Imperial Hypocrite: The Depressing Inside Story of How the U.S. Gave Its Blessing to Egypt's Brutal

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http://www.alternet.org/world/us-gave-blessing-egypts-brutal-coup-regime?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark



John Kerry has praised Egypt's "path to democracy," while Congress passed legislation restoring all aid to the country.

Imperial Hypocrite: The Depressing Inside Story of How the U.S. Gave Its Blessing to Egypt's Brutal Coup Regime
By Alex Kane
February 17, 2014 |

On a sunny August day last year, President Barack Obama took a break from vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard to deliver a rebuke to the Egyptian military. The armed forces had deposed the country’s first elected president, who was backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, in a coup in July 2013. The dark clouds that had been gathering in the weeks since the coup in the Arab world’s most populous country got darker on Aug. 14, 2013, when the Egyptian military ordered the clearing of a Muslim Brotherhood protest camp in Cairo and slaughtered hundreds of largely unarmed people.

Obama, whose administration had expressed concern but took little action to stop the violence and refused to call it a coup, was forced by the crackdownto speak out. “The United States strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by Egypt's interim government and security forces. We deplore violence against civilians,” the president said the day after the military cleared out the sit-in at Rabaa square in Cairo.

But his rhetoric hardly matched up to the action he took: canceling a joint military exercise, a symbolic move at best, considering the $1.3 billion in military aid the U.S. gives Egypt every year as a condition of keeping the peace with Israel and acting as an outpost for U.S. power in the Middle East.

It was a sign the U.S. would look the other way at a military coup crushing any vestige of democracy in the country, in effect giving American blessing to a government that rose to power by force. And as Egypt continued to grow more and more repressive, that's exactly what happened: the U.S. legitimized the coup by applauding Egypt's "roadmap" and passing legislation that would restore all aid. (The U.S. has refused to label the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi as a coup, since doing so would trigger automatic aid cut-offs to Egypt.)

[pampango]

1. Amid U.S.-Egypt chill, Sisi seeks military assistance from Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, meets with visiting Egyptian Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Sisi at a government palace near Moscow.

De facto Egyptian leader Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Sisi on Thursday got an endorsement from Russian President Vladimir Putin for his as-yet undeclared candidacy for president, but there was no immediate indication that a previously discussed $2-billion arms deal has been completed.

However, since Sisi led a military coup to depose elected President Mohamed Morsi amid massive unrest in Egypt last summer, the Obama administration has withheld much of the annual $1.5 billion in military assistance traditionally supplied to Cairo.

Putin’s reception of Sisi and Fahmy seemed intended to send a message to the West that the Kremlin still has influence in the Middle East’s most populous country and appears ready to supply Sisi’s interim government with air defense systems and other military hardware that Cairo had previously looked to Washington to provide.

The Russian arms deal in the works is reportedly to be financed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which together with other Arab nations around the Persian Gulf have promised $12 billion in aid to Egypt in support of the military-orchestrated ousting of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, which grew powerful during his yearlong term in office.

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-russia-egypt-sisi-putin-20140213,0,6138582.story#axzz2tgPFh65c