US military aid to Egypt is counterproductive

Ettinger is right about the aid but he doesn’t speculate why the US keeps doing it. Ted Belman

By Yoram Ettinger, ISRAEL HAYOM

One million demonstrators participated in the anti-Mubarak Tahrir Square rallies earlier this year. However, two million demonstrators joined the Muslim Brotherhood anti-U.S. Tahrir Square demonstration following the toppling of Mubarak, highlighting a political trend in Egypt.

The transfer of advanced U.S. military systems to Egypt – including the co-production in Egypt of the M1A1 Abrams tank – undermines vital U.S. national security interests. It bolsters a regime at odds with the values and the long-term interests of the U.S., making it a potentially anti-U.S. regime that is becoming increasingly closer to Hamas and a safe haven for additional anti-U.S. terrorists. It accelerates the regional arms race and fuels Egyptian imperialistic goals in the Sudan, the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It rewards a regime that oppresses and executes its Christian-Coptic minority of nine million people and institutionalizes anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. hate-education. Egypt doesn’t need the transfer of advanced U.S. military systems to combat domestic terrorism and to safeguard the borders with dramatically weaker Libya and Sudan. Those military systems are required in order to achieve a “strategic parity with Israel” – a code name for launching a war on Israel. Such a transfer defies Middle Eastern-Egyptian realities.

For example, the most advanced U.S. military systems, sold to the pro-U.S. Shah of Iran, could not avert the February 1979 ascension to power of the anti-U.S. Khomeini. Those systems made Iran a much more formidable threat to the U.S. The 1951-1969 transformation of Libya’s Wheelus Air Base into the largest American air base outside the U.S. did not foil Moammar Gadhafi’s coup in 1969.

The transfer of U.S. military hardware to Jordan did not prevent King Hussein from supporting Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The pile of advanced U.S. military systems sold to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States was not employed during the 1991 and 2003 U.S.-Iraq wars. A large-scale U.S. military deployment and U.S. casualties were required to secure recipients of U.S. military hardware.

The recent seismic developments on the Arab street, especially in Egypt, have demonstrated the tenuousness of Arab regimes, policies and alliances; how unpredictable, volatile, unstable, treacherous and violent are inter and intra Arab politics; and how little control the U.S. has over them.

The rising tide of fundamental Islam is apparent in Egypt, where the anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood – Hamas’ Big Brother – is favored to make major gains in the coming election. According to a December 2010 Pew Global Attitudes, 95 percent of Egyptians support Islam’s large role in politics, 82% favor the stoning of adulterers, 84% support the execution of apostates and 77% advocate the flogging or hand-amputation of thieves. Egypt produced Osama bin Laden’s chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Blind Sheikh Rahman of the 1993 Twin Tower terror attack, and Mohammed Atta, the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorists.

Anti-U.S. Egyptian sentiments are the derivative of sustained incitement by educators, policy-makers and public opinion molders. For instance, the Mubarak-controlled media and clergy celebrated 9/11 and contended that it was a U.S. conspiracy. Two weeks before 9/11, the Mubarak-controlled daily Akhbar al-Yom incited, “The Statue of Liberty must be destroyed.” The editor-in-chief of the Al Jumhuriyah daily, who was appointed by Mubarak, wrote that “Iraqi swords would chop the neck of the U.S. invader.”

Egypt has collaborated with Russia, China and especially with North Korea (since 1981, with Saddam’s financial support) in the development of ballistic, chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities. Mubarak violated U.S. sanctions against Saddam and Gadhafi and voted consistently against the U.S. in the U.N.

Notwithstanding the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Egypt has conducted a Cold War against Israel, promoting anti-Semitic hate-education, anti-Israel positions at the U.N., the Arab League, NGOs, the anti-Semitic Durban conferences and in Africa. Egypt has facilitated the flow of advanced missiles to Hamas-controlled Gaza, spending 18% of GNP on its military, while its economy crumbles.

The $40 billion in U.S. military aid to Egypt ($1.3 billion in 2012) is framed as an investment in regional stability, supposedly advancing pro-U.S. policies, allegedly constraining anti-U.S. elements, promoting regional peace and democracy and ostensibly reducing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. However, reality demonstrates that U.S. military aid to Egypt has been devastatingly counterproductive, with potential devastation yet to occur.