EDITORIAL
The bipartisan U.S. drive to suspend and/or reduce or even eliminate aid to Egypt's popular interim government is illogical and contrary to the national interest of the United States and the security of its most important Middle Eastern allies--Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia--all of which strongly oppose suspension of U.S. aid to Egypt.
The choice in Egypt, plainly put, is between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood. The military is supported by an overwhelming majority of Egyptians, including practically all secular Muslims and Christians. The Muslim Brotherhood is supported by Islamists, including Al Qaeda and its affiliates and sympathizers.
The cynical strategy of trying to ride the Muslim Brotherhood/Islamist tiger without being eaten, dating to the 1950s, when the Eisenhower administration covertly backed the Muslim Brotherhood against the Nasser regime, is bound to fail. In this regard, the catastrophic blowback from the Carter administration's craven betrayal and abandonment of Iran's Shah, a pro-Western, modernizing monarch, should guide Washington's thinking and policymaking.
That and the suicidal idiocy of the unnecessary "humanitarian intervention" in Libya and the incredibly stupid stirring up of an Islamist insurrection in Syria in order to counter Iran and Hezbollah. Islamism is clerical fascism--a menace to civilized humanity. There is no such thing as moderate Islamism, just as there was no such thing as moderate Nazism. The antidote for the deadly poison of Shiite Islamism isn't another deadly poison--Sunni Islamism--regardless of how it is labeled or who is peddling or administering it. Poison is poison. It must not be swallowed.
Egyptis' secular Muslims and Christians have voted--in the streets--for their interim government. Washington should stand with them in their hour of need and national emergency.
Copyright © 2013 Foreign Confidential
