Will U.S. Suspend Aid to Egypt’s Military?
The anti-Western policies recently adopted by Egypt’s military government may be spawning a surprising anti-Egyptian backlash in Washington. A movement inside and outside of Congress is calling for re-examination of the $1.3 billion in military assistance the U.S. gives each year to the Egyptian generals.
A call for an end to military aid reverberated throughout Washington last February, when President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down during the height of the “Arab Spring.”
Now, some see Egypt falling into an Arab Winter. Two observers recently noted that all is not well in land of the Nile, writing: “Post-Mubarak Egypt has morphed into a dictatorless tyranny.” Others believe the continuing flow of money is “simply rewarding bad behavior,” as Egypt is now expressing warmth toward Iran, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood — while spurning Washington.
Since 1979, when former President Jimmy Carter helped to broker a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, the United States has endowed the Egyptian military elite with a record $27 billion in military assistance — the second largest sum in the world. This largess has been said to have created an “economy within an economy.” And as a result, the Egyptian military is rife with corruption.
Egypt’s military/industrial complex is a topic rarely discussed in the West. Via U.S. aid, Egypt today operates a vast array of state-owned enterprises under the control of a military-run organization called the Armament Authority. This entity has enriched an entire generation of middle- to upper-level Egyptian officers.
The Armament Authority supervises the Arab Organization for Industrialization (AOI), an Egyptian-based Arab military organization established in 1975. The AOI supervises nine military factory complexes, which produce civilian goods as well as military products. They independently run a wide array of for-profit companies ranging from manufacturing cars and jeeps and running auto dealerships to managing hospitals.
The Egyptian web of armament factories is the largest military manufacturing complex in the Middle East, its military industrial base dwarfing all other Middle East countries including Saudi Arabia.
Egypt appears now to be run by a civilian prime minister, Essam Abdel-Aziz Sharaf, who once served as Mubarak’s transportation minister. On March 4 — the day he assumed power — Sharaf appeared on stage with Mohamed Beltagy, a Muslim Brotherhood leader. Sharaf is well-known to hold a strong stance against normalization of relations with Israel.
The balance of power, however, is held by a group of generals who comprise the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The generals are considered the real power behind the government. The group is secretive and opaque: last month Washington Post associate editor Lally Weymouth interviewed two of the council members — they only agreed to the interview on the grounds that they were not identified.
Lt. General Sami Hafez Enan, the Soviet-trained army chief of staff, is considered the general with the most influence in running Egypt’s affairs. Enan is also reported to be the Muslim Brotherhood’s “favorite general.”
Last month in Bali, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi met with his Egyptian counterpart, Nabil al-Arabi. Both said diplomatic and trade relations should improve now that Mubarak is gone. Tehran had severed ties with Cairo after Egypt signed its peace treaty with Israel.
An informative and unsettling report. I hope the question of aid to Egypt comes up in presidential debates (including Republican primary debates).
What a shock! The world gets behind a silly little “Bolshevistic” style revolution and an even less ideal situation pops out the other side! Suddenly the Mubarak option that we didn’t side with isn’t looking so bad.
Even though I think Ghadafi is a piece of garbage, this is exactly why I’ve been hoping he manages to hang in there. The domino’s need to stop falling because the cure, thus far, is worse than the disease.
Self-righteous socialists, the likes of which we currently have running the country, are of the ilk that they think an all-muslim national assemblage from Tripoli to Bosnia is the answer. They probably think that if the US helps bring that about, they will then “like us” and they’ll read glowing posts about them on facebook. Not so and every thinking American knows this.
But who knows what the socialists’ motives actually might be although it can be guaranteed that whatever they are, they are bad for the US citizens. It’s almost comical that they cannot see the damage they are causing, intentionally but due to their arrogant intellectualism.
Carter thought that bribing sand-people nations would bring about peace and harmony when the critics of such actions believed it would bring about extortion and racketeering. Pundits of the times pooh-poohed these notions and look where we are today. The money cannot be recovered, which is doubly sinful because that’s money even a self-proclaimed leftist could’ve used to send several Shanequa’s to college to get that all-important social-justice degree and the fragile hatred in the areas run by tribal megalomaniacs is about to explode into the third muslim uprising against non-muslims the world has seen.
Most people knew that the elephant in the room after the fall of the Soviet Union was “what to do about the angry muslims” because their are millions of them and for generations they have been indoctrinated into hate against the West. Well, the elephant has now sat down in the living room, is eating your ice cream and has the remote.
What are we going to do about it? Apparently….nothing.
“Post-Mubarak Egypt has morphed into a dictatorless tyranny.” Others believe the continuing flow of money is “simply rewarding bad behavior,” as Egypt is now expressing warmth toward Iran, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood — while spurning Washington.”
Wow, who could have seen THAT coming? Well, just about everybody outside of the Obama administration, that’s who. Oh, and of course, the people in the main stream media and the New York Times didn’t see it coming, either. They were too busy sucking up to Obama and saying what a genius he was in handling this new “Arab Spring.” Now we have radical Islamists about to take over most, if not all, of North Africa and both the Obama administration and the main stream media are wondering, “Gosh, how did that happen?”
After seeing how the Obama administration handled this whole mess, you have to come to either one of two conclusions. Either the Obama administration had no clue what it was doing when assisting the Egyptians in ousting Mubarak, or the Obama administration loves supporting radical Islamists, as when it refused to help depose the radical Islamists in Iran after their 2009 “elections.” I really, honestly, hope they are simply fools and are not consciously supporting radical Islamic killers, because that in and of itself would be a crime. It would also be a major blow to Israel, our only true ally in that part of the world. We really need 2012 to come as soon as possible so that we can get some adult leadership in the White House. It can’t come soon enough.
It is clear that you likely have never read the New York Times, or only read whatever headlines were reproduced for you from Fox News. The NYT repeatedly printed articles about the negative effect the toppling of Mubarak would have on the fight against terrorism, especially in regards to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the formation of a military dictatorship in Egypt.
While I agree that Obama handled the Arab Spring situation terribly, his administration did in fact see the current situation coming, which is why Obama, ever the “compromiser”, only called for Mubarak’s resignation weeks into the demonstration when it became clear that Mubarak was not going to survive the revolt.
Obama did nothing to help the Egyptians overthrow Mubarak, it was the Egyptian military who betrayed Mubarak for their own gain. After the Iranian “election”, it was impossible for the United States to be militarily involved due to military overexertion in Afghanistan and Iraq. Furthermore, overthrowing Ahmadinejad would probably have resulted in a weak government unable or unwilling to combat terrorism, the same reason you so detest the overthrowing of Mubarak.
Again, I agree with you that Obama handled the situation terribly, but partisan feces slinging and spreading of misinformation makes reasonable dialogue and efforts to come up with real solutions all but impossible.
The Egyptian military has no reason to worry. We always reward our enemies and punish our friends! That’s what our fearless leader is all about!
I read in today’s news that Egyptians are performing forced “virginity tests”, apparently in the event that a woman is set on like the American reporter was by an Egyptian mob.
I guess they want to know after an assault whether or not a woman’s claim to being violated was accurate.
I also read that a Coptic Christian church (south of Cairo?) was surrounded and threatened with being burned to the ground.
Charming, these morons, who may well succeed in reducing yet another proud middle eastern country to dust and evil.
Let’s see, we will assist in propping up and arming the muslum brotherhood in Egypt and pay interest to the communist Chinese for the borrowed money.
Does this sound like being in the best interest of the U.S.A?
“wither” the Arab Spring, indeed.
There are a lot of things wrong with this picture. Egypt getting military aid is just one. Arming and training the West Bank Palestinians is another. Arming and training the Hezbollah run Lebanese army is another. Its time to wake up, its not roses that we are smelling. Get the Socialist thugs out of Washington!
Let`s see our government sends money to Pakistan, Afghanistan, hezbollah, hamas, Jordan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and many more of our enemies so they will keep giving Egypt all the money they want to buy weapons to kill Americans. You gotta love our muslim president!
Islam governs these theocratic, fascist, backward and corrupted countries.
What is to be expected?