I was initially surprised by Sen. John McCain’s decision to call for a suspension of aid to Egypt until I realized that McCain is always wrong.
“We cannot repeat the same mistakes that we made at other times in our history by supporting the removal of freely elected governments,” McCain said during a public event in Prescott, Ariz…
“The president was freely elected,” said McCain, who acknowledged that he thought “long and hard” about his request, considering Morsi had “mismanaged” the county since taking over…
“…The USA must learn the lessons of history, and that is we cannot stand by, without acting in cases where freely elected governments are unseated by the military arm of those nations,” McCain said.
I think we can use the threat of suspended aid to help guide the military’s actions, with the goals of assuring a prompt resumption of representative government and limiting any human rights violations. But the last thing Egypt needs right now is more economic hardship.
The coup had the blessing of the the Obama administration, even if it wasn’t their first choice:
As President Mohamed Morsi huddled in his guard’s quarters during his last hours as Egypt’s first elected leader, he received a call from an Arab foreign minister with a final offer to end a standoff with the country’s top generals, senior advisers with the president said.
The foreign minister said he was acting as an emissary of Washington, the advisers said, and he asked if Mr. Morsi would accept the appointment of a new prime minister and cabinet, one that would take over all legislative powers and replace his chosen provincial governors.
The aides said they already knew what Mr. Morsi’s answer would be. He had responded to a similar proposal by pointing at his neck. “This before that,” he had told his aides, repeating a vow to die before accepting what he considered a de facto coup and thus a crippling blow to Egyptian democracy.
His top foreign policy adviser, Essam el-Haddad, then left the room to call the United States ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, to say that Mr. Morsi refused. When he returned, he said he had spoken to Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, and that the military takeover was about to begin, senior aides said.
“Mother just told us that we will stop playing in one hour,” an aide texted an associate, playing on a sarcastic Egyptian expression for the country’s Western patron, “Mother America.”
And, again:
Mr. Morsi’s advisers had meetings with Ms. Patterson and her deputy as well as a phone call with Ms. Rice, the national security adviser. Mr. Morsi’s advisers argued that ousting the president would be “a long term disaster” for Egypt and the Arab world because people would “lose faith in democracy.” They said it would set off an explosion in the streets that they could not control.
And they argued that the United States was implicated: “Nobody who knows Egypt is going to believe a coup could go forward without a green light from the Americans.”
Surely, Sen. McCain knows what happened, yet he wants to punish the generals for doing what they were authorized to do.
Why?
After all, taking money out of the Egyptian economy will only exacerbate the people’s economic hardship, leading to an even more unstable and radicalized situation.
But, John McCain is always wrong. Always.
Cindy McCain expresses her thanks for getting Grumpy out of the house every Sunday morning.
That’s a very dangerous meme to have out there either as truth or falsehood and just adds to the global perception that the US is ruthlessly trying to regain the imperial power that George W. Bush lost.
It’s going to take a while before perception catches up to reality. Until very recently, it was absolutely the case that such a thing could not happen without American approval.
Being a superpower ain’t what it used to be.
Ain’t that the truth! “Tis why China isn’t rushing to fill the vacuum in the bigfooted way the the US did after WWII.
Oh, they’re certainly rushing to fill the vacuum, but as you say, not in the same way the US did after World War Two.
yes, where’s their Marshall Plan?
Actually, if you look at their work in Africa, they are certainly trying to build up the economies of countries they want in their orbit.
An extended effort to achieve a negotiated settlement that kept Morsi in office is a green light for a coup against him?
Anyway, a threatened aid cutoff unless a new, elected government is installed within XXX days would seem to be the smart move, especially since el-Sissi himself doesn’t seem to want a military takeover.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Mother lost her patience.
That’s certainly the story you, and Morsi, want to tell. Unfortunately, you don’t have evidence of this. The story certainly doesn’t provide any.
What there is evidence for is Sissi losing his patience. The US made one last effort to make a deal, Morsi said no deal, and without a deal, the military overthrew him.
Unless you accept the premise that any US involvement must necessarily mean the US is calling the shots, there is no way to take the involvement of the US in trying to forestall a coup as evidence of their support for a coup.
The evidence for trying to avoid the coup is not the evidence for green-lighting it. The evidence for green-lighting it comes from the fact that Gen. Sisi was in close consultation with Dempsey and Hagel, and that he ultimately waited until Morsi had rejected the last U.S.-provided options, and that NSA Rice delivered the death sentence.
The two concepts are not in conflict. Green-lighting the coup after all acceptable alternatives had been exhausted, is not the same thing as being pro-coup, but it means we approved it.
So “approved” here means “didn’t threaten air strikes to prevent?”
Approved means approved.
…which, apparently, doesn’t mean being pro-coup.
You are using words to stymie understanding.
I could accuse you of the same.
If I am a health insurance employee who is supposed to approve your surgery, I may resist approval if I think the surgery is elective rather than necessary, but if I relent and approve then I am ultimately pro-surgery.
By your logic, every defendant who ever accepts a plea deal is pro-sending-himself-to-prison.
You also slipped in “and approve,” still without ever showing any evidence that the US approved anything.
Doesn’t matter what the facts are in any situation; in any situation McCain will attack Obama, because he’s a bitter old sore loser. If the administration were denouncing the coup, he’d be raging at them for supporting the oppressive regime of the Muslim Brotherhood trampling on the rights of the Egyptian people.
Crashing In Flames ain’t even a stopped clock.
Yes, Cranky is against whatever Obama does, then he thinks up some rationale.
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How trustworthy are the US media in respect to the Middle-East and the coup-d’etat in Egypt? As I have writte in another diary today, Hillary Clinton policy of support for the Muslim Brotherhood is dead. John Kerry is re-aligning US ME policy towards ally Saudi Arabia, the monarchy funding Salafist and Wahhabist teachings of terror around the globe.
Cross-posted from my diary – Obama Administration Backed Muslim Brotherhood.
See also my earlier diary – The MB Axis Egypt – Turkey – Qatar Faces Defeat.
ElBaradei was America’s choice the first time. So why is McCain complaining?
Rather interesting reversal there? El Baradei not America’s choice to run IAEA but choice to run Egypt.
I completely do not understand how this is being discussed.
Morsi had already undermined Egyptian democracy – i.e. set Egyptian democracy on the road to a theocratic state. don’t Morsi’s earlier actions constitute a coup of sorts?
I agree with your general thrust.
You can’t undermine a democracy that doesn’t exist. Democracies require ground rules, and they require that everyone agree to follow those ground rules (“deriving its just power from the consent of the governed.”) The Morsi government was elected to write those ground rules – to produce the constitution. They failed to work with other factions and produce a set of ground rules that everyone agreed to abide by. Instead, they rammed an unpopular constitution down the public’s throats, and it never had democratic legitimacy.
Imagine if, during the American Constitutional Convention, eight states had voted for some early draft, and the rest against it, and those eight states proceeded to hold elections that only they participated in, and the winner of that election began governing as President. That was Morsi’s situation.
Some background that US media has not covered.
Irish Times: Morsi role at Syria rally seen as tipping point for Egypt army
If the US green-lighted the coup in Egypt, it scuttled the Gulf States actions with regard to Syria. Note that Qatar expelled the Moslem Brotherhood and Hamas exactly in the time frame of the protests and coup in Egypt.
Talking Points Memo covered it, we linked to it a few days back
By US media, I meant the usual clueless suspects.
well, as I commented above, I really don’t understand why it’s being discussed the way it is. it’s like bizarro world, maybe not covering basic facts is part of that
showed Morsi wasn’t interested in addressing Egypt’s problems [or his overlords weren’t interested, etc etc]
Chile? Pinochet? Allende? Just wondering.
Whether true or incorrect, that’s a dangerous myth to spread because it feeds the global belief that the United States is aggressively seeking to reclaim the imperial power it lost under George W. Bush.
Mario Games