arab regimes that regarded themselves as US allies.
While there is no disputing that Mubarak was an odious authoritarian leader, he was considered a moderate within the context of the Arab world, a loyal ally of the US, and a combatant of Islamic terrorism — facts whose implications Obama either inexplicably failed to grasp or naively chose to ignore.
The Obama administration’s greatest failure with regard to Egypt has been its inexcusable and naive mischaracterization of the Moslem Brotherhood. The Moslem Brotherhood is a fanatical Islamist organization, established in 1928 with the objective of imposing medieval Islamic sharia law throughout the world, employing violence and terror to achieve the goal. The organization was suppressed for most of its 85-year history, and many of its leaders were jailed in Egypt during the Mubarak era.
The Brotherhood opposes freedom of religion and incites hatred against Christians and Jews, demanded the death penalty for apostates, homosexuals and adulterers and has relegated women to third-class status. It engineered the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Despite this damning record, the Obama administration has inexplicably characterized the Moslem Brotherhood as a moderate movement and suggested that it could become part of a multicultural, Egyptian democratic government that could collaborate with other secular, liberal political streams.
Obama could not have been more wrong. When Mohamed Morsi, one of the Moslem Brotherhood’s leading members took over the reins of government (gaining just 25% of the electoral vote due to the organizational chaos of his opponents), he began purging non-Brotherhood government officials and replacing them with Islamists and their cronies.
Instead of focusing on stabilizing the economy and reaching out to other factions, his new parliament concentrated on outlawing foreign languages in state schools and sanctioning female genital mutilation. During Morsi’s brief tenure, Islamists made major inroads in the Sinai and the provinces where radical elements succeeded in killing Egyptian military and police, murdering Christian Copts, who comprise 10% of the population, and burning and desecrating more than 50 of their churches.
President Morsi would have confronted the US and introduced amendments to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, had Egypt’s economic crisis not demanded his full attention. Much like Hitler, Morsi moved determinedly toward dictatorship.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Egyptians became enraged. More than 30 million people signed a petition calling for Morsi to step down. Minister of Defense, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who Morsi had appointed, demanded that the government be more inclusive. But Morsi ignored the calls, and the army intervened. Violence erupted, he and other Moslem Brotherhood leaders were arrested, and more than a thousand Brotherhood supporters were killed in riots. Egyptians strongly supported the army and its imposition of martial law. As of now, the military has the upper hand and violent resistance from Brotherhood elements has apparently been suppressed.
Throughout this period of chaos and collapse, the Obama administration did nothing more than call for a re-instatement of a democratic government that never existed. In their last conversation, Obama assured Morsi that he continued to regard him as the democratically elected President of Egypt. While Obama hitherto had avoided severing relations with Egypt, he outraged many Egyptians by criticizing General El-Sisi, but supporting the repressive and murderous Moslem Brotherhood, whose stated objective is the transformation of Egypt into an Islamist state.
In contrast to Obama’s fantasies, Israeli leaders are focused on realities and fully aware of the risks that Egypt’s instability poses to Israeli security. They recognize that a fanatical Islamic dictatorship allied with an organization that created Hamas and utterly committed to the elimination of Jewish sovereignty, is a disastrous scenario.
However, Israel has also learned from experience that the enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend. Mubarak had exploited anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism amongst the Egyptian people in order to divert attention from economic and domestic problems.
There is thus always a remote possibility that a desperate Egyptian military government could turn on Israel to divert attention from domestic problems. (Indeed, some elements within the Tamarod movement, which facilitated the military coups, have displayed anti-Semitic tendencies and called for an end to dependence on the US and the severing of ties with Israel, and Al Ahram, the most widely circulated Egyptian daily newspaper, has warned of a “Zionist-American-Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy against Egypt.”)
Nonetheless, we recognize that a military regime is far preferable to a Moslem Brotherhood dictatorship that created Hamas, considers Israel Moslem territory that must one day be regained, and is notorious for its feral anti-Semitism, with its leaders continuously referring to Jews as “the descendants of apes and pigs” and “vampires”.
However, the Egyptian military has already reined back Hamas and closed many of the tunnels through which arms were being transferred to Islamic extremists in Sinai. There are also reports of close cooperation between Israeli and Egyptian military authorities in neutralizing threats from terrorists in Sinai.
In Egypt today the choice between the Egyptian army and the Moslem Brotherhood is clear. Despite the justifiable repugnance of military juntas, there should be no equivocation. While the Obama administration obsessively attempts to impose democracy on a society that lacks democratic political experience, it is potentially enabling the most populous Arab state to be controlled by tyrannical, Jihadist autocrats.
By failing to support the Egyptian military, the US may also be fostering Egypt’s economic and social collapse. That Obama is considering abrogating economic aid to Egypt suggests that the US has not absorbed the lessons arising from Jimmy Carter’s naïve and disastrous approach to Iran, which paved the way for the ayatollah’s takeover. Without urgent, remedial aid to Egypt, which depends on imports for the bulk of its food and is rapidly running out of hard currency, total economic meltdown, hunger, riots and even civil war are likely.
In addition, ongoing US pressure to “democratize” Egypt could enable Putin to restore the Russian-Egyptian nexus which prevailed prior to Sadat’s break with the Soviet Union.
Instead of seeking to impose democracy from without, the US should support Egypt’s military government as a mechanism for forestalling the transformation of Egypt into a breeding ground for Jihadists and Al Qaeda.
Democracy is a gradual process which can only be developed from within and only after the formation of a functioning government authority. The majority of the Egyptian people are clearly totally opposed to an extremist Islamic takeover. The US and the West should welcome the collapse of the Moslem Brotherhood regime, as it represents a major blow to the globalization of Islamic fundamentalism — the greatest threat to the Western world and international stability.
– See more at: http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=4773#sthash.Oyk68chh.dpuf
dweller Said:
that what Honeybees are, fabians. Share the hive the food the work.
As some one said, no opportunity should go to waste.
The response to Syria must FIRST and FORE MOST be a message to Iran otherwise it will be a waste of everybody energy.
This message should be the essence of the talk btw Obama and Putin at the meeting of the “TWENTY”.
Iran and Putin are giving a unique chance to Obama to recover US role in the ME and the world.
I wonder if he realizes THAT. Wishful thinking!!!!
dweller Said:
Your such a little Piss Ant, Silly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I”ll stick one on your backside!!!!!!!!!!!!
His many ref and view suggest a strong sensitivity from “Islam” that must have been balanced with far left ideology. A dangerous mix in a western world that always looks for something new. New is not necessarily progress but may be consider “progressive”!
@ watsa46:
I seriously doubt that he identifies as a Muslim, even privately.
He may think he has to cater to them to avoid encountering a fatwa — effectively, a hit contract on him — for apostasy.
But it’s pretty far-fetched to think that he views himself as a Muslim.
People like him — products of the elite Western academic establishment — like to think of themselves as utterly above such benighted phenomena as organized religion
— of any stripe.
He’s more like something of a “neo-Fabian.”
@ yamit82:
All your points, eh?
If I did, I managed to do it with less than half the verbiage.
But as a matter of fact, Yamit, you actually touched on several matters of which I made no mention at all.
Furthermore, YOU seem to think that giving the Egyptians economic aid at this time is as misguided as giving them military aid.
I frankly don’t.
And my going out of my way to note that Obama’s contemplated cutting of economic aid INSTEAD of military aid constitutes the height of perversity
— can hardly be characterized as a ‘paraphrase’ of anything you wrote.
Just when I thought Yamit had shrunk to the smallest possible caricature of his already-petty self — he proves me wrong again. . . .
The “5” and the “6” are next to each other on the keyboard.
Given
— the few minutes available to me for blogging and the consequent speed at which I have to operate
— as well as the fact that some of these computers are worm & virus infested
it’s amazing to me that I don’t make lots MORE typos than I do.
I’m sure glad that typos are not a problem for Yamit, though.
Incidentally, what’s an “E-!5” ?
@ honeybee:
Good for you, Twinkie — you get a gold star to stick on your forehead.
When you lay hold of that dictionary, take a moment to look up the meaning of “rhetorical question.”
yamit82 Said:
You are like Moses from the Mt..
Palestinian opposition to Hamas regime revived as Egypt cracks down in Sinai
http://www.worldtribune.com/2013/08/29/palestinian-opposition-to-hamas-regime-revived-as-egypt-cracks-down-in-sinai/
I had just specualted on this a couple of days ago. It appears that there may be a plan afoot for a gaza spring.
Looks like those “democratic” twitter revolutionaries are on the move again. PA hoping to benefit? PA and GCC colluding? Look who was shut down.
Here is my crazy idea: when the smoke clears they hope to have a PA unified govt including Abbas and Meshaal. 😛
dweller managed to paraphrase all my points: https://www.israpundit.org/archives/57272/comment-page-1#comment-287319, without having to use a direct quote. The words he uses are incidental to the ideas I made that he adopted and regurgitated. 😉
how many f-15’s in Egyptian air force?
Egypt has no E-!5’s!!!
Obama belief in Islam to solve world problems is plain “naiveté”. Islamism is an integral part of Islam. Al the “isms” reflect human nature and must be taken with grain of salt. This includes communism, socialism, capitalism and all others “isms”. He still knows too little about human nature.
There is only one way to explain Obama behavior, his naïve believe in “Islam”. Islam cannot be separated from Islamism. Just like the naïve believe in communism or socialism or even capitalism or other “ISMS”. Apparently he still knows too little about human nature.
dweller Said:
Hello Sunshine!!!! To attack Israel, silly. Yamit 82 already told you the answer,don’t you listen???
BHO has it bass-ackwards. There’s no constructive reason to cut economic aid to Egypt, as long as the Army continues to handle its distribution in a responsible way.
It’s the MILITARY aid that should be cut. What in blue blazes does the Egyptian Army need explicitly offensive armament like F-15’s & Abrams Tanks for?
— a war with Libya? or the Sudan?
There’s only one other, immediately adjacent neighbor, and THAT one has never evidenced offensive intentions toward Egypt — under any Egyptian regime.
Even the ’56 & ’67 actions were themselves essentially RESPONSES to Egyptian provocations.
Why does the Egyptian military need F-15’s & Abrams Tanks?
yamit82 Said:
“We can forgive the death of our children”,Golda.
yamit82 Said:
Another ” Black Hawk Down “. We are throwing USA soldier against a wall. Knights in a chess game. More furnerals for young hispanic kids. No wonder Obama supports illeagal immigration.
A Kuwaiti newspaper reported Thursday that Gulf leaders have been in touch with Israel, and have asked that Israel act “with restraint” in the event of an attack by Western nations on Syria. That restraint would be necessary if Bashar al-Assad responds to an attack against him by attacking Israel. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/171397#.Uh9Vh3-Bbfg
Earlier this week, Syrian officials said that if Syria was attacked, a coalition of nations and terror groups, including Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Hezbollah, would respond with an all-out attack on Israel.
According to the report, Israel responded by saying that it would indeed exercise “restraint,” as long as the attacks on Israel “did not exceed reasonable bounds.” The report did not describe what those bounds were.
A separate report said that European Union officials have warned Assad not to attack Israel if he is attacked. The warning said that the EU could not be responsible for Israel’s response. The message added that any attack against Assad was not aimed at removing him from power.
Putin Orders Massive Strike Against Saudi Arabia If West Attacks Syria
Posted by EU Times on Aug 27th, 2013 // 364 Comments
Critical to note, and as we had previously reported on in our 28 January 2013 report “Obama Plan For World War III Stuns Russia,” the Federal Security Services (FSB) confirmed the validity of the released hacked emails of the British based defence company, Britam Defence that stunningly warned the Obama regime was preparing to unleash a series of attacks against both Syria and Iran in a move Russian intelligence experts warned could very well cause World War III.
According to this FSB report, Britam Defence, one of the largest private mercenary forces in the world, was the target of a “massive hack” of its computer files by an “unknown state sponsored entity” this past January who then released a number of critical emails between its top two executives, founder Philip Doughty and his Business Development Director David Goulding.
The two most concerning emails between Doughty and Goulding, this report says, states that the Obama regime has approved a “false flag” attack in Syria using chemical weapons, and that Britam has been approved to participate in the West’s warn on Iran, and as we can read: More Here
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Iran: Putin Orders Massive Strike Against Saudi Arabia If West Attacks Syria
“According to Kremlin sources familiar with this extraordinary “war order,” Putin became “enraged” after his early August meeting with Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan who warned that if Russia did not accept the defeat of Syria, Saudi Arabia would unleash Chechen terrorists under their control to cause mass death and chaos during the Winter Olympics scheduled to be held 7-23 February 2014 in Sochi, Russia,” EU Times said quoting a report from whatdoesitmean.com.
Lebanese newspaper As-Safir confirmed this amazing threat against Russia saying that Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord by stating, “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us.”
Prince Bandar went on to say that Chechens operating in Syria were a pressure tool that could be switched on an off. “These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role in Syria’s political future.” More Here
Egypt’s interim P.M. now says yes to Muslim Brotherhood
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=61816
QUOTE: “Interim P.M.”Egypt should not ban the Muslim Brotherhood or exclude
it from politics”
Egypt should not ban the Muslim Brotherhood or exclude it from politics, the
interim prime minister has said, reversing his previously stated view.
The apparent about-turn after the army’s overthrow of Islamist president
Mohammed Morsi fuelled speculation that the military-installed government, may now seek a political settlement to the crisis. But also coincided with a new call for protests by Mr Morsi’s supporters.
Hazem el-Beblawi, the interim prime minister, had proposed on August 17 that
the Brotherhood, the Arab world’s oldest and arguably most influential
Islamist group, should be dissolved, and said the government was studying
the idea.
But in an interview with state media this week, Mr Beblawi appeared to row back.
He says the government would instead monitor the group and its political wing and that the actions of its members would determine its fate.
Obama Not Ready to Order Syria
Strike but Gives up on U.N”, Agence France Presse
SUBJECT: Obama on hold re Syria strike
Mohammed Morsi fuelled speculation that the military-installed government may now seek a political settlement to the crisis.
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=61816
Whose side is Isi Leibler on? Egypt is near starvation and instead of supplying them with wheat we gave them F-16’s and other assorted military purchases. Egypt’s economy no matter who runs the show is beyond fixing. American aid the the Egyptian military will not enhance their ability to fight and defeat Islamists like the MB. Their internal security and police force is sufficient and the few thousand in Sinai mostly Bedouin can be defeated or at least controlled with a fraction of their current forces if Egypt wants to do it, which till now with all the billions in military aid they haven’t. Assuming the Egyptian military manages to stabilize their hold of government, it is still left with the biggest Army in the ME, trained and supplied by Uncle Sam and guess who they will return their attention to??? Egypt cannot justify such an extensive military without a military objective and they have no serious existential enemy except Israel. With a near starving population sooner or later ala- Nasser they will invoke the Zionist bogeyman distraction.
Israel’s long term agenda should be to reduce the power and influence of the Egyptian Army not aid in strengthening it as the idiot Leibler is advocating in this article. A cutoff of American military aid would allow Israel to voluntary divest from American aid as well.
The Russians cannot easily replace over 30 years of American supplied weaponry. Any transition would be costly and time consuming. Israel could live with that. Israel could potentially become self-sufficient in weaponry we need and what we cannot make ourselves we would be free to buy from any source based on quality and price. American Arms are very overpriced, the Dollar has lost over 50% of it’s value since 1983 but the base amt is still relatively the same. Giving up Israeli aid from America would free up our Political leadership to make independent decisions and remove ammunition in the hands of Israel haters in America.
I say that you need to know that Egypt is an enemy and its army is training for war with Israel. Not against Sudan or Libya, but against us.
“Israel abandoned its oil in Sinai, the airports, huge deposits of iron and uranium. All the weapons flowing into Gaza – are all sponsored by the Egyptian intelligence that totally controls Sinai. Mubarak was one of the most harsh and cruel enemies of the people of Israel.”
“Thanks to us Egypt has sophisticated modern weapons and a very strong army. Sinai has underground bunkers – against the agreement- bunkers that can accommodate entire divisions.”
I say drain the enemies swamp and that includes Primarily Egypt, who have waged war against Israel 4 times since 1947.
We will return again, to the new Yamit, rebuilt on its ruins.