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America Has Long Supported Egypt's Dictatorial Leadership
As I wrote Tuesday:
Egypt’s president Mubarak is a yes-man
to the U.S., and the fall of the Tunisian and now Egyptian leaders are
really the ouster of U.S. puppet regimes in the Middle East.
Indeed, Egypt was for many years the second-biggest recipient of American aid in the Middle East, behind Israel). As leading military publication Janes notes:
Egypt
is reliant on US military aid to finance major equipment and this is
worth just over 25 per cent of the total defence spend in 2008, US
Foreign Military Financing (FMF) is fixed at USD1.3 billion annually.
America has also long provided training to Egypt's army. See this and this.
And as Free Press notes, American companies have helped to maintain Egyptian leaders' dictatorial powers:
An
American company — Boeing-owned Narus of Sunnyvale, CA — has sold
Egypt "Deep Packet Inspection" (DPI) equipment that can be used to help
the regime track, target and crush political dissent over the Internet
and mobile phones.
The power to control the Internet and the
resulting harm to democracy are so disturbing that the threshold for
using DPI must be very high. That’s why, before DPI becomes more widely
used around the world and at home, the U.S. government must establish
clear and legitimate criteria for preventing the use of such
surveillance and control technology.
In addition, Egypt has long tortured prisoners, and the U.S. used extraordinary rendition to fly prisoners to Egypt to be tortured. As Wikipedia notes:
In a New Yorker
interview with CIA veteran Michael Scheuer, an author of the rendition
program under the Clinton administration, writer Jane Mayer noted, "In
1995, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt, making
clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport
terrorist suspects globally — including access to a small fleet of
aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea... 'What was clever was that some of
the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian,' Scheuer said. 'It served
American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to
get these people back, where they could be interrogated.' Technically,
U.S. law requires the CIA to seek 'assurances' from foreign
governments that rendered suspects won’t be tortured. Scheuer told me
that this was done, but he was 'not sure' if any documents confirming
the arrangement were signed."[30] However, Scheuer testified before Congress that no such assurances were received.[31] He further acknowledged that treatment of prisoners may not have been "up to U.S. standards." However, he stated,
- This
is a matter of no concern as the Rendition Program’s goal was to
protect America, and the rendered fighters delivered to Middle Eastern
governments are now either dead or in places from which they cannot
harm America. Mission accomplished, as the saying goes.[32]Thereafter,
with the approval of President Clinton and a presidential directive
(PDD 39), the CIA instead elected to send suspects to Egypt, where they
were turned over to the Egyptian Mukhabarat [Egypt's intelligence
service].
And the statement of CNBC's Erin Burnett to the effect that the U.S. must support Middle Eastern dictators to keep cheap oil flowing doesn't really help.
Make no mistake ... a revolution in Egypt is a refutation of American policy.
And see this.
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+1
Indeed. It's not quite a Hobson's Choice, but the U.S. props up friendly dictators because they're better than the alternative. Democracy will not sprout in the Arab world. Choose you poison.
'Scuse me, but back int he day and by the day I mean roughly the 1890s, there was a healthy debate specifically in Egypt about how to develop an Islamic democratic republic. In fact Cairo University was the world center of Islamic political philosophy. As the new fad of republicanism spread, the fall of the Ottoman Empire was obviously a matter of time. The Japanese beat a 'Western' nation (Tsarist Russia) in 1905, Ethopia was still free from colonialism...things were poised for change.
Read if you will 'A Peace to End All Peace' by David Fromkin, which was a Pulitzer finalist. What Churchill and the 'West' did to the Middle East after the Great War is a stinking, festering, infected wound in history and in people's lives to this day. We--the rich nations--betrayed the ordinary folk in the Middle East, often calling them subhuman in the bargain. Why? The sheer fun of the Great Game, oil, and the piggish barbarism they taught the tiny, inbred British upper class twits who ran the Foreign Office.
Joe and Jane Islam, the middle class wannabes in the Middle East, ARE the future. Remember that black viscous energy source we can't survive three months without? IT'S THEIRS.
Try to be nice, and for God's sake don't buy into sick dehumanizing cartoons about people you don't know. The AP reported today on a protestor unfurling a banner on the statue of a great Egyptian economist (!) that read in Arabic letters: 'The Middle Class'.
They are us and we are them. If we lack the vision to see a way forward together, well that is defeatism writ large.
@Jim - thanks!
'Scuse me, but back int he day and by the day I mean roughly the 1890s, there was a healthy debate specifically in Egypt about how to develop an Islamic democratic republic. In fact Cairo University was the world center of Islamic political philosophy. As the new fad of republicanism spread, the fall of the Ottoman Empire was obviously a matter of time. The Japanese beat a 'Western' nation (Tsarist Russia) in 1905, Ethopia was still free from colonialism...things were poised for change.
The point is? Anyone can make statements on what would have happened or what obviously would happen; untested, never to be known and therefore useless statements though they be. Things would have had if ...Especially here on zerohedge it should be obvious how easy and cheap hindsight is and how sensitive conditionals.
We--the rich nations--betrayed the ordinary folk in the Middle East, often calling them subhuman in the bargain.
I do not accept your generilization of 'we the rich nations' nor do I like the playing on guilt in the latter part.
Joe and Jane Islam, the middle class wannabes in the Middle East, ARE the future. Remember that black viscous energy source we can't survive three months without? IT'S THEIRS.
This ought to be Mohammed Islam and his *unnamed wife*. The future will not be theirs just because there are some resources in their lands. Consider the state of sub-sahara Africa for other places with resources and little claim to the future being theirs.
Why? The sheer fun of the Great Game, oil, and the piggish barbarism they taught the tiny, inbred British upper class twits who ran the Foreign Office.
The sheer fun? ...really. Jolly good fun.
'Piggish barbarism'? What does that even mean?
'tiny,inbred British upper class twits' these statements are pretty funny considering your next advice:
Try to be nice, and for God's sake don't buy into sick dehumanizing cartoons about people you don't know. T
Seems like you have been taking some of the dehumanizing cool-aid yourself. Finally, you statement that 'They are us and we are them' may be true, but it may not be too. Our interests may diverge as much as they overlap.
Wow, pretty poor effort at refutation. Oh well. Read the book and some other relevant sources if you wish to understand the 'powers that were'. Until then my paraphrasing will have to suffice (and note that my characterization is of a few dozen particular individuals, not an entire social group--and since when did the message have to come from a perfect messenger? Truth hurt a bit?).
As to the rest it isn't hard to either have some faith in human nature or not; the Founding Fathers understood this better than anyone which is why their constitutional model doesn't try to count too much on angels in positions of power. OR DEVILS. Just people.
The Arabs have just as much chance to succeed at democracy as anyone else. They are not angels or devils either. A century of wilful resource theft via repressive puppet elites doesn't change that.
Well said.
Well Jim...I do recall an earlier encounter (my nation had) along the Barbary Coast where there were a few things written about as to culture, class & stature by many uninterested parties in the affair.
We don't need to get into who traded on which side of Africa and in what do we?..the Arab culture might seem less than, shall we say pristine.
Be that as it may, I will always be with freedom against tyranny...if the "brotherhood" does not take over the whole shabang I will stand with them.
Otherwise...well...here we go again.
It's up to them...it's their choice is now.
Were they doing anything your ancestors weren't?
"Were they doing anything your ancestors weren't?"
Actually, yes.
My ancestors didn't ritualistically cut their balls off (eunuchs) to keep them from impregnating the ole lady or the mistress...you couldn't leave it alone could you? ;-)
Maybe we need. Always funny. So lets start.
Who traded on wich side of Africa?
Arabs on the east & north side...europeans on the west.
beautiful post Jim, thankyou.
Thank you for taking the time to explain. Some people, while good at analyzing domestic economic policy, go only an inch deep when addressing foreign policy.
Glad to see that I'm not the only fair-minded and rational Jim in MN -- Bravo!
Any dictatorship backed by the US is in deep shit now -- one of the things that keeps people down is knowing the big guy (US) is backing up their dictator. Besides giving the dictator (or other fascist leader) muscle and support, both real and perceived, there is a sense in the population of being protected by being aligned with power. As the US appears weaker by the minute this view of things crumbles and so do the internal restraints which come from it.
Egypt has long been a republic. And we should know.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/eg.html
well said and the two perceptions feed the mutual declines
It takes time (and logistics!) to move an army, especially when a Decepticrat is commander-in-chief!
As the US appears weaker by the minute...
Look at Lebanon. Everywhere brave people are finding the cajones to stand up to the crumbling ogre.
I hope we get our Republic back.
I hope you get your cajones and backbone back. It's going to take a transplant and then you could hope that the anti-rejection drugs work.
Look at your 2 sentences. If we need to "hope" to get our Republic back, we don't deserve it.
Milestones
The castles made of sand are falling into the sea. The US has lost it's grip on this sphere of influence.
That reminds me of an appropriate sing-along.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF4-r2MpRMs
Deleted double post.
And think how much scrambling is going on to figure out why all the fascist population control technology and police training have failed.
Apparently, police training is sadly lacking in creating indifference in the trainees when it's their own relatives/neighbors in the gunsights. Saddam Hussein's training methods must have been proprietary to his regime.
+1,000,000,000 (in gold-backed currency, not fiatbucks ...)
And if we learned anything from the 1978-79 overthrow of the Shah of Iran, a new Egyptian government may not be as easily suborned by American power.
BREAKING NEWS: Saudi demonstration planned for Saturday (today) to protest the corruption and lack of infrastructure in Jeddah after massive floods devastate the city this week!
http://fedupmontrealer.blogspot.com/2011/01/saudi-hiccup.html
The protest is being organized via Blackberry Messenger...