O, what a tangled web we weave...
In the latest example of its poorly understood Egypt policy, the Obama administration has decided to temporarily suspend the disbursement of most direct military aid, the delivery of weapons to the Egyptian military, and some forms of economic aid to the Egyptian government while it conducts a broad review of the relationship. The administration won’t publicly acknowledge all aspects of the aid suspension and maintains its rhetorical line that no official coup determination has been made, but behind the scenes, extensive measures to treat the military takeover of Egypt last month as a coup are being implemented on a temporary basis.
If the Obama administration's Egypt policy is poorly understood it's because it is so poorly conceived. And, if the above is correct, so willfully deceitful. Does anybody take anything at face value from this administration anymore?
But two administration officials told The Daily Beast that administration lawyers decided it was best to observe the law restricting military aid on a temporary basis, as if there had been a coup designation, while at the same time deciding that the law did not require a public announcement on whether a coup took place.
Both parties in Washington are getting Egypt horribly wrong right now. Maybe even disastrously wrong. We should be urging restraint on the part of the Egyptian security forces, but at the same time we should be strongly condemning the Muslim Brotherhood attacks on those same security forces and on the Egyptian Copts.
There are no good options in Egypt, but backing the military there right now is the least bad. The Brotherhood democracy experiment is over, for now at least, and it is up to the Egyptians themselves to determine to what extent, if any, the Muslim Brotherhood will be allowed to participate in the political process. The Obama administration and Congress have to accept whatever the Egyptians decide if they want to retain any influence at all in Egypt, let alone start to repair the damage from the last two years.
This is the time for straight talk and realism on Egypt. Obama needs to get with leading Democrats and Republicans and knock some sense into them(McCain and Graham in particular). Then he needs to get Congress to change the law in order to end this ridiculous charade that it wasn't coup, yet still allow the current military aid to go forward.
In other words, it's time for Obama to step up and exercise some leadership.
Hahahaha...sorry, I lost my head there for a second.
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