Obama on Egypt: Kidneys

One has to marvel at the naïveté of this president. That is what it has to be, barring the unthinkable, that Barack Obama secretly hopes that the Muslim Brotherhood will take over in Egypt, just as radical Shi’as did in Iran during the 1970s. Not even this president is that dumb.

In his interview with Bill O’Reilly during the Super Bowl on Sunday, Obama wanted the Factor host to be careful to distinguish between the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and the controlling Shi’a sect that took over when the shah was forced to vacate in Iran.

Different situation completely. No similarity, was the drift coming from the only U.S. president to actually attend a madrasa, something that Mr. Obama seems to think qualifies him as an authority on Muslim extremism.

Of course there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the two sects where jihad is concerned; the controlling radical elements of both major sects of Islam—and make no mistake, radicals do control this religion—are completely dedicated to the destruction of the Great Satan, which would be us.

The second disturbing assumption Obama seems to make in the Super Bowl interview, concerning the current upheaval in Egypt, is the idea that Mubarak’s departure will automatically give way to a democracy, presto chango.

What else can the leader of the Free World, the commander-in-chief of the War on Terror on two fronts, have in mind when he insinuates that the Muslim Brotherhood is to be a key element in any future negotiations concerning the transfer of power?

These, as O’Reilly astutely noted, are “rough boys.” They don’t recognize Mubarak’s right to negotiate the fate of the Egyptian people, much less the Muslim caliphate. They certainly will not respect U.S. interests.

What else can the President be suggesting? Because, frankly his administration is all over the place in this crisis.

Let’s be clear. Egyptians are not rioting in the streets for the right to vote. Egyptians are revolting against the Mubarak government for food and jobs. Starving people will react this way when they see their baby’s bellies bloating. Were it otherwise they would have revolted 20 years ago.

Iran like Egypt was a highly westernized society. The revolution was populist and nationalist, not Islamic. Obama is quick to point out that the Muslim Brotherhood is only one small faction in Egypt. So what is new? The ayatollahs were not a controlling faction in Iran when they gained power; they were a highly organized minority that stayed in the background as the revolution unfolded, waiting for their chance to move.

Does anyone in the Obama administration not believe that the Muslim Brotherhood, once legitimized by U.S. media and government—and we are seeing just that right now—will not take control of the government at the first opportunity?

So just how is it that this president thinks a new democracy will materialize in Egypt?
While we provide destination choices to Hosni Mubarak would it not be advisable to think about just where America’s best interests lie?

President Obama should begin immediately to publically label the Muslim Brotherhood and its factions as extremists. While we perhaps cannot affect who will ultimately lead Egypt, we must wield a heavy hand in determining who does not.

Egypt: The Result of Flawed U.S. Policies

Decades of failed U.S. foreign policy are playing out in Egypt today as Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship hangs by a thread. The Egyptian government, the second largest recipient of U.S. military aid and the third in foreign aid, has been left to run rampant over multitudes of impoverished citizens for the thirty-plus years, without making reforms that would allow free elections.

Why would the United States invest billions annually into a nation, no matter how vital to our national interests, with virtually no strings attached?

It would be convenient to blame Barack Obama for this latest outburst but the current administration is merely one more in a succession of failed administrations, in respect to how the U.S. spends its foreign and military aid. Obama is far from blameless but the problem is far larger.

This is a lesson we should have learned with Iran in the mid 1970s when the Shah’s regime fell. The Carter administration sat on its hands while Islamic extremists filled the power vacuum, and it appears very possible that the same thing could happen in Egypt.

Consecutive U.S. administrations have doled out foreign and military aid for years without insisting that Mubarak open his government to dissenting non-Islamic views and parties. As a result the current regime teeters on the edge of collapse with no one to fill the vacuum other than extremists or a military junta.

As the future of the entire Middle East hangs in the balance these are questions every American should be asking their government. The United States foreign policy—our entire foreign policy—is a mess. We have pressured Israel to negotiate with extremist Islamists and allowed a man like Mubarak to run amok with out restraint.

While it may be impossible to place the totality of the blame for Egypt at Barack Obama’s feet, his coddling attitude towards Islamics and his failure to understand the impending threat of the Islamists among them is deeply disturbing. Indeed, some in the Obama administration almost seem to side with the extremists. Instead of condemning radicals within the Islamic faith Obama has treated them like an insignificant fraction of an otherwise good religion.

Contrarily, no religion that allows the barbaric practices of extremists such as al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah and others can be a good religion until it universally condemns the practices and those who carry them out. Islam as a whole has not done so.

Without question the United States at times will have to align itself with unsavory characters and regimes to protect our national interests. But our foreign aid must be distributed with strong humanitarian strings attached; our military aid must be assured only when the governments that receive it adhere to stringent requirements that assure some modicum of decency.

America has placed all of its eggs in one basket in Egypt and now it appears that Mubarak’s regime at the very least will not survive him. Not an ounce of forethought, it would seem, has been devoted to our future in the region after this one dictator’s is gone.