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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: George Whorewell on January 28, 2011, 07:49:23 AM
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And President Obongo can't say anything-- He certainly can't support the people of these countries because he refused to do the same for the Iranians. Now, the terrorist organizations that rule the region will create a power vacuum and turn the middle east into one big terror conglomerate.
Lebanon is next and Jordan will soon follow.
Change we can believe in!
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Maybe he is angling to resign the U.S. Presidency and become the leader of a ME Caliphate?
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The Muslim Brotherhood is salivating at the bit in Egypt. Going to be a nice opportunity for them to usher in their fundamentalist, ultra-strict Sharia bullshit should Egypt's government fall. Same goes for the other countries. A Sharia-law endorsing c*nt that was banned from Tunisia has already started opening his suckhole about the prospects of an Islamic Tunisia.
Best keep sending Egypt $1.3 billion a year! ::)
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Revolution is in the air but US sticks to same old script January 29, 2011
Washington appears addicted to propping up tyrants, writes Paul McGeough.
Events in the Middle East are moving too fast for the Obama administration to think it can get away with Plan A and Plan B reaction strategies according to the regimes or leaders it wants to keep in and out of power.
Consider the response of the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to Hezbollah tightening its grip on power in Lebanon this week - Washington might have to pull its funding worth hundreds of millions for Lebanon, her office warned.
Advertisement: Story continues below But as democracy demonstrators were confronted by thousands of baton-wielding policemen in the streets in Cairo, there was no mention of pulling the $US2 billion-plus cheque that Washington writes for the octogenarian President, Hosni Mubarak, each year.
Instead, a rhetorical nugget that Mubarak's mouthpieces would use in their defence - ''our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable'' and then some namby-pamby words about how Mubarak was ''looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people''.
That response came on Wednesday - more thugs in and out of uniform in the streets, more tear-gas and 860 more young Egyptians banged up in prison because, Oliver-like, they had the audacity to stand in the streets and to ask for more. Such is stability.
Undaunted, Clinton tried again on Wednesday, when she called on the Egyptian authorities to cease blocking the communications on which the demonstrators relied. But on Thursday the Twitter and Facebook websites were inaccessible and mobile-phone users in Cairo said that it was difficult or impossible to sent text messages.
Clinton uttered the ''stability'' line early in the week - before the seriousness of what is unfolding in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria came in to focus. Consider how it might be interpreted by ordinary Egyptians - the human rights of 80 million people have been trampled for 30 years but what the US Secretary of State is most concerned about is the stability of the state.
And, even as the focus sharpened, the administration refused to tell the truth about the despot upon whom Washington relies - ''Egypt is a strong ally,'' the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, replied when asked if the administration still supported Mubarak.
And, in a week in which the Middle East's historic self-started wave of democracy protests came to a head, Barack Obama might have used his State of the Union address to cheer along all the protesters; and perhaps to warn all the leaders, country by country, of the fate that awaits them.
Instead he confined his specific remarks to Tunisia, saying: ''The United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia and supports the democratic aspirations of all people.'' So, in a region of 333 million people, where to varying degrees a good 325 million are under the heel of unelected leaders, the US President addressed only little Tunisia.
The lame excuse offered to reporters was that Cairo erupted late in the drafting process of the speech but that last ''aspirations of all people'' phrase was a recognition that ''what happens in Tunisia resonates around the world''.
By current American thinking it would never do to have Islamists in power in the Palestinian Occupied Territories or in Lebanon and therefore they heed every despot's warning that the Islamists are waiting in the wings across North Africa and the Middle East.
But lost in the lunge to protect US strategic and commercial interests by propping up the region's dictator class is any realisation that that support is what leaves the youth of the region under-educated and under-employed and, thereby, ripe for the picking by Islamist and other underground movements.
In Tunisia the revolutionaries are still searching for a leader who can articulate their demands. And this week a leader flew in to Cairo - searching for a revolution. That was the former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, whose return to Egypt underscores a challenge brought on across the region as much by the local community as the international community - the grooming of those who might form a half-decent opposition.
Tracing an arc through Obama's approach to the Middle East, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies professor Fouad Ajami described the President's foreign policy pragmatism as ''a break of faith with democracy''.
Alluding to the suppression of demonstrations in Tehran after the contested 2009 presidential election, he wrote in Lebanon's Daily Star: ''American diplomacy was not likely to alter the raw balance of power between the regime and its democratic oppositionists. But the timidity of American power and the refusal of the Obama administration to embrace the cause of the opposition must be reckoned one of American foreign policy's great moral embarrassments.''
The Mubarak machine's contempt for popular aspirations and whatever the US might think of them was on full display yesterday when Safwat el-Sherif, the head of the ruling National Democratic Party, feigned obliviousness to the reality of political power in Egypt as he lectured the protesters - ''democracy has its rules and process - the minority does not force its will on the majority''.
Abdel Moneim Said, a stooge government-appointed publisher, echoed Hillary Clinton's midweek ''stability'' comment when he told reporters: ''I can't think of anybody that I know that has any concern about the stability of the regime.''
Finding the right policy mix to influence events without being accused of interfering is a fine balance that some observers have concluded eludes the Obama administration.
''It's about identifying the US too closely with these changes and thereby undermining them; and not finding ways to nurture them enough,'' Aaron David Miller, of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, told The New York Times.
Meanwhile, observers on the ground in the region shake their heads. ''People want moral support,'' said Shadi Hamid, of the Brookings Doha Centre. ''They want to hear words of encouragement - right now they don't have that. They feel the world doesn't care and is working against them.''
His point seems to be this: it is time Washington thought in terms of investing in people in the region, not in dictators.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/revolution-is-in-the-air-but-us-sticks-to-same-old-script-20110128-1a8e6.html
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Im' all for egypt crushing them.
I know, we preach freedom, blah blah. But you let the people 'choose' their leader and it sure won't be a US puppet like we have now. They get billions annually from the USA... 2nd only to isr in teh region.
We give 'we should spread democracy' lots of lip service... but you give that population democracy, and they'll choose a leader that'll hurt our interests geopolitically.
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Let the people choose their own leader? Hahahaha, as if that will happen. The Muslim Brotherhood is waiting for the right opportunity to put their own dictator in who will then pave the way for turning Egypt into another Sharia-ruled state.
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Well there goes the neighborhood
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GW beat me to it but....didn't douchbag give a speech or lecture in Cairo kicking off the post election save the world tour. This dumbass didn't learn from the 2010 elections...he didn't learn anything from Tunisia afew weeks ago and he can't do or say anything about this one except send the blithering moron Biden out to say that Mubarak isn't a dictator. They have had a state of emergency for 30 years. The guy sucks, but he's our guy. Either dump him and try and influence/back a moderate into power or watch some group the Muslim Brotherhood take power and immediatly spread this to other countries. I'm sure Israel is thrilled. Obama sucks.....the guy would do better as a mayor of a small liberal town where he didn;t have to deal with big boy issues like foreign policy.
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Well there goes the neighborhood
That's what I said when Betty Blanco came up to my car and tried to wash my windshield while I was stopped at a red light last week.
Racist post reported.
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Jimmy carter redux.
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Unreal, just read obama skipped meetings today on this and let biden and hillary deal with it. He went to watch his kid play b ball.
Hillary was right all along.
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Hillary was right all along.
33,
who would you vote for in a hilary vs. palin matchup in 2012 or 2016?
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Probably hildbeast.
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Probably hildbeast.
why? her policy or competence, leadership, or some combination?
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She probably will be too shot by then. She already looks like hell.
I'm really hoping christie steps up.
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i think being grandmotherly actually HELPS hilary. Nobody expects her to be hot. She gets old, she just looks way more experienced and wiser.
Palin, on the other hand, wouldn't have a snowflakes' chance in hell, without her looks.
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Neither would bama.
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Im' all for egypt crushing them.
I know, we preach freedom, blah blah. But you let the people 'choose' their leader and it sure won't be a US puppet like we have now. They get billions annually from the USA... 2nd only to isr in teh region.
We give 'we should spread democracy' lots of lip service... but you give that population democracy, and they'll choose a leader that'll hurt our interests geopolitically.
I wish this happened to Mughabe or the other corrupt "African heads of state"
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NBC sat night live wsa punking the shit out of mubarrak like i've never seen them do to an active head of state. so I"m guessing they beleive he's out?
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NBC sat night live wsa punking the shit out of mubarrak like i've never seen them do to an active head of state. so I"m guessing they beleive he's out?
No, but the Egyptian government is now accusing the US of coordinating certain elements of the protests. Add another one to the list of allies Obama has alienated and thrown under the bus.
I do find it interesting that he had nothing to say about the Iranians, who were trying to overthrow an Islamic government, yet he's now supporting the Tunisians and Egyptians in their quest to install Islamic governments.
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John Bolton gives, far and away, the most sensible and objective response to this situation.
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Read the editorial in haretz today. Scathing indictment of obama admn role in this.
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No, but the Egyptian government is now accusing the US of coordinating certain elements of the protests. Add another one to the list of allies Obama has alienated and thrown under the bus.
Wikileaks docs showed we were working to undermine him, right?
He's in his 70s... Iran just rioted... they're living in poverty... the age of tweeting...
We knew it was gonna end eventually and figured by making sure "our guys" were the ones leading the change, we could influence who gets into office?
Not unreasonable at all, and exactly what i'd expect from obama, bush, clinton, or whoever. If we DIDN'T get involved with the uprising, I'd be pissed cause it means china or russia or iran or someone else IS.
So no, I'm not worried if the on-his-way-out, old ass dictator isn't "happy" cause we're helping undermine him. The millions on the street and the fact his corrupt ass is eating caviar while 95% of the nation lives in poverty... well, it is what it is. Best that we're steering whoever takes over.
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Funny you didn't say the same thing about saddam.
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Wikileaks docs showed we were working to undermine him, right?
He's in his 70s... Iran just rioted... they're living in poverty... the age of tweeting...
We knew it was gonna end eventually and figured by making sure "our guys" were the ones leading the change, we could influence who gets into office?
Not unreasonable at all, and exactly what i'd expect from obama, bush, clinton, or whoever. If we DIDN'T get involved with the uprising, I'd be pissed cause it means china or russia or iran or someone else IS.
So no, I'm not worried if the on-his-way-out, old ass dictator isn't "happy" cause we're helping undermine him. The millions on the street and the fact his corrupt ass is eating caviar while 95% of the nation lives in poverty... well, it is what it is. Best that we're steering whoever takes over.
Knew it was going to end eventually? Are you fucking retarded or do you just not know anything about Egypt? Here's a little hint: it's the military that has most of the power in Egypt. They're the ones that let Mubarak stay as leader and they're the ones that hold the ultimate power in replacing him.
Undermining him AND the military, when both have been allies to us, is pretty much acknowledging that we're trying to install a Muslim Brotherhood-led Sharia Law dictatorship in there as they're the only real opposition group with any political clout.
But let me guess, you think the Muslim Brotherhood is full of progressive, tolerant, pro-democracy and pro-American people? Put down the NY Times, who can't stop slobbering all over their nuts (probably from MB money lining their coffers), and do some reading on them. ::)
We should be staying out of it just like Bolton said.
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Funny you didn't say the same thing about saddam.
???
Please explain what you mean? saddam was dropping the dollar. The WMD BS was lies, but him selling oil in euros was kinda a big deal...
Saddam had a solid line of succession and a country he CONTROLLED. And they sure weren't allies!
And even natural causes alone, at age 73 or whatever he is, mubarrak probably would see his own natural retirement in 10 years or less. So we gotta plan for transition. His son was hated by the military so he wasn't going to take over.
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Oil crisis here we come, just as this admn hopes.
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Oil crisis here we come, just as this admn hopes.
cause it'll usher in cap/trade? or some other reason?
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Can someone tell me why they are rioting in the first place? I thought the standard of living was not so bad there...
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I wish this happened to Mughabe or the other corrupt "African heads of state"
You might get your wish sooner than you think.
I have to believe Laurent Gbagbo in Cote d'Ivoire is very nervous right now.
He just seized the Central Bank, which contains not only Cote D'Ivoire money, but that of 8 other Western African states, and they cannot be happy about that. They have been trying to avoid war, but Gbagbo's latest move doesn't help.
Laurent Gbagbo needs to step down and honour the election results.
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Can someone tell me why they are rioting in the first place? I thought the standard of living was not so bad there...
Berblexer, it's like in the USA. you have those who enjoy a rather high standard of living in Beverly Hills,
...and those who live in sewer pipes and under bridges, or tent cities.
In Egypt, there are extensive patronage networks that rely on government largesse through mubarak. at least 25% of the population or higher is on his payroll, however, there are those who have no place at the table, and with unemployment rates closer to 30% instead of the reported numbers, you have angry people.
They have been under a corrupt dictatorship for 30 years, and they want their freedom. It's that simple.
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Egypt is burning, Tunisia has been overthrown, ...could Saudi be next? Cote d'Ivoire?
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Oil crisis here we come. Yeah!!!!
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Oil crisis here we come. Yeah!!!!
There will only be an oil crisis if the straights of Hormuz get's closed off.
The USA will always have access to Canadian oil. The big question is... will you be able to afford it. :-\
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One of the latests tweet from geocapitalist Jim Rickards
(http://egyptfinetours.com/images/atm_woman.jpg)
"I guess middle-class #Eqyptians w/ 20 or so #gold coins stashed away feel slightly better than those lined up at soon-to-be shut-down ATM's." - Jim Rickards
So true Jim, ...so very true!
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This story is another reminder of why I prep and stay armed to the teeth.
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Katrina showed us we are one step removed from anarchy.
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Katrina showed us we are one step removed from anarchy.
It also showed us that stupid people do stupid things no matter what the circumstances are.
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It also showed us that stupid people do stupid things no matter what the circumstances are.
True, although we saw ordinarily law abiding citizens do some crazy things, like abandoning incapacitated old people and law enforcement turning into criminals.
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In all fairness, this is the "Chocolate City" we are talking about, so I wasn't shocked by anything that happened. I think Ray Nagins momma is still on the roof of the New Orleans City Hall in a shrimp boat.
An extremely elderly relative of mine lives on the outskirts of New Orleans about five miles from the city. His wife is blind and in a wheelchair. When they heard the storm was coming they took whatever they could and checked into a hotel a few miles North. When the government told them to evacuate they had their son drive down from Georgia and pick them up. They made it out almost 48 hours before the storm hit and were able to save a lot of their personal belongings. Most importantly, my 88 year old relative and his blind, incapacitated wife were not harmed. They aren't wealthy, of sound mind or sound body and managed to get out of the way of the storm just fine. I suppose that if they had followed the conventional wisdom of the retards who stayed in NO and put plywood on their windows, they would be dead too. Was it nature taking its course to remove morons out of the gene pool? I couldn't say.
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In all fairness, this is the "Chocolate City" we are talking about, so I wasn't shocked by anything that happened. I think Ray Nagins momma is still on the roof of the New Orleans City Hall in a shrimp boat.
An extremely elderly relative of mine lives on the outskirts of New Orleans about five miles from the city. His wife is blind and in a wheelchair. When they heard the storm was coming they took whatever they could and checked into a hotel a few miles North. When the government told them to evacuate they had their son drive down from Georgia and pick them up. They made it out almost 48 hours before the storm hit and were able to save a lot of their personal belongings. Most importantly, my 88 year old relative and his blind, incapacitated wife were not harmed. They aren't wealthy, of sound mind or sound body and managed to get out of the way of the storm just fine. I suppose that if they had followed the conventional wisdom of the retards who stayed in NO and put plywood on their windows, they would be dead too. Was it nature taking its course to remove morons out of the gene pool? I couldn't say.
You have smart relatives. I was thinking of the nursing home residents who drowned after being left behind.
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It was an unspeakable act of cruelty predicated by the incompetence of the New Orleans Municipality. It is a sterling example of how animals behave like animals if allowed to run the show. Had the floods taken place in a different American city- D.C., NYC, Chicago; The same result probably would not have happened (at least not to the same degree) in the majority of areas. However, in certain areas run and operated by a certain cross section of the population that I shall remain vague about, the same thing would have happened and the weakest among us would have been abandoned to drown to death. Law abiding just means not breaking the law. Fortunetly for them and unfortunately for us, stupidity isn't a crime.
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I've read literally dozens of survival books in the last year. From kooky and strange, to those wriTten by military professionals.
Bottom line - hate at least a week or two of whatever you need, including food and water.
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Obama is partying it up w reporters tonight.
What a freaking joke this admn. A worldwide laughing stock. Not feared, not respected.
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In all fairness, this is the "Chocolate City" we are talking about, so I wasn't shocked by anything that happened. I think Ray Nagins momma is still on the roof of the New Orleans City Hall in a shrimp boat.
An extremely elderly relative of mine lives on the outskirts of New Orleans about five miles from the city. His wife is blind and in a wheelchair. When they heard the storm was coming they took whatever they could and checked into a hotel a few miles North. When the government told them to evacuate they had their son drive down from Georgia and pick them up. They made it out almost 48 hours before the storm hit and were able to save a lot of their personal belongings. Most importantly, my 88 year old relative and his blind, incapacitated wife were not harmed. They aren't wealthy, of sound mind or sound body and managed to get out of the way of the storm just fine. I suppose that if they had followed the conventional wisdom of the retards who stayed in NO and put plywood on their windows, they would be dead too. Was it nature taking its course to remove morons out of the gene pool? I couldn't say.
Choclalate City is DC...due to NO's French heritage, the people have a more Laissez-faire attitude about things--from all walks of life, I have noticed this in coming across many people from NO, and let's not forget the politics, especially back in the day...damn near laughable---and the amount of corruption would have made Nigerian politicians blush.
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Ray Naggin, former Mayor of NO, used the term chocolate city, even though that is the term reserved for DC. And you're correct- It is extremely laid back and corrupt down there-- even to this day.
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Ray Naggin, former Mayor of NO, used the term chocolate city, even though that is the term reserved for DC. And you're correct- It is extremely laid back and corrupt down there-- even to this day.
Something that they inherited from the French...
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What I fear is going to happen is that radical crazies are going to swoop in once the power vacuum is created leaving many of these well intentioned people in a far worse situation.
ObaCarter is seen as weak and ineffective and we can already hear people like el bariedai taking shots at this admn for its handling of things these past two years, specifically the ridiculous cairo speech. Funny, everyone over there sees through his empty slogans, bs, false premises, false moral equivalencies, etc, and yet, we still have a kneepadding msm, idiotic 46 percent still hypnotized by this crap, and not seeing the chaos being created.
Can't vote present anymore, time to put up or shut up.
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I fear Aaron Rodgers will get a super bowl ring, more than I fear anything about Egypt.
Something about the look on his face I just don't like.
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I've read literally dozens of survival books in the last year. From kooky and strange, to those wriTten by military professionals.
Bottom line - hate at least a week or two of whatever you need, including food and water.
Wow... You're just full of hate aren't you? Now you even hate the very food you need to survive. ;D
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240 again bringing the stupid.
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Muslim Brotherhood Wants War With Israel
Mohamed Ghanem, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, calls Egypt to stop pumping gas to Israel and prepare the Egyptian army for a war with it’s eastern neighbor.
Speaking with Iranian television station Al-Alam, Mohamed Ghanem blamed Israel for supporting Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Ghanem also said that the Egyptian police and army won’t be able to stop the Muslim Brotherhood movement.
There are doubts about the loyalty of the Egyptian army to president Mubarak. If the brotherhood takes control over Egypt, it will be very messy from the whole region.
In the meantime, EUR/USD , GBP/USD other pairs have enjoyed the relative calm in the Egyptian crisis and regained most of their losses on Friday. An escalation will send them down, and will strengthen the dollar, yen and Swiss franc.
http://www.forexcrunch.com/muslim-brotherhood-wants-war-with-israel/
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Israel shocked by Obama's "betrayal" of Mubarak
Reuters ^
Israel shocked by Obama's "betrayal" of Mubarak
By Douglas Hamilton
JERUSALEM | Mon Jan 31, 2011 12:54pm EST
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - If Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak is toppled, Israel will lose one of its very few friends in a hostile neighborhood and President Barack Obama will bear a large share of the blame, Israeli pundits said on Monday.
Political commentators expressed shock at how the United States as well as its major European allies appeared to be ready to dump a staunch strategic ally of three decades, simply to conform to the current ideology of political correctness.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told ministers of the Jewish state to make no comment on the political cliffhanger in Cairo, to avoid inflaming an already explosive situation. But Israel's President Shimon Peres is not a minister.
"We always have had and still have great respect for President Mubarak," he said on Monday. He then switched to the past tense. "I don't say everything that he did was right, but he did one thing which all of us are thankful to him for: he kept the peace in the Middle East."
Newspaper columnists were far more blunt.
One comment by Aviad Pohoryles in the daily Maariv was entitled "A Bullet in the Back from Uncle Sam." It accused Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of pursuing a naive, smug, and insular diplomacy heedless of the risks.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
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Muslim Brotherhood Wants War With Israel
Mohamed Ghanem, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, calls Egypt to stop pumping gas to Israel and prepare the Egyptian army for a war with it’s eastern neighbor.
Speaking with Iranian television station Al-Alam, Mohamed Ghanem blamed Israel for supporting Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Ghanem also said that the Egyptian police and army won’t be able to stop the Muslim Brotherhood movement.
There are doubts about the loyalty of the Egyptian army to president Mubarak. If the brotherhood takes control over Egypt, it will be very messy from the whole region.
In the meantime, EUR/USD , GBP/USD other pairs have enjoyed the relative calm in the Egyptian crisis and regained most of their losses on Friday. An escalation will send them down, and will strengthen the dollar, yen and Swiss franc.
http://www.forexcrunch.com/muslim-brotherhood-wants-war-with-israel/
BF, do you have info on how entrenched the Muslim Brotherhood is within the military?
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While Cairo Burns, Obama Parties
http://www.whitehousedossier.com ^ | January 30,2011 | Keith Koffler
The Washington A-List was out in force Saturday night at the farewell party for senior adviser David Axelrod, with a roster of guests featuring Cabinet secretaries, big shot journos and – President Obama.
As revolution threatened to sweep Egypt and possibly other allies – with the horrifying prospect of Islamism replacing reliable friends – the president was on view partying with the IN crowd.
The skepticism beyond the Beltway about whether Washington is just one big Love-In certainly gets fed by the sight – as conveyed by the press pool report – of reporters like ABC’s Jake Tapper, NBC’s Chuck Todd, National Journal’s Major Garrett, and John Harwood of CNBC and the New York Times emerging from a bash with the president that was held to toast his chief political fixer and leading spinmeister.
I understand why reporters would do this – other than the admittedly pathetic notion that, gosh, it’s fun to party with the president of the United States! It is pretty good for building sources and getting inside dope. But man, it ain’t easy smacking the White House with tough stories all the time if you’re getting invited to their exclusive parties, now is it?
Also on hand were Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu. The party was at the Washington residence of Linda Douglass, the former hard-hitting ABC reporter who dropped out of journalism to spin the health care bill out of the White House. She’s now a VP at Atlantic Media.
So we have an official with a journalism outfit – Atlantic Media – HOSTING a party for the president and his consigliere.
Mrs. Obama stayed home. Good for her. Maybe she was monitoring the situation in Egypt.
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D I S G U S T I N G
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BF, do you have info on how entrenched the Muslim Brotherhood is within the military?
From what I've read, the military appears to be less warmongering than the Brotherhood. They have sympathizers and operatives in it, though. However, I don't think the military is looking for another beating from Israel right now nor are they interested in losing the billions of dollars we send them in military aid every year.
The upper echelon of Egypt's military is very secretive, though. Was reading a good article yesterday about how none of the foreign intelligence agencies have been able to crack it so no one can really be sure what the generals and colonels are thinking right now. I'll see if I can find it. Think it might have been on Debka.
Whether that changes should be the Brotherhood come to power and start their transformation of Egypt into another Islamic state is a different question.
Egyptian troops have actually been fighting Hamas for 2 days now in North Sinai for control of the area. Debka's been all over it (while the MSM ignores it).
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NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com PRINT
Andrew C. McCarthy
January 31, 2011 4:00 A.M.
Fear the Muslim Brotherhood
At the Daily Beast, Bruce Riedel has posted an essay called “Don’t fear Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,” the classic, conventional-wisdom response to the crisis in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is just fine, he’d have you believe, no need to worry. After all, the Brothers have even renounced violence!
One might wonder how an organization can be thought to have renounced violence when it has inspired more jihadists than any other, and when its Palestinian branch, the Islamic Resistance Movement, is probably more familiar to you by the name Hamas — a terrorist organization committed by charter to the violent destruction of Israel. Indeed, in recent years, the Brotherhood (a.k.a., the Ikhwan) has enthusiastically praised jihad and even applauded — albeit in more muted tones — Osama bin Laden. None of that, though, is an obstacle for Mr. Riedel, a former CIA officer who is now a Brookings scholar and Obama administration national-security adviser. Following the template the progressive (and bipartisan) foreign-policy establishment has been sculpting for years, his “no worries” conclusion is woven from a laughably incomplete history of the Ikhwan.
By his account, Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna “preached a fundamentalist Islamism and advocated the creation of an Islamic Egypt, but he was also open to importing techniques of political organization and propaganda from Europe that rapidly made the Brotherhood a fixture in Egyptian politics.” What this omits, as I recount in The Grand Jihad, is that terrorism and paramilitary training were core parts of Banna’s program. It is by leveraging the resulting atmosphere of intimidation that the Brotherhood’s “politics” have achieved success. The Ikhwan’s activist organizations follow the same program in the United States, where they enjoy outsize political influence because of the terrorist onslaught.
Banna was a practical revolutionary. On the one hand, he instructed his votaries to prepare for violence. They had to understand that, in the end — when the time was right, when the Brotherhood was finally strong enough that violent attacks would more likely achieve Ikhwan objectives than provoke crippling blowback — violence would surely be necessary to complete the revolution (meaning, to institute sharia, Islam’s legal-political framework). Meanwhile, on the other hand, he taught that the Brothers should take whatever they could get from the regime, the political system, the legal system, and the culture. He shrewdly realized that, if the Brothers did not overplay their hand, if they duped the media, the intelligentsia, and the public into seeing them as fighters for social justice, these institutions would be apt to make substantial concessions. Appeasement, he knew, is often a society’s first response to a threat it does not wish to believe is existential.
Here’s Riedel again:
By World War 2, [the Brotherhood] became more violent in its opposition to the British and the British-dominated monarchy, sponsoring assassinations and mass violence. After the army seized power in 1952, [the Brotherhood] briefly flirted with supporting Gamal Abdel Nasser’s government but then moved into opposition. Nasser ruthlessly suppressed it.
This history is selective to the point of parody. The Brotherhood did not suddenly become violent (or “more violent”) during World War II. It was violent from its origins two decades earlier. This fact — along with Egyptian Islamic society’s deep antipathy toward the West and its attraction to the Nazis’ virulent anti-Semitism — is what gradually beat European powers, especially Britain, into withdrawal.
Banna himself was killed in 1949, during the Brotherhood’s revolt against the British-backed monarchy. Thereafter, the Brotherhood did not wait until after the Free Officers Movement seized power to flirt with Nasser. They were part of the coup, Nasser having personally lobbied Sayyid Qutb (the most significant Ikhwan figure after Banna’s death) for an alliance.
Omitting this detail helps Riedel whitewash the Brothers’ complicity in what befell them. The Ikhwan did not seamlessly “move into the opposition” once Nasser came to power. First, it deemed itself double-crossed by Nasser, who had wooed the Brotherhood into the coup by signaling sympathy for its Islamist agenda but then, once in power, declined to implement elements of sharia. Furthermore, Nasser did not just wake up one day and begin “ruthlessly suppressing” the Brotherhood; the Ikhwan tried to assassinate him. It was at that point, when the Islamist coup attempt against the new regime failed, that the strongman cracked down relentlessly.
Riedel next asserts: “Nasser and his successors, Anwar Sadat and Mubarak, have alternatively repressed and demonized the Brotherhood or tolerated it as an anti-communist and right-wing opposition.” This, too, is hopelessly wrong and incomplete. To begin with, regardless of how obdurately progressives repeat the claim, Islamism is not a right-wing movement. The Brotherhood’s is a revolutionary program, the political and economic components of which are essentially socialist. It is no accident that Islamists in America are among the staunchest supporters of Obamacare and other redistributionist elements of the Obama agenda. In his Social Justice in Islam, Qutb concludes that Marx’s system is far superior to capitalism, which Islamists deplore. Communism, he argues, faltered principally in its rigid economic determinism, thus missing the spiritual components of Allah’s totalitarian plan — though Qutb compared it favorably to Christianity, which he saw as insufficiently attentive to earthly concerns.
Nasser’s persecution of the Ikhwan led many of its leading figures to flee Egypt for Saudi Arabia, where the Brothers were welcomed because they were perceived, quite correctly, as urbane but stalwart jihadists who would greatly benefit a backwards society — especially its education system (Banna and Qutb were both academics, and the Brotherhood teemed with professionals trained in many disciplines). The toxic mix of Saudi billions and Brotherhood ideology — the marriage of Saudi Wahhabism and Brotherhood Salafism — created the modern Islamist movement and inspired many of the terrorist organizations (including al-Qaeda) and other Islamist agitators by which we are confronted today. That Wahhabism and Salafism are fundamentalist doctrines does not make them right-wing. In fact, Islamism is in a virulent historical phase, and is a far more daunting challenge to the West than it was a half-century ago, precisely because its lavishly funded extremism has overwhelmed the conservative constraints of Arab culture.
Sadat pivoted away from his predecessor’s immersion of Egypt into the Soviet orbit. He did indeed invite the Ikhwan to return home, as Riedel indicates. Sadat knew the Brothers were bad news, but — much like today’s geopolitical big thinkers — he hubristically believed he could control the damage, betting that the Ikhwan would be more a thorn in the side of the jilted Nasserite Communists than a nuisance for the successor regime. Riedel’s readers may not appreciate what a naïve wager that was, since he fails to mention that the Brotherhood eventually murdered Sadat in a 1981 coup attempt — in accordance with a fatwa issued by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (later of World Trade Center–bombing fame) after Sadat made peace with the hated “Zionist entity.”
Sadat’s successor, Mubarak, is undeniably a tyrant who has kept emergency powers in force through the three decades since Sadat’s assassination. Any fair assessment, however, must concede that he has had his reasons. Egypt is not just plagued by economic stagnation and inequality; it has been brutalized by jihadist terror. It would be fair enough — though by no means completely convincing — for Riedel and others to argue that Mubarak’s reign has been overkill. It makes no sense, though, to ignore both the reason emergency powers were instituted in the first place and the myriad excuses jihadists have given Mubarak to maintain them.
On that score, the Brotherhood seems comparatively moderate, if only because the most horrific atrocities have been committed by two even worse terrorist organizations — Abdel Rahman’s Gamaat al Islamia and Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Islamic Jihad, both precursors to al-Qaeda (in which Zawahiri is bin Laden’s deputy). Of course, Zawahiri — like bin Laden and such al-Qaeda chieftains as 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — came of age as a Muslim Brother, and Abdel Rahman notoriously had a close working relationship with the Ikhwan. But even if we close our eyes to the Ikhwan’s contributions to terrorist violence in Egypt since its attempted forcible overthrow of the regime in 1981, we must not overlook the sophisticated game the Ikhwan plays when it comes to terrorism.
Occasionally, the Brotherhood condemns terrorist attacks, but not because it regards terrorist violence as wrong per se. Instead, attacks are criticized either as situationally condemnable (al-Qaeda’s 1998 embassy bombings, though directed at American interests, killed many Muslims and were not supported by an authoritative fatwa), or as counterproductive (the 9/11 attacks provoked a backlash that resulted in the invasion and occupation of Muslim countries, the killing of many Muslims, and severe setbacks to the cause of spreading Islam). Yet, on other occasions, particularly in the Arab press, the Ikhwan embraces violence — fueling Hamas and endorsing the murder of Americans in Iraq.
In addition, the Brotherhood even continues to lionize Osama bin Laden. In 2008, for example, “Supreme Guide” Muhammad Mahdi Akef lauded al-Qaeda’s emir, saying that bin Laden is not a terrorist at all but a “mujahid,” a term of honor for a jihad warrior. The Supreme Guide had “no doubt” about bin Laden’s “sincerity in resisting the occupation,” a point on which he proclaimed bin Laden “close to Allah on high.” Yes, Akef said, the Brotherhood opposed the killing of “civilians” — and note that, in Brotherhood ideology, one who assists “occupiers” or is deemed to oppose Islam is not a civilian. But Akef affirmed the Brotherhood’s support for al-Qaeda’s “activities against the occupiers.”
By this point, the Ikhwan’s terror cheerleading should surprise no one — no more than we should be surprised when the Brotherhood’s sharia compass, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, approves suicide bombings or unleashes rioting over mere cartoons; no more than when the Ikhwan’s Hamas faction reaffirms its foundational pledge to destroy Israel. Still, just in case it is not obvious enough that the “Brotherhood renounces violence” canard is just that, a canard, consider Akef’s explicit call for jihad in Egypt just two years ago, saying that the time “requires the raising of the young people on the basis of the principles of jihad so as to create mujahideen [there’s that word again] who love to die as much as others love to live, and who can perform their duty towards their God, themselves, and their homeland.” That leitmotif — We love death more than you love life — has been a staple of every jihadist from bin Laden through Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood killer.
To this day, the Brotherhood’s motto remains, “Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our law, Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu akbar!” Still, our see-no-Islamic-evil foreign-policy establishment blathers on about the Brotherhood’s purported renunciation of violence — and never you mind that, with or without violence, its commitment is, as Qaradawi puts it, to “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.” It is necessary to whitewash the Ikhwan’s brutal legacy and its tyrannical designs in order to fit it into the experts’ paradigm: history for simpletons. This substitute for thinking holds that, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice famously told an Egyptian audience in 2005, America has too often opted for stability rather than freedom. As a result, the story goes, our nation has chosen to support dictators when we should have been supporting . . . never mind that.
But we have to mind that. History is rarely a Manichean contest between good and evil. It’s not a choice between the pro-Western shah and Iranian freedom, but between the shah and Khomeini’s ruthless Islamist revolution. It’s not a choice between the pro-Western Musharraf and Pakistani freedom, but between Musharraf and a tense alliance of kleptocratic socialists and Islamists. Back in the 1940s, it was not a choice between the British-backed monarchy and Egyptian freedom, but between the monarchy and a conglomeration of Nasserite pan-Arab socialists, Soviet Communists, and Brotherhood Islamists. And today, the choice is not between the pro-American Mubarak and Egyptian freedom; it is a question of whether to offer tepid support to a pro-American dictator or encourage swift transition to a different kind of tyranny — one certain to be a lot worse for us, for the West at large, and for our Israeli ally: the Muslim Brotherhood tempered only, if at all, by Mohamed ElBaradei, an anti-American leftist who willfully abetted Iran’s nuclear ambitions while running the International Atomic Energy Agency.
History is not a quest for freedom. This is particularly true in the Islamic ummah, where the concept of freedom is not reasoned self-determination, as in the West, but nearly the opposite: perfect submission to Allah’s representative on earth, the Islamic state. Coupled with a Western myopia that elevates democratic forms over the culture of liberty, the failure to heed this truth has, in just the past few years, put Hamas in charge of Gaza, positioned Hezbollah to topple the Lebanese government, and presented Islamists with Kosovo — an enduring sign that, where Islam is concerned, the West can be counted on to back away even from the fundamental principle that a sovereign nation’s territorial integrity is inviolable.
The Obama administration has courted Egyptian Islamists from the start. It invited the Muslim Brotherhood to the president’s 2009 Cairo speech, even though the organization is officially banned in Egypt. It has rolled out the red carpet to the Brotherhood’s Islamist infrastructure in the U.S. — CAIR, the Muslim American Society, the Islamic Society of North America, the Ground Zero mosque activists — even though many of them have a documented history of Hamas support. To be sure, the current administration has not been singular in this regard. The courting of Ikhwan-allied Islamists has been a bipartisan project since the early 1990s, and elements of the intelligence community and the State Department have long agitated for a license to cultivate the Brotherhood overtly. They think what Anwar Sadat thought: Hey, we can work with these guys.
There is a very good chance we are about to reap what they’ve sown. We ought to be very afraid.
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.
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Egypt's False Prophet
The Mubarak regime is likely in its last days and the Muslim Brotherhood has now endorsed former IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) director Mohamed ElBaradei to replace him. The wise move by the Islamists will allow them to control the next government while soothing the fear over the creation of the Islamic Republic of Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood has allowed ElBaradei to lead a new coalition called the National Association for Change that also includes secular democrats and other opposition figures like Ayman Nour and Dr. Osama al-Ghazali Harb. This coalition led by ElBaradei is going to begin forming a national unity government that will exclude President Mubarak's National Democratic Party, removing a potential secular voice in the next regime. Once this national unity government is put together, it will force the U.S. to pick either the Mubarak regime or the opposition regime as the government of Egypt.
The Brotherhood decided to embrace ElBaradei because it will make it easier to pursue an Islamist agenda. One of the group's officials did not try to disguise this, saying "The Brotherhood realizes the sensitivities, especially in the West, towards the Islamists, and we're not keen to be at the forefront."
The West should not find comfort in the prospect of ElBaradei leading Egypt instead of an official Brotherhood member. He may be a secular democrat ideologically, but his foreign policy stances are not much different than the Brotherhood and he is a stalwart defender of the organization. He has just compared them to "new evangelical…groups in the U.S., like the orthodox Jews in Jerusalem" and says "[t]his is total bogus that the Muslim Brotherhood are religiously conservative. They are [in] no way extremists."
He also asserts that the Brotherhood has "not committed any acts of violence in five decades," drawing a deceitful distinction between the Brotherhood and its Palestinian branch, Hamas. The constitution of Hamas states it is "the arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine" and in March, a top Hamas operative reaffirmed that it remains so. There are already unconfirmed reports that armed members of Hamas are now entering Egypt to link up with the Brotherhood. ElBaradei has in the past defended "the Palestinian resistance," saying that "the Israeli occupation only understands violence."
An Egypt under ElBaradei would be friendly to Iran. As the director of the IAEA, El-Baradei was repeatedly accused of covering-up incriminating evidence about the Iranian nuclear program. He opposes sanctions on Iran and says "they are not like the stereotyped fanatics bent on destroying everybody around them. They are not." It has been reported that an Iranian official gave $7 million to an associate of his in Hungary to finance a presidential campaign and the Iranians also offered other forms of assistance, including information to undermine Mubarak. This could be an attempt by Egypt's Arab allies to undermine ElBaradei but at the very least, the Iranian state media is supporting the revolution.
The U.S. is currently in a difficult position as the stability of the Mubarak regime is in its geopolitical interests. However, preserving the West's strategic position requires siding against democratic change and it would reinforce the Brotherhood's narrative that the U.S. supports dictatorships as part of an imperialistic agenda.
The Muslim Brotherhood leader in Jordan is making that argument right now, stating that "We tell the Americans, enough is enough" and that "Obama must understand that the people have woken up and are ready to unseat the tyrant leaders who remained in power because of U.S. backing." Likewise, ElBaradei blames the U.S. for Mubarak's "life support" and says that the U.S. is "losing credibility every day." Secretary of State Clinton's earlier description of Mubarak's regime as "stable" and Vice President Biden's remark that Mubarak is not a dictator and should not resign assists the Egyptian opposition in making these arguments.
Tawfik Hamid, a former member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, says that the U.S. must now force Mubarak to resign because it is the "ONLY thing that can calm the political situation sufficiently [emphasis original]" and have him replaced by a secular military leader. Hamid argues that a new presidential advisory office that includes the opposition must be created that the U.S. can work with.
The Washington Post's Jackson Diehl argues that the U.S. should support the replacement of Mubarak with a transitional government led by ElBaradei. He feels that if elections are held off for six months to a year while a new constitution is written, this would undermine the Brotherhood.
"Given time to establish themselves, secular forces backed by Egypt's growing middle class are likely to rise to the top in those elections--not the Islamists that Mubarak portrays as the only alternative," Diehl writes.
However, a poll last year shows strong support for an Islamist agenda. Over 80 percent support stoning adulterers; over three-fourths support whippings and the cutting off the hands of those that commit robbery; 84 percent favor the death penalty for apostates and 59 percent would vote for "Islamists" over "modernizers," who would get only 27 percent of the vote. One-fifth express a favorable view of Al-Qaeda, 30 percent view Hezbollah favorably, and 49 percent view Hamas favorably.
The other problem with Diehl's analysis is that the opposition coalition has not stated how long of a period there would be before elections. The Brotherhood would push for a minimal delay so its opponents could not organize effectively. ElBaradei has tried to ease concerns about his alliance with the Brotherhood by estimating they would only have the support of "maybe 20 percent of the Egyptian people." This is unlikely given the results of the aforementioned poll, but even if it were true, the Brotherhood would still be in a position to have a significant say over the direction of the government.
The decision by the Brotherhood to rally behind ElBaradei is a trick to win power without bringing scrutiny that could derail its agenda. El-Baradei may not share the Brotherhood's ideology, but his advent will empower the group and he will make Egypt an opponent of the U.S. and Israel and a friend to their enemies.
With Hezbollah taking over Lebanon and Mubarak likely on his way out in Egypt, the balance of power has shifted in favor of Iran and its Islamist allies. The pro-American Arab regimes may feel they have to cave to Iran after having lost their powerful Egyptian ally. The fall of the Mubarak regime may pave the way for a Middle East whose future is dictated from Tehran.
By Ryan Mauro
http://www.aina.org/news/20110131104748.html
The Iranians must be ecstatic at the prospect of bringing one of the major Arab powers under their control.
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This is going to be a catastrophe on many levels.
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Such is life. Outside of going in there ourselves what choices do we have? Egypt is it's own country. If Israel is so worried why doesn't it fly in there and help him itself. The more we stay out of the middle east the better off we are.
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Fine, then when israel tells the palis to stfu and smashes them, don't say a damn thing.
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Fine, then when israel tells the palis to stfu and smashes them, don't say a damn thing.
It's not like anyone has stopped it yet have they? Israel has been allowed to marginalize and dehumanize an entire population without sanctions or repercussions. Why would they stop now? No president, leader or the like has been able to get them to change their ways.
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Such is life. Outside of going in there ourselves what choices do we have? Egypt is it's own country. If Israel is so worried why doesn't it fly in there and help him itself. The more we stay out of the middle east the better off we are.
Interesting. So I take it you'll be condemning Obama sticking his nose in this like he's been doing? After all, Egypt is its own country.
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Interesting. So I take it you'll be condemning Obama sticking his nose in this like he's been doing? After all, Egypt is its own country.
I haven't heard him comment in fact i was under the impression from the articles posted in this thread he was off partying instead.
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I haven't heard him comment in fact i was under the impression from the articles posted in this thread he was off partying instead.
The State Department and Hillary are up to their necks in this. You don't think they're acting without Obama's approval on something as significant as this?
I understand that he's off partying as he's not much of a leader and instead chooses to have his constituents handle anything of significance, but approval is approval, and I'm sure he's given it in this situation.
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In the run up to this he has been meddling.
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The State Department and Hillary are up to their necks in this. You don't think they're acting without Obama's approval on something as significant as this?
I understand that he's off partying as he's not much of a leader and instead chooses to have his constituents handle anything of significance, but approval is approval, and I'm sure he's given it in this situation.
Seems to be speculation at this point. Unless you believe the US is helping the protesters. Or if you believe Israel is doing nothing more than try to get the US to do something instead of handling their own business.
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Seems to be speculation at this point. Unless you believe the US is helping the protesters. Or if you believe Israel is doing nothing more than try to get the US to do something instead of handling their own business.
You really don't do much reading of current events, do you? I would think that you, who seems to take everything the liberal MSM says as gospel, would have been well aware of the reports.
Now you're either living under a rock or your Obama cocklust is once again hampering your ability to think clearly. I'm going with the latter.
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You really don't do much reading of current events, do you? I would think that you, who seems to take everything the liberal MSM says as gospel, would have been well aware of the reports.
Now you're either living under a rock or your Obama cocklust is once again hampering your ability to think clearly. I'm going with the latter.
I haven't taken any interest in this issue at all so haven't read much about it. It would seem that the info posted has yet to prove any US involvement and seems to show a lack of involvement. But please clutch at those straws, you do that oh so well in all the threads you post in.
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Published 01:55 30.01.11
Latest update 01:55 30.01.11
Obama will go down in history as the president who lost Egypt
The street revolts in Tunisia and Egypt show that the United States can do very little to save its friends from the wrath of their citizens.
By Aluf Benn
Tags: Israel news Egypt protests Middle East peace
Jimmy Carter will go down in American history as "the president who lost Iran," which during his term went from being a major strategic ally of the United States to being the revolutionary Islamic Republic. Barack Obama will be remembered as the president who "lost" Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, and during whose tenure America's alliances in the Middle East crumbled.
The superficial circumstances are similar. In both cases, a United States in financial crisis and after failed wars loses global influence under a leftist president whose good intentions are interpreted abroad as expressions of weakness. The results are reflected in the fall of regimes that were dependent on their relationship with Washington for survival, or in a change in their orientation, as with Ankara.
America's general weakness clearly affects its friends. But unlike Carter, who preached human rights even when it hurt allies, Obama sat on the fence and exercised caution. He neither embraced despised leaders nor evangelized for political freedom, for fear of undermining stability.
Obama began his presidency with trips to Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and in speeches in Ankara and Cairo tried to forge new ties between the United States and the Muslim world. His message to Muslims was "I am one of you," and he backed it by quoting from the Koran. President Hosni Mubarak did not join him on the stage at Cairo University, and Obama did not mention his host. But he did not imitate his hated predecessor, President George W. Bush, with blunt calls for democracy and freedom.
Obama apparently believed the main problem of the Middle East was the Israeli occupation, and focused his policy on demanding the suspension of construction in the settlements and on the abortive attempt to renew the peace talks. That failure led him to back off from the peace process in favor of concentrating on heading off an Israeli-Iranian war.
Americans debated constantly the question of whether Obama cut his policy to fit the circumstances or aimed at the wrong targets. The absence of human rights issues from U.S. policy vis-a-vis Arab states drew harsh criticism; he was accused of ignoring the zeitgeist and clinging to old, rotten leaders. In the past few months many opinion pieces have appeared in the Western press asserting that the days of Mubarak's regime are numbered and calling on Obama to reach out to the opposition in Egypt. There was a sense that the U.S. foreign policy establishment was shaking off its long-term protege in Cairo, while the administration lagged behind the columnists and commentators.
The administration faced a dilemma. One can guess that Obama himself identified with the demonstrators, not the aging dictator. But a superpower isn't the civil rights movement. If it abandons its allies the moment they flounder, who would trust it tomorrow? That's why Obama rallied to Mubarak's side until Friday, when the force of the protests bested his regime.
The street revolts in Tunisia and Egypt showed that the United States can do very little to save its friends from the wrath of their citizens. Now Obama will come under fire for not getting close to the Egyptian opposition leaders soon enough and not demanding that Mubarak release his opponents from jail. He will be accused of not pushing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hard enough to stop the settlements and thus indirectly quell the rising tides of anger in the Muslim world. But that's a case of 20:20 hindsight. There's no guarantee that the Egyptian or Tunisian masses would have been willing to live in a repressive regime even if construction in Ariel was halted or a few opposition figures were released from jail.
Now Obama will try to hunker down until the winds of revolt die out, and then forge ties with the new leaders in the region. It cannot be assumed that Mubarak's successors will be clones of Iran's leaders, bent on pursuing a radical anti-American policy. Perhaps they will emulate Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who navigates among the blocs and superpowers without giving up his country's membership in NATO and its defense ties with the United States. Erdogan obtained a good deal for Turkey, which benefits from political stability and economic growth without being in anyone's pocket. It could work for Egypt, too.
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Source: cnn
Cuba's former leader Fidel Castro accused U.S. President Barack Obama of underhanded dealings with Egypt, saying Monday that while Washington provided the government with arms, the United States Agency for International Development financed the opposition.
"Nobody is unaware that the United States converted Egypt into its main ally in the Arab world," Castro wrote in an essay published Monday in state media. "It was the Arab country that received more arms shipments."
"Their Machiavellianism consisted of providing the Egyptian government with arms, while USAID provided funds to the opposition," he added, a reference to the 16th century Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. "Obama doesn't have any way to manage the can of worms that he has opened."The current Cuban government has not commented on the crisis in Egypt although state-run media has given it limited coverage.
Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/01/31/cuba.e... /
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Where did the love go?
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Obama's Dangerous Game in Egypt
by Andrew Roberts Info
Historian Andrew Roberts' latest book, Masters and Commanders, was published in the UK in September. His previous books include Napoleon and Wellington, Hitler and Churchill, and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. Roberts is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
If Egypt’s revolution is successful, the U.S. will lose an influential ally, says Andrew Roberts—and if history is any guide Obama may wish Mubarak had remained in power. Plus, full coverage of the Egypt protests.
How would you feel if a friend and work colleague came to your house for dinner and a bed for the night, happily accepting your hospitality, and you learned afterward that even while he was doing so, he had been angling to get you sacked? “Betrayed” isn’t the start of it. Well, that’s how Hosni Mubarak has every right to be feeling about Barack Obama today, and one day before long it might well come to haunt the President of the United States.
For when President Obama visited what he called “the timeless city of Cairo” to give his famous speech of June 4, 2009, and went through all the diplomatic pleasantries and greetings with Mubarak, exchanging presents and so on, it turns out that his administration was actively undermining his host and ally. WikiLeaks has revealed that only three weeks before Obama’s inauguration, on December 30, 2008, Margaret Scobey, the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, warned the State Department that opposition groups had drawn up secret plans for “regime change” before the September 2010 elections. The embassy’s source was an anti-Mubarak campaigner whom the State Department had helped to attend an activists’ summit in New York. This secret support for anti-Mubarak campaigners continued after the change of administrations, and up to the outbreak of the present attempted revolution.
Should Mubarak survive, he will understandably abhor American double-dealing in this matter, and the alliance between Egypt and the United States will hereafter be characterized by suspicion and deep distrust.
Should he fall, and his place be taken at any stage by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Republican narrative for the next presidential election will be obvious. Truman lost us China; Johnson lost us Vietnam; Carter lost us Iran, and now Obama has lost us Egypt. You can’t trust the Democrats in foreign policy. Argue over the historical minutiae if you like—was LBJ more or less to blame than JFK or Nixon, for example—but if Cairo goes Islamist the overall narrative will be compelling.
History shows how small, extremist, determined, and, above all, well-organized revolutionary cadres tend to succeed out of all proportion to their numbers against amorphous, well-meaning, middle-class liberals.
For if history bears witness to anything about mob-led uprisings it is this: Revolutions eat their children. It is too universal an historical phenomenon to ignore. As you consider the future of Mohamed ElBaradei in Egypt, remember that Oliver Cromwell took over the English Revolution, not John Pym who started it. Napoleon was heir to the French Revolution, not Abbé Sieyes, a serial writer of constitutions that were never adopted for long.
Lenin usurped the Russian revolution only eight months after Alexander Kerensky toppled the Czar. ElBaradei might well be fated to play the role in Egypt that was played by Shapour Bakhtiar in Iran or Bishop Abel Muzorewa in Zimbabwe, of the stopgap figure who is acceptable to the West but soon swept away by the far more extreme Khomeini and Mugabe, respectively. Timeless Cairo itself provides the example of Mohammed Naguib, who lasted only 17 months as president of Egypt after the revolution that toppled King Farouk, before being ousted and placed under house arrest for 18 years by Nasser. Those who unleash the tiger very rarely ride it for long.
In the Egyptian parliamentary elections of 2005 the Muslim Brotherhood managed to obtain 88 seats out of 444 (if one strips out the 64 seats reserved for women and the 10 for presidential appointees), and that was with every organ of the state—especially the police—working flat out against them. The December 2010 elections were simply too fraudulent to permit anything worthwhile to be made of them. The Brotherhood’s 30 percent showing in polls compares well, therefore, to both the Nazis’ and the Bolsheviks’ positions at this stage of the revolutionary cycle. The MB is hiding behind the secular, middle class anti-Mubarak revolutionaries who sound so articulate on TV right now, but it is aiming to bury them just as surely as the Bolsheviks did the Mensheviks and the Khomeini did Shapour Bakhtiar (in both cases, literally so). History shows how small, extremist, determined, and, above all, well-organized revolutionary cadres tend to succeed out of all proportion to their numbers against amorphous, well-meaning, middle-class liberals. That’s why Kerensky wound up teaching at Stanford rather than ruling in St. Petersburg.
During the 1848 revolution in Paris, a French politician was seen chasing after the mob as it marched on the royal palace, shouting as he ran: “I am their leader; I must follow them!” That ungainly stance is essentially the one that Obama is adopting today toward the Egyptian mob, which his pronouncements, critical of Mubarak’s admittedly corrupt and unreformed government, can only have encouraged. He will soon enough find that mob-led policies are not in America’s best interests any more than they are in Egypt’s, and that open, liberal, democratic and uncorrupt Arab governments in the Middle East are as rare as the black swan.
Historian Andrew Roberts' latest book, Masters and Commanders, was published in the U.K. in September. His previous books include Napoleon and Wellington, Hitler and Churchill, and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. Roberts is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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Great article
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That last one was a great read.
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reminds me of a cool sean connery movie quote "you're playing both sides"....
that is one cool dude.
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Latest update 11:26 04.06.09
'Obama met Muslim Brotherhood members in U.S.'
Egyptian newspaper Almasry Alyoum reports president met group's members who live in U.S., Europe.
By Zvi Bar'el and Avi Issacharoff (Cairo)
U.S. President Barack Obama met with members of Egypt's Islamist opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, earlier this year, according to a report in Thursday editions of the Egyptian daily newspaper Almasry Alyoum.
The newspaper reported that Obama met the group's members, who reside in the U.S. and Europe, in Washington two months ago.
According to the report, the members requested that news of the meeting not be publicized. They expressed to Obama their support for democracy and the war on terror.
The newspaper also reported that the members communicated to Obama their position that the Muslim Brotherhood would abide by all agreements Egypt has signed with foreign countries.
Obama landed in Cairo on Thursday to deliver a conciliatory speech as part of his outreach to the Arab and Muslim world.
The Muslim Brotherhood is considered a Sunni-dominated fundamentalist Islamic organization that has spawned numerous factions across the Arab world that have engaged in terrorist activity, including the Palestinian rejectionist group Hamas.
It is also the main opposition bloc to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose regime is viewed favorably in the West due to its adherence to the thirty-year-old peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
The Cairo University setting in which Obama will make his Middle East speech is spectacular and will accommodate a highly unusual audience.
Israel's ambassador to Egypt, Shalom Cohen, who had been specifically invited by the White House, will be seated not far from Iran's representative and the 11 members of the Egyptian Parliament who belong to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Also present will be a group of Egyptian artists who oppose normalization with Israel, including film stars Adel Imam and Leila Alawi.
Just hours before the speech, the hall in which Obama will speak was nearly filled to capacity.
Egyptian sources said Ambassador Cohen was invited by the president of the university, Prof. Hossam Kamel, who told journalists the instruction to invite Cohen came from "on high" and was "impossible to refuse." The White House constructed the guest list together with the director-general of Mubarak's office, and the Egyptian president personally authorized the result.
The Muslim Brotherhood MPs had requested an emergency debate in parliament on the invitation of the Israeli ambassador, and university lecturers threatened to block Cohen from entering the campus. However, the protests were said to have subsided when the Muslim Brotherhood MPs found their names on the guest list as well, along with the name of recently released opposition activist Ayman Nour.
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BF - check this out.
http://politicalvelcraft.org/2011/01/30/obamas-september-surprise-islamic-acorn-islam-granted-%E2%80%98direct-access%E2%80%99-to-taxpayers-stimulus-grants-for-the-muslim-brotherhood/
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Muslim Brotherhood Members to Attend Obama's Cairo Speech
Published June 03, 2009
| FOXNews.com
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Egyptian lawmakers from the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood are expected to attend President Obama's highly anticipated speech to the Muslim world Thursday in Cairo.
Khaled Hamza, editor of the Muslim Brotherhood Web site, confirmed to FOXNews.com that 10 members of the Brotherhood's parliamentary bloc received official invitations to attend the speech.
The list includes Mohammed Saad el-Katatni, head of the parliamentary bloc.
The expected attendance of the Brotherhood members already is stirring some criticism from conservatives in the U.S. who say they do not represent the kind of moderate Muslims Obama should be appealing to.
"What kind of signal are we sending?" said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, warning that such an invitation will be seen more as a sign of weakness than strength. "I think the president takes some big risks by unilaterally putting out these olive branches."
The Muslim Brotherhood, though, has a complicated history.
Though the hard-line group, which calls for an Islamic state and has close ties to the militant Hamas, is officially banned in Egypt, its members have considerable sway in the country and its lawmakers, who run as independents, hold 88 seats in Egypt's 454-seat parliament.
The Brotherhood renounced the use of violence in the 1970s and now says it seeks democratic reform in Egypt. It is the most powerful opposition movement in the country, and many analysts argue Washington should engage the Brotherhood directly to show it is open to dealing with nonviolent Islamist movements.
The group is not on the State Department's official list of foreign terrorist groups.
Despite some reports suggesting the Obama administration arranged the invitations, officials said invitations were only sent out by Cairo University and Al-Azhar University.
"I can tell you that invitations have gone out to the full range of actors in Egyptian political society," Obama adviser Denis McDonough said Friday.
It is unclear what Muslim Brotherhood members hope to hear in the speech. One member said last month on the group's Web site that Obama's trip to Egypt would be "useless" unless preceded by concrete changes in U.S. foreign policy.
Scott Wheeler, director of the National Republican Trust PAC, slammed the administration for apparently allowing the Muslim Brotherhood into the event.
In a written statement, he charged that the group is linked to "international terrorists attacks, advocates suicide bombings, and the very founders of Hamas."
"The American people did not vote for President Barack Hussein Obama to make peace with Muslim terrorists," he said in the statement.
Obama is hoping to strengthen fractured ties between the East and West in his Cairo speech Thursday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Obama Administration Lifts US Ban on Muslim Brotherhood Leader
by Avi Yellin
http://www.israelnationalnews.com//News/News.aspx/135654
The Barack Obama administration has decided to lift a ban preventing Muslim Scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States. Ramadan, an Egyptian currently living in Switzerland, is a leading member of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood branch and the grandson of the movement’s founder Hassan al-Banna. The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization for Hamas and some of the groups that recently merged into al-Qaeda, including Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
Ramadan was invited to teach at the University of Notre Dame in 2004 but the George W. Bush administration revoked his visa, citing a statute that applies to those who have “endorsed or espoused” terrorism. The administration later dropped the terror endorsement claim and linked the ban to $1,336 in donations Ramadan made between 1998 and 2002 to a Swiss charity that was later blacklisted by the US.
Although the White House asked the court last March to uphold the Bush-era entry ban on Ramadan, the administration has now decided to lift the ban and possibly allow both Ramadan and South African Muslim activist Professor Adam Habib onto American soil. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters that the government no longer views Ramadan or Habib as representing threats to the United States. “The next time Professor Ramadan or Professor Habib apply for a visa, they will not be found inadmissible on the basis of the facts that led to denial when they last applied.”
(IsraelNationalNews.com)
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Egyptian newspaper Almasry Alyoum reports...
if there's one thing I know after watching the week of covers, it's that we can trust teh Egyptian media :)
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Obama Administration Lifts US Ban on Muslim Brotherhood Leader
by Avi Yellin
http://www.israelnationalnews.com//News/News.aspx/135654
The Barack Obama administration has decided to lift a ban preventing Muslim Scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States. Ramadan, an Egyptian currently living in Switzerland, is a leading member of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood branch and the grandson of the movement’s founder Hassan al-Banna. The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization for Hamas and some of the groups that recently merged into al-Qaeda, including Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
Ramadan was invited to teach at the University of Notre Dame in 2004 but the George W. Bush administration revoked his visa, citing a statute that applies to those who have “endorsed or espoused” terrorism. The administration later dropped the terror endorsement claim and linked the ban to $1,336 in donations Ramadan made between 1998 and 2002 to a Swiss charity that was later blacklisted by the US.
Although the White House asked the court last March to uphold the Bush-era entry ban on Ramadan, the administration has now decided to lift the ban and possibly allow both Ramadan and South African Muslim activist Professor Adam Habib onto American soil. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters that the government no longer views Ramadan or Habib as representing threats to the United States. “The next time Professor Ramadan or Professor Habib apply for a visa, they will not be found inadmissible on the basis of the facts that led to denial when they last applied.”
(IsraelNationalNews.com)
Just makes you wanna puke...
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BF - check this out.
http://politicalvelcraft.org/2011/01/30/obamas-september-surprise-islamic-acorn-islam-granted-%E2%80%98direct-access%E2%80%99-to-taxpayers-stimulus-grants-for-the-muslim-brotherhood/
Smell the tolerance. This guy is going to go down as the biggest foreign policy disaster ever. Going to leave Carter in his wake.
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ObaCarter
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Know Islam, Know Violence.
No Islam, No Violence.
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Know Islam, Know Violence.
No Islam, No Violence.
Dude your a retard,your mind is obsessed with conflict.
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Dude your a retard,your mind is obsessed with conflict.
Conflict? Ha. It's cute, though, the manic depressive "I'm suicidal and C-C-C-C-CRAZY" douche is still following me around. Unlike some of the others, I'm not going to coddle a troll. Probably the last time I'll respond to a post of yours in this thread, also. :)
Move along, you illiterate, uneducated baby.
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February 1, 2011
Clueless in Washington
By Caroline Glick
www.realclearpolitics.co m
The Egyptian multitudes on the streets of Cairo are a stunning sight. With their banners calling for freedom and an end to the reign of President Hosni Mubarak the story these images tell is a simple one as old as time.
On the one hand we have the young, dispossessed and weak protesters. And on the other we have the old, corrupt and tyrannical Mubarak. Hans Christian Andersen taught us who to support when we were wee tots.
But does his wisdom apply in this case?
Certainly it is true that the regime is populated by old men. Mubarak is 82 years old. It is also true that his regime is corrupt and tyrannical. Since the Muslim Brotherhood spinoff Islamic Jihad terror group murdered Mubarak's predecessor president Anwar Sadat in 1981, Egypt has been governed by emergency laws that ban democratic freedoms. Mubarak has consistently rejected US pressure to ease regime repression and enact liberal reforms in governance.
This reality has led many American commentators across the political spectrum to side enthusiastically with the rioters. A prestigious working group on Egypt formed in recent months by Middle East experts from Left and Right issued a statement over the weekend calling for the Obama administration to dump Mubarak and withdraw its support for the Egyptian regime. It recommended further that the administration force Mubarak to abdicate and his regime to fall by suspending all economic and military assistance to Egypt for the duration.
The blue ribbon panel's recommendations were applauded by its members' many friends across the political spectrum. For instance, the conservative Weekly Standard's editor William Kristol praised the panel on Sunday and wrote, "It's time for the US government to take an active role... to bring about a South Korea/Philippines/Chile-like transition in Egypt, from an American-supported dictatorship to an American-supported and popularly legitimate liberal democracy."
The problem with this recommendation is that it is based entirely on the nature of Mubarak's regime. If the regime was the biggest problem, then certainly removing US support for it would make sense. However, the character of the protesters is not liberal.
Indeed, their character is a bigger problem than the character of the regime they seek to overthrow.
According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics. When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.
Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion.
When given the opportunity, the crowds on the street are not shy about showing what motivates them. They attack Mubarak and his new Vice President Omar Suleiman as American puppets and Zionist agents. The US, protesters told CNN's Nick Robertson, is controlled by Israel. They hate and want to destroy Israel. That is why they hate Mubarak and Suleiman.
WHAT ALL of this makes clear is that if the regime falls, the successor regime will not be a liberal democracy. Mubarak's military authoritarianism will be replaced by Islamic totalitarianism. The US's greatest Arab ally will become its greatest enemy. Israel's peace partner will again become its gravest foe.
Understanding this, Israeli officials and commentators have been nearly unanimous in their negative responses to what is happening in Egypt. The IDF, the national security council, all intelligence agencies and the government as well as the media have all agreed that Israel's entire regional approach will have to change dramatically in the event that Egypt's regime is overthrown.
None of the scenarios under discussion are positive.
What has most confounded Israeli officials and commentators alike has not been the strength of the anti-regime protests, but the American response to them. Outside the far Left, commentators from all major newspapers, radio and television stations have variously characterized the US response to events in Egypt as irrational, irresponsible, catastrophic, stupid, blind, treacherous, and terrifying.
They have pointed out that the Obama administration's behavior - as well as that of many of its prominent conservative critics - is liable to have disastrous consequences for the US's other authoritarian Arab allies, for Israel and for the US itself.
The question most Israelis are asking is why are the Americans behaving so destructively? Why are President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton charting a course that will necessarily lead to the transformation of Egypt into the first Salafist Islamic theocracy? And why are conservative commentators and Republican politicians urging them to be even more outspoken in their support for the rioters in the streets?
Does the US not understand what will happen in the region as a result of its actions? Does the US really fail to understand what will happen to its strategic interests in the Middle East if the Muslim Brotherhood either forms the next regime or is the power behind the throne of the next regime in Cairo?
Distressingly, the answer is that indeed, the US has no idea what it is doing. The reason the world's only (quickly declining) superpower is riding blind is because its leaders are trapped between two irrational, narcissistic policy paradigms and they can't see their way past them.
The first paradigm is former president George W. Bush's democracy agenda and its concomitant support for open elections.
Bush supporters and former administration officials have spent the last month since the riots began in Tunisia crowing that events prove Bush's push for democratization in the Arab world is the correct approach.
The problem is that while Bush's diagnosis of the dangers of the democracy deficit in the Arab world was correct, his antidote for solving this problem was completely wrong.
Bush was right that tyranny breeds radicalism and instability and is therefore dangerous for the US.
But his belief that free elections would solve the problem of Arab radicalism and instability was completely wrong. At base, Bush's belief was based on a narcissistic view of Western values as universal.
When, due to US pressure, the Palestinians were given the opportunity to vote in open and free elections in 2006, they voted for Hamas and its totalitarian agenda. When due to US pressure, the Egyptians were given limited freedom to choose their legislators in 2005, where they could they elected the totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood to lead them.
The failure of his elections policy convinced Bush to end his support for elections in his last two years in office.
Frustratingly, Bush's push for elections was rarely criticized on its merits. Under the spell of the other policy paradigm captivating American foreign policy elites - anti-colonialism - Bush's leftist opponents never argued that the problem with his policy is that it falsely assumes that Western values are universal values. Blinded by their anti-Western dogma, they claimed that his bid for freedom was nothing more than a modern-day version of Christian missionary imperialism.
It is this anti-colonialist paradigm, with its foundational assumption that that the US has no right to criticize non-Westerners that has informed the Obama administration's foreign policy. It was the anti-colonialist paradigm that caused Obama not to support the pro-Western protesters seeking the overthrow of the Iranian regime in the wake of the stolen 2009 presidential elections.
As Obama put it at the time, "It's not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling, the US president meddling in the Iranian elections."
And it is this anti-colonialist paradigm that has guided Obama's courtship of the Syrian, Turkish and Iranian regimes and his unwillingness to lift a hand to help the March 14 movement in Lebanon.
MOREOVER, SINCE the paradigm claims that the non-Western world's grievances towards the West are legitimate, Obama's Middle East policy is based on the view that the best way to impact the Arab world is by joining its campaign against Israel. This was the central theme of Obama's speech before an audience dominated by Muslim Brotherhood members in Cairo in June 2009.
Like the pro-democracy paradigm, the anti-colonialist paradigm is narcissistic. Whereas Western democracy champions believe that all people are born with the same Western liberal democratic values, post-colonialists believe that non-Westerners are nothing more than victims of the West. They are not responsible for any of their own pathologies because they are not actors. Only Westerners (and Israelis) are actors. Non-Westerners are objects. And like all objects, they cannot be held responsible for anything they do because they are wholly controlled by forces beyond their control.
Anti-colonialists by definition must always support the most anti-Western forces as "authentic." In light of Mubarak's 30-year alliance with the US, it makes sense that Obama's instincts would place the US president on the side of the protesters.
SO THERE we have it. The US policy towards Egypt is dictated by the irrational narcissism of two opposing sides to a policy debate that has nothing to do with reality.
Add to that Obama's electoral concern about looking like he is on the right side of justice and we have a US policy that is wholly antithetical to US interests.
This presents a daunting, perhaps insurmountable challenge for the US's remaining authoritarian Arab allies. In Jordan and Saudi Arabia, until now restive publics have been fearful of opposing their leaders because the US supports them. Now that the US is abandoning its most important ally and siding with its worst enemies, the Hashemites and the Sauds don't look so powerful to their Arab streets. The same can be said for the Kuwaiti leadership and the pro-American political forces in Iraq.
As for Israel, America's behavior towards Egypt should put to rest the notion that Israel can make further territorial sacrifices in places like the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley in exchange for US security guarantees. US behavior today - and the across-the-board nature of American rejection of Mubarak - is as clear a sign as one can find that US guarantees are not credible.
As Prof. Barry Rubin wrote this week, "There is no good policy for the United States regarding the uprising in Egypt but the Obama administration may be adopting something close to the worst option."
Unfortunately, given the cluelessness of the US foreign policy debate, this situation is only likely to grow worse.
caroline@carolineglick.com
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According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics. When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.
Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion.
________________________ ________________________ ___-
But but but but - KC Ballsack and Mal told me I was wrong in muslim attitudes. ::) ::) ::)
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Admin Official: Obama "not ruling out legitimacy" of Muslim Brotherhood for New Egypt Gov't
Monday, January 31, 2011 | Kristinn
An Obama administration official, speaking anonymously to the Washington Post, said the administration is open to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood being in the government of Egypt that will likely replace the rule of Hosni Mubarak:
The official said that while the administration was concerned about "some elements" of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and other non-secular groups participating in the demonstrations, it was "not ruling out their legitimacy" and place in a future government.
Obama was aware that the Muslim Brotherhood and others were in the audience when he spoke of "a new beginning" in a 2009 speech in Cairo that was directed at the Islamic world, the official said. He cited a passage in the speech in which Obama said that "no system of government can or should be imposed by one nation on any other" and that "America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them."
The Post buried this unsettling revelation in an article about the administration charting a "delicate course to oust Mubarak."
Voice of America reported that at today's White House briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration had no contact with the Muslim Brotherhood:
Gibbs was also asked about the U.S. position on potential participation of the Muslim Brotherhood in any new governing structure, saying that the United States has had no contact with the group.
"We have as we have throughout the world, standards for that contact - that is adherence to the law, adherence to non-violence and a willingness to be part of a democratic process, but not use that democratic process to simply instill yourself into power," he said.
While the group professes to be non-violent, the Muslim Brotherhood is widely considered to be the father of international Islamic terrorism and is thought to be working to create a global Islamic caliphate.
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Muslim Brotherhood: ‘Prepare Egyptians for war with Israel'
By YAAKOV LAPPIN
01/02/2011
http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=206130
A leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt told the Arabic-language Iranian news network Al-Alam on Monday that he would like to see the Egyptian people prepare for war against Israel, according to the Hebrew-language business newspaper Calcalist.
Muhammad Ghannem reportedly told Al- Alam that the Suez Canal should be closed immediately, and that the flow of gas from Egypt to Israel should cease “in order to bring about the downfall of the Mubarak regime.” He added that “the people should be prepared for war against Israel,” saying the world should understand that “the Egyptian people are prepared for anything to get rid of this regime.”
Ghannem praised Egyptian soldiers deployed by President Hosni Mubarak to Egyptian cities, saying they “would not kill their brothers.” He added that Washington was forced to abandon plans to help Mubarak stay in power after “seeing millions head for the streets.”
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Between the wikileaks documents and Obama throwing every ally we have under the bus, we're on the fast track to having zero allies. After seeing how quickly Obama and the Europeans dumped Mubarak, who is going to trust either of them again?
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anyone who trusts damn thing from obama, on anything whatsoever, is a complete moron. Seriously, there is not one thing obama has EVER been truthful about.
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Between the wikileaks documents and Obama throwing every ally we have under the bus, we're on the fast track to having zero allies. After seeing how quickly Obama and the Europeans dumped Mubarak, who is going to trust either of them again?
doesnt matter if they "trust" us.
They'll keep taking our 1.5 bil a year... and we'll keep being first in line in the Suez canal... no matter how they "feel" about us.
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doesnt matter if they "trust" us.
They'll keep taking our 1.5 bil a year... and we'll keep being first in line in the Suez canal... no matter how they "feel" about us.
Should the Muslim Brotherhood come to power it'll be debatable whether they keep taking our money and keep the Suez open. We once gave the Iranians a ton of shit until they were overthrown by the Mullahs. Interestingly enough the Mullahs and their Islamic dictatorship weren't interested in our money.
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doesnt matter if they "trust" us.
They'll keep taking our 1.5 bil a year... and we'll keep being first in line in the Suez canal... no matter how they "feel" about us.
shit is at risk way more than you are imagining.
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I dunno. If I'm president, I tell the new guy... "We're still 1st in line at the canal... you're still gonna help out with ISR... or we'll be linking some attack to you in 5 years and we'll be pulling an afghanistan on your ass".
Hell, didn't the wiki papers show we're propping this guy up anyway? He's been in NYc working for a thinktank or something for the last decade, suddenly he's there to save the egyptian people? lol... he's a puppet. meet the new guy, same as the last guy.
IMO, it's a non-issue. We're working with both sides behind the scene, nothing happens over there without a USA stamp on it. Egypt is full of US weapons, US money, US troops. You think the new guy gives us the heave-ho? LMAO... nope. whatever he says in the press to get the job is just something to ignore. He'll be a puppet.
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Oh brother.
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I dunno. If I'm president, I tell the new guy... "We're still 1st in line at the canal... you're still gonna help out with ISR... or we'll be linking some attack to you in 5 years and we'll be pulling an afghanistan on your ass".
Hell, didn't the wiki papers show we're propping this guy up anyway? He's been in NYc working for a thinktank or something for the last decade, suddenly he's there to save the egyptian people? lol... he's a puppet. meet the new guy, same as the last guy.
IMO, it's a non-issue. We're working with both sides behind the scene, nothing happens over there without a USA stamp on it. Egypt is full of US weapons, US money, US troops. You think the new guy gives us the heave-ho? LMAO... nope. whatever he says in the press to get the job is just something to ignore. He'll be a puppet.
It's not about who we're propping up. And we were propping up one of the activists, not the Muslim Brotherhood. It's that this is creating the perfect opportunity for the Brotherhood to step in and seize power right out from under the feet of everyone. Who starts the revolt doesn't necessarily end up in power when the revolt is said and done, and I doubt this situation will be any different.
Of the 55 Islamic states, only 3 of them barely qualify as democracies. Why does anyone think Egypt is going to be the 4th?
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It won't, crazies are going to flood the area from all over to try to seize power and the well meaning kids and middle class people are going to get wrecked.
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It won't, crazies are going to flood the area from all over to try to seize power and the well meaning kids and middle class people are going to get wrecked.
I think that's probably true.
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I think that's probably true.
The Muslim Brotherhood is going to use the democratic process and whatever figurehead they can as a Trojan horse to gain power and implement Sharia, terrorism and to continue the conflict with Israel. They do not believe Israel should exist, they pretty much are Hamas in Gaza and they raise money for Hamas etc here in America. Go look up their teachings, words and thoughts...it's all there. They are not a moderate faction, not even close. I can't believe how some people in our govt. and media can simply plug their ears and put a blindfold on when discussing the current situation in Egypt....I was watching Farid Zakaria and he was sucking the Muslim Brotherhoods dicks, it was sad. He was pushing them as some moderate force for good that doesn't have any blood on its hands. It was funny hearing him say things like "Well, if they took power...uh, a potential downside would be women having fewer voices..." and other stuff that was just fucking stupid. No mention of their "Kill Israel" stance, their support for terrorism, fund raising for terrorism in the U.S......nothing.
What a joke.
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Synagogue torched in Tunisia: Jewish leader
(AFP) – 5 hours ago
TUNIS — Arsonists set fire to a synagogue in the southern Gabes region of Tunisia, a leader of the local Jewish community said Tuesday.
"Someone set fire to the synagogue on Monday night and the Torah scrolls were burned," Trabelsi Perez told AFP, criticising the lack of action by the security services to stop the attack.
"What astonished me was that there were police not far from the synagogue," added Perez, who is also head of the Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba, the oldest synagogue in Africa.
Twenty-one people were killed, including 16 European tourists, when Al-Qaeda bombers attacked Ghriba in April 2002.
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According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics. When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.
Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion.
________________________ ________________________ ___-
But but but but - KC Ballsack and Mal told me I was wrong in muslim attitudes. ::) ::) ::)
Hahaha when it comes to suicide bombers being supported by a majority you are! ;)
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The Muslim Brotherhood is going to use the democratic process and whatever figurehead they can as a Trojan horse to gain power and implement Sharia, terrorism and to continue the conflict with Israel. They do not believe Israel should exist, they pretty much are Hamas in Gaza and they raise money for Hamas etc here in America. Go look up their teachings, words and thoughts...it's all there. They are not a moderate faction, not even close. I can't believe how some people in our govt. and media can simply plug their ears and put a blindfold on when discussing the current situation in Egypt....I was watching Farid Zakaria and he was sucking the Muslim Brotherhoods dicks, it was sad. He was pushing them as some moderate force for good that doesn't have any blood on its hands. It was funny hearing him say things like "Well, if they took power...uh, a potential downside would be women having fewer voices..." and other stuff that was just fucking stupid. No mention of their "Kill Israel" stance, their support for terrorism, fund raising for terrorism in the U.S......nothing.
What a joke.
why are you telling me to go look up stuff?... I just agreed with 3333.
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Hahaha when it comes to suicide bombers being supported by a majority you are! ;)
Well, if Egypt truly becomes a democracy and it decides to put the Muslim brotherhood into a prominent role, then I think we can say for certain that Arabs are low lifes that should be exterminated for the good of humanity. We will then have Arab Muslim Nazi Regimes in Egypt, Lebanon and Gaza. Persian Muslim Nazi Iran will be pulling the strings with failed states Yemen and Pakistan soon to collapse as well. If Tunisia hasn't become a terrorist state yet, it soon will. Afterward Jordan is certain to follow suit.
My point is that for years we have heard this nonsense about giving the Muslim scum population of the Eastern Hemisphere the freedom to choose their own leaders. The rationale has been that these poor miserable souls will gravitate toward secular humanism and away from radical Islam. If this theory is disproved (and it certainly looks that way) then I prefer an America puppet to any of the terrorist regimes these barbarians democratically elect to rule them.
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Hahaha when it comes to suicide bombers being supported by a majority you are! ;)
::) ::)
Right - cause there is a huge difference between stoning women to death, amputating limbs, and suicide bombings.
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Obama green-lighting Muslim Brotherhood participation in Egyptian government
hot air ^ | 2/1/11 | Ed Morrissey
________________________ ________________________ __
Welcome to the new reality of cold, hard choices in Egypt, and the consequences of democracy in regions where radicalism thrives. In order to stay ahead of the crisis in Egypt, the Obama administration yesterday signaled that it supports the participation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egyptian politics as long as they renounce violence and commit to democracy:
The Obama administration said for the first time that it supports a role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist organization, in a reformed Egyptian government.
The organization must reject violence and recognize democratic goals if the U.S. is to be comfortable with it taking part in the government, the White House said. But by even setting conditions for the involvement of such nonsecular groups, the administration took a surprise step in the midst of the crisis that has enveloped Egypt for the last week. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
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Well, if Egypt truly becomes a democracy and it decides to put the Muslim brotherhood into a prominent role, then I think we can say for certain that Arabs are low lifes that should be exterminated for the good of humanity. We will then have Arab Muslim Nazi Regimes in Egypt, Lebanon and Gaza. Persian Muslim Nazi Iran will be pulling the strings with failed states Yemen and Pakistan soon to collapse as well. If Tunisia hasn't become a terrorist state yet, it soon will. Afterward Jordan is certain to follow suit.
My point is that for years we have heard this nonsense about giving the Muslim scum population of the Eastern Hemisphere the freedom to choose their own leaders. The rationale has been that these poor miserable souls will gravitate toward secular humanism and away from radical Islam. If this theory is disproved (and it certainly looks that way) then I prefer an America puppet to any of the terrorist regimes these barbarians democratically elect to rule them.
That's not a surprising point of view from you GW. However, i can see why that is preferable to a Taliban style leadership, i get that. But i also get that the worst thing the United States can do right now is get overly involved.
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why are you telling me to go look up stuff?... I just agreed with 3333.
That was just a general item in my long winded response, more or less geared towards those who have their heads on the sand.
Sorry, I should have been more specific or just not quoted you.
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Breaking News: Egyptian President Mubarak Reportedly Stepping Down
foxnews.com ^ | 2/1/11 | foxnews
Egyptian President Mubarak Reportedly Stepping Down
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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33, now that mubarrak is looking for a job.....
would you vote for mubarrak over obama in 2012, for US president?
(ignoring the US birth requirement.
for both of them ;)
)
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Obama Urges Mubarak Not to Run Again
nytimes.com ^ | Feb. 1, 2011 | Mark Landler
________________________ ________________________ ____
WASHINGTON — President Obama has told the embattled president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, that he should not run for another term in elections in the fall, effectively withdrawing American support for its closest Arab ally, according to American diplomats in Cairo and Washington.
Al Arabiya television, citing unnamed sources, reported that Mr. Mubarak would announce in a nationwide address Tuesday evening that he would not run for another term.
The message was conveyed to Mr. Mubarak by Frank G. Wisner, a seasoned former diplomat with deep ties to Egypt, these officials said. Mr. Wisner’s message, they said, was not a blunt demand for Mr. Mubarak to step aside now, but firm counsel that he should make way for a reform process that would culminate in free and fair elections in September to elect a new Egyptian leader.
This back channel message, authorized directly by Mr. Obama, would appear to tip the administration beyond the delicate balancing act it has performed in the last week — resisting calls for Mr. Mubarak to step down, even as it has called for an “orderly transition” to a more politically open Egypt.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Hopefully obama takes his own advice after the disaster and catastrophe he himself has been.
FFFFUUUBBBOOOO
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He'd lose anyway. No need to fuel the fire anymore.
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Well, if Egypt truly becomes a democracy and it decides to put the Muslim brotherhood into a prominent role, then I think we can say for certain that Arabs are low lifes that should be exterminated for the good of humanity. We will then have Arab Muslim Nazi Regimes in Egypt, Lebanon and Gaza. Persian Muslim Nazi Iran will be pulling the strings with failed states Yemen and Pakistan soon to collapse as well. If Tunisia hasn't become a terrorist state yet, it soon will. Afterward Jordan is certain to follow suit.
My point is that for years we have heard this nonsense about giving the Muslim scum population of the Eastern Hemisphere the freedom to choose their own leaders. The rationale has been that these poor miserable souls will gravitate toward secular humanism and away from radical Islam. If this theory is disproved (and it certainly looks that way) then I prefer an America puppet to any of the terrorist regimes these barbarians democratically elect to rule them.
Not possible for any faithful adherent of Islam.
Here's what Muslims in England were handing out on the streets of London last weekend:
(http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q236/BerzerkFury23/001-2.jpg)
Totalitarian Sharia Law is Islam and Islam is totalitarian Sharia Law.
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Not possible for any faithful adherent of Islam.
Here's what Muslims in England were handing out on the streets of London last weekend:
(http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q236/BerzerkFury23/001-2.jpg)
Totalitarian Sharia Law is Islam and Islam is totalitarian Sharia Law.
HA, watch anybody trying to hand out a rebuttal be accused of insensitivity, fear-mongering, etc, etc.
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Source: Obama Asks Mubarak Not to Seek Re-Election (Despite Admin. claims, Obama picked sides)
Fox News ^ | 2/1/2011 | fox news
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President Obama has urged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak not to stand for re-election this fall, Fox News has learned, as U.S. officials hold talks with both government and opposition leaders about what comes next after days of massive protests.
The message from Obama comes as Mubarak reportedly prepares to address his country. Al Arabiya reports that the 30-year ruler of Egypt will use the address to announce he will not run for another term.
Whether that will placate demonstrators remains to be seen. But the Obama administration has been holding talks to make clear Washington's desire for a peaceful transition, according to State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Margaret Scobey met with opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei in Cairo to convey that message. Crowley described the meeting as "part of our public outreach to convey support for orderly transition in Egypt."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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Let the throat cutters, stone throwers, head choppers, and islamic butchers in!
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I wouldn't call that a bad move 333. Egyptians want democracy, Obama nor Bush nor any president of the USA can stop the will of the people. You want him to go in and bomb them or something?
If you put all of the US eggs in Mubarak's basket, you end up being hated yet again by another country in the middle east. Exactly what the US does not need.
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I wouldn't call that a bad move 333. Egyptians want democracy, Obama nor Bush nor any president of the USA can stop the will of the people. You want him to go in and bomb them or something?
If you put all of the US eggs in Mubarak's basket, you end up being hated yet again by another country in the middle east. Exactly what the US does not need.
I thought you wanted him to butt out?
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The Egyptians hate us
Washington Times ^ | 2/1/11 | editor
The Egyptian people are reentering history. The masses have awakened, swarming in the streets against autocracy, chanting “Yes we can!” It’s too bad they hate America.In June 2009, President Obama launched his much heralded outreach effort to the Muslim people with a speech in Cairo. Now the people of that city are clamoring for reform, but their view of the United States is worse than it was at the height of the George W. Bush administration. According to survey data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project released in June 2010, the United States had a 30 percent approval
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
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I thought you wanted him to butt out?
Commenting is not exactly 'butting' in. I would rather he leave it be, but Egypt being a country with which we have had good relations, it's probably best to go with the will of the people.
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I thought you wanted him to butt out?
Have you ever met a far-leftist that wasn't a hypocritical douche?
I can just see it now. "But, but, the Egyptians said they wanted democracy. I believed them!" as the Brotherhood turns that country into the first part of the caliphate.
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(http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q236/BerzerkFury23/001-2.jpg)
Funny how they quote a survey about women being raped (as if it is democracy that causes this and islam would prevent it)...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1301003/Special-investigation-How-predatory-gangs-force-middle-class-girls-sex-trade.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/9356021.stm
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The only hope for Egypt at this point is the military, if they keep the nuts out of power, things may go OK. If they don't then we have a problem
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Egypt crisis: Israel faces danger in every direction
The Telegraph ^ | 2/1/2011 | David Horovitz
The Middle East is in ferment at the moment – but despite the general excitement, the outcome could be a grim one for Israel, and for the West more generally.
In the past few weeks, we have seen a president ousted in Tunisia. We've seen protests in Yemen. We've seen Iran essentially take control of Lebanon, where its proxy, Hizbollah, has ousted a relatively pro-Western prime minister and inserted its own candidate. We've seen the King of Jordan rush to sack his cabinet amid escalating protests. We've seen reports that similar demonstrations are planned for Syria, where the president, Bashar Assad, will find it far harder to get away with gunning down the crowds than his father did in 1982. And most dramatically, we are seeing the regime in Egypt – the largest, most important Arab country – totter, as President Mubarak faces unprecedented popular protest, and the likelihood that he will have to step down sooner rather than later.
It is tempting to be smug. Egypt's blink-of-an-eye descent into instability underlines afresh the uniqueness of Israel, that embattled sliver of enlightened land in a largely dictatorial region. Those who like to characterise it as the root of all the Middle East's problems look particularly foolish: the people on the streets aren't enraged by Israel, but because their countries are so unlike Israel, so lacking in the freedoms and economic opportunities that both Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs take for granted.
Yet the country is deeply concerned. The main worry is over a repeat of the events in Iran a little over 30 years ago, when popular protest ousted the Shah, only to see him replaced by a far more dangerous, corrupt, misogynist and intolerant regime. Iran is plainly delighted by what is unfolding. With peerless hypocrisy,
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
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Hopefully Israel will take out the muslim trash if they try anything. Sadly they cant count on Ayatollah Obama, piss be upon him, for any help in this.
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You really have to ask the question, why would Obama not support the Iranian people's attempt to take down an Islamic supremacist regime in favor of a secular one yet he is now supporting the Egyptian's quest to take down a secular regime in favor of an Islamic supremacist one?
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You really have to ask the question, why would Obama not support the Iranian people's attempt to take down an Islamic supremacist regime in favor of a secular one yet he is now supporting the Egyptian's quest to take down a secular regime in favor of an Islamic supremacist one?
I would give you the answer, but I would be again attacked.
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Gibbs: Aid to Egypt may change
Politico44 ^ | 01/31/11 | MJ LEE
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The actions of the Egyptian government amid protests there will determine whether the United States continues to give aid to the north African country, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.
The White House will “make determinations” based on Egypt’s response to the protests, Gibbs told reporters. “We are ... watching the actions of [the Egyptian] government,” he said.
Gibbs’s position appears to be different than that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said Sunday that “there’s no discussion at this time about cutting off aid” to Egypt.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
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Unreal. I guess when the MB takes over we will eally open our wallets.
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I would give you the answer, but I would be again attacked.
The truth hurts. :-\
I think that first picture is insulting to Carter. :-X
Gibbs: Aid to Egypt may change
Politico44 ^ | 01/31/11 | MJ LEE
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The actions of the Egyptian government amid protests there will determine whether the United States continues to give aid to the north African country, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.
The White House will “make determinations” based on Egypt’s response to the protests, Gibbs told reporters. “We are ... watching the actions of [the Egyptian] government,” he said.
Gibbs’s position appears to be different than that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said Sunday that “there’s no discussion at this time about cutting off aid” to Egypt.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
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Unreal. I guess when the MB takes over we will eally open our wallets.
Pakistan manages to suck $5+ billion out of us every time any sort of political unrest hits them. Egypt will be the same.
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The truth hurts. :-\
I think that first picture is insulting to Carter. :-X
Pakistan manages to suck $5+ billion out of us every time any sort of political unrest hits them. Egypt will be the same.
Easier to pay them off and keep the status quo.
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Clinton: 'We're not advocating any specific outcome' in Egypt crisis
By Bridget Johnson and Michael O'Brien - 01/30/11 09:29 AM ET
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The Obama administration struggled to maintain a careful balance on its response to the crisis in Egypt on Sunday, which continued to spiral out of control as armed gangs broke hundreds of militants out of Egyptian jails and the U.S. Embassy warned citizens to consider leaving the country as soon as possible.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the rounds on all five Sunday shows, advocating that the people's voice be heard while taking care not to call for a departure of President Hosni Mubarak.
The steps Mubarak has taken to address his people's grievances against the government haven't been enough, Clinton said on "Fox News Sunday."
"I don't think anyone is satisfied, least of all the Egyptian people," Clinton said.
But when asked on CNN's "State of the Union" whether the U.S. was taking the side of government or the protesters, Clinton stressed that the U.S. had been "on the side of the people" as it had been for more than 30 years of cooperation with Cairo while advocating greater democratic and civil rights.
"We're not advocating any specific outcome," she said.
She said that the U.S. is trying to "keep on the message we've been on, convey it publicly and privately, and stand ready to help."
"We do not want to send any message about backing forward or backing back," Clinton said.
Clinton said that the U.S. wanted to see the people be able to express their voices in "peaceful protest ... and then a process of national dialogue that will lead to the changes the Egyptian people seek and deserve."
She cautioned that such changes will take time, but urged Mubarak to take concrete steps and for his new government officials to "put real life into what President Mubarak said" in his address to the nation Friday evening.
Mubarak requested the resignation of his government on Friday, and announced the appointment of a new vice president, a former intelligence chief who's regarded as a Mubarak loyalist.
On Fox, Clinton said that was a first step. "But there's a long way to go."
"We have been very clear that we want to see a transition to democracy, and we want to see the kind of steps taken that will bring that about. But we also want to see an orderly transition," she said. "There are many, many steps along the journey that has been started by the Egyptian people themselves."
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), making his first comments on the Egyptian situation, said he was largely satisfied by the Obama administration's response to the crisis.
"I think our administration so far has handled this tense situation pretty well," Boehner said on "Fox News Sunday."
He echoed the administration's language, speaking of the "legitimate grievances" of the Egyptian people, but worrying about the possibility of Islamic extremists taking control of the government in that country.
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Egyptian authorities have shut down the offices of news network Al Jazeera, blocking broadcasts into the country. Renowned Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas tweeted Saturday morning that hundreds of judges had joined the protests in Tahrir Square.
However, a calmer protest presence has been reported since the military, a respected entity in Egypt, took over security operations from the police.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) noted on CNN's "State of the Union" that "there are some good signs here; it's not all terrible."
"It is not an anti-U.S. message primarily, nor is it a radical Islamist message," he said of the protesters' economic and political grievances.
"The hope is there will be a transition to something else," Schumer said. "A democratic government is the way to go and hopefully it can be channeled in that direction with the government as a guiding hand."
2008 GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the White House needs to do more to get "ahead" of the crisis in Egypt.
“I think the president should get a little bit more out ahead” of the situation, McCain said on CNN. “In other words, lay out a scenario of what we think the Egyptian people should have every right to expect."
The ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee told host Candy Crowley that “we’ve got to be on the right side of history” in the Egyptian crisis.
McCain said that “there’s real chance for democracy” at this juncture. “There is a real awakening going on,” he said.
“We have a real opportunity for a democratic transition … this is a very critical time, what happens in Egypt” has a direct effect on what happens in other countries in the region also on the verge of political unrest, including Jordan, Yemen and Libya, McCain said.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) backed the White House's handling of the crisis.
“I don’t have any criticism of President Obama or Secretary Clinton at this point, they know full well that they can’t give the Egyptians advice about who their leadership is — that’s beyond the reach of the United States,” McConnell told NBC’s David Gregory.
McConnell, who appeared on "Meet the Press," said “Egypt has been an extraordinary ally of ours … we hope that at the end of the day … we’ll still have an important ally.”
McConnell refused to say whether the U.S. should hold out the annual $1.3 billion in military aid sent to Cairo as a means of influencing the outcome of the crisis.
“It’s up to the Egyptians to determine what their leadership is and we’ll take a look at it after that,” McConnell said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his first public comments on the crisis Sunday. The country is in a precarious position because a new government such as the Muslim Brotherhood would likely dismiss the treaty between Egypt and Israel that has kept a terse peace for many years.
"Our efforts are designed to continue and maintain stability and security in our region," the prime minister, who said he was "anxiously monitoring" the protests, said during the weekly Cabinet meeting.
According to The Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu spoke with President Obama on Saturday as well as with Clinton.
"I remind you that the peace between Israel and Egypt has endured for over three decades and our goal is to ensure that these relations continue," Netanyahu said.
"Of course, at this time, we must show maximum responsibility, restraint and sagacity and, to this end, I have instructed my fellow ministers to refrain from commenting on this issue. Naturally, we are also holding consultations in the appropriate government forums," he said.
"I know that everybody wants a yes-or-no answer to what are very complicated issues," Clinton said on ABC's "This Week." "Obviously, this is a volatile situation. Egypt has been a partner of the United States for over three decades, has been a partner in achieving historic peace with Israel, a partner in, you know, trying to stabilize a region that is subject to a lot of challenges."
—Molly K. Hooper contributed to this report
This story was updated at 12 p.m.
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Obama presses Mubarak to move 'now'
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 1, 2011; 9:31 PM
President Obama, clearly frustrated by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's intention to retain his hold on power until elections later this year, said Tuesday evening that he has told Mubarak that a transition to representative government "must begin now."
In brief remarks at the White House, Obama made no mention of Mubarak's announcement that he had decided not to stand for reelection. Instead, Obama said he had told the Egyptian president in a telephone call that this was a "moment of transformation" in Egypt and that "the status quo is not sustainable."
Obama's message appeared carefully calibrated to avoid publicly calling for Mubarak to stand down, while making clear he should stand aside. Administration officials say they are seeking a transitional government, with or without Mubarak as its titular head, formed by representative reform leaders and backed by the Egyptian army that will address legitimate grievances, restore stability and plan for a free election.
"The key part of the statement was 'now,' " an administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Obama's message to Mubarak had been conveyed earlier in the day by special envoy Frank G. Wisner during a meeting in Cairo. While Wisner said it would be useful if Mubarak made clear that he had no plans to run in the scheduled September election, officials said, the bulk of the meeting was spent urging Mubarak to turn over control far sooner.
While Mubarak appeared to understand the first part of the message, it was not clear to the White House until his speech was broadcast that he had dismissed the second part. In Cairo, protesters greeted the speech with continued demands that Mubarak leave office immediately.
"All of us who are privileged to serve in positions of political power do so at the will of our people," Obama said. It was "not the role of any other country to determine Egypt's leaders," he said. But "what is clear, and what I indicated tonight to President Mubarak, is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now."
Obama was effusive in his praise for the Egyptian military, which did not interfere in protests Tuesday that were the largest yet in a week of massive demonstrations in Cairo and other cities. He spoke of "the sense of community in the streets" and the "mothers and fathers embracing soldiers."
Addressing the protesters, Obama said their "passion and dignity" was "an inspiration to people around the world, including here in the United States and to all those who believe in the inevitability of freedom."
"I want to be clear, we hear your voices," he said.
"Throughout this process, the United States will continue to extend the hand of partnership and friendship to Egypt," Obama said. "We stand ready to provide assistance that is necessary to help the Egyptian people as they manage the aftermath of these protests."
An administration official said that Obama's 30-minute conversation with Mubarak, which occurred after the Egyptian leader's televised speech, was "direct and frank," and similar to the public statement Obama then made at the White House.
Obama told Mubarak that "it was clear how much he loves his country, and how difficult this is for him," the official said. Obama also told him "that an orderly transition can't be prolonged - it must begin now."
Obama and his national security team - including Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and National Security Adviser Thomas E. Donilon - watched Mubarak's address, and the public reaction to it in Cairo, in the White House Situation Room.
Their meeting then continued with a discussion of how to respond to Mubarak and to protests spreading across the Arab world. After demonstrators took to the streets in Jordan, King Abdullah II announced in Amman on Tuesday that he had fired the Jordanian prime minister and dismissed the government.
Officials declined to comment on whether Obama had called Abdullah and other regional leaders Tuesday.
Before the Situation Room meeting adjourned after about a hour and 10 minutes, Obama decided to call Mubarak personally and to make a public statement. As speechwriters began to compose the statement, the president went to the Oval Office to make the call.
The administration's position is similar to that spelled out Tuesday morning by Sen. John F. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who called for Mubarak to both declare that neither he nor his son would run in September and to pledge to work with the Egyptian army and civil society to establish "an interim, caretaker government as soon as possible to oversee an orderly transition in the coming months."
Kerry, whose comments appeared in an op-ed article in The New York Times, said that Egypt's stability "hinges on [Mubarak's] willingness to step aside gracefully to make way for a new political structure."
In a statement issued after Mubarak's remarks, Kerry again called on him to "work now with the military and civil society to establish an interim caretaker government."
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Maybe they will take obama?
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Bad news for Israel
Jerusalem Post ^ | 02/01/2011 | RAY HANANIA
Democracy will give Egyptian people a voice, and their voice may demand that peace accord be broken.
Egypt’s democracy protests across the board spell bad news for Israel, which is more democratic than most countries in the Middle East, but not democratic enough.
Tens of thousands of protestors have filled the streets in Egypt’s major cities demanding the resignation of its presidentfor- life Hosni Mubarak and the backlash has impacted the monarchy in Jordan and the dictatorship in Syria.
Mubarak is not the worst Arab tyrant in the Middle East, but he is viewed as a puppet of the United States which currently finds itself in a curious position. Does the US back democracy in Egypt as it has in other countries or does it try to help Egypt make a transition from a dictatorship to a more open dictatorship?
Why are Americans even balking at calling for an end to the dictatorial rule in Egypt? Because Egypt is the cornerstone of American and Israeli foreign policy in the Middle East.
Without Egypt supporting the status quo, Israel especially has much to lose.
The average Egyptian does not support the peace accord that signed by Mubarak’s predecessor, Anwar Sadat on Sept.17, 1978. Sadat tried to argue that peace between Egypt and Israel would usher in peace with the Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians and Lebanese. Save for Jordan, that peace is still elusive.
After Sadat’s assassination, Mubarak, one of his generals became president. Not known for his diplomatic talents, he became the caretaker of the unpopular peace with Israel.
Though he is a dictator, Egyptians have enjoyed more freedoms than most citizens in other Arab countries.
Israel’s main benefit from its peace accord with Egypt was not only the hope of establishing normal relations, but also clearing away the threat of wars, lead by Egypt until then.
Once it signed an agreement with Israel, the threat of a regional war vanished, replaced by proxy wars like those fought against the vanguards of radical Islam, Hamas and Hizbullah, agents of Iran, also a nation of tyrants and dictators.
On the surface, Egypt’s turn to democracy sounds good, although it has put America and Israel in awkward positions: sure they want democracy, but not if that democracy undermines the peace accords with Israel.
Peace with Israel under its present terms can only be enforced by a dictator like Mubarak. Democracy will give the people a voice and their voice clearly demands that the peace accord be broken.
If Egypt falls, that chorus of anti-Israel sentiment will grow across the Arab world, possibly even sparking new regional wars. Already, protestors in Jordan have taken to the streets and Syrian dictator Bashir al- Assad is moving fast to prevent similar protests in his country.
Israel may then find itself regionally back in time to the 1960s, isolated by the Arab world and constantly fearing more wars.
THE ARAB world may be under the foot of dictators, friend and foe to the West and Israel, but the Arab people are smart enough to see through the years of false promises and bad deals on Israel’s part.
If democracy revails in Egypt and the people take control, Israel will face a pivotal moment: to either continue its current course of rejecting peace or taking negotiations with the Palestinians more seriously as a first step towards becoming a real member of the Middle East community.
Democracy is good, but it carries with it a real price that will disrupt the conveniences of the status quo.
The biggest losers will be the dictators, Western foreign policy and, likely, Israel.
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Get ready boys and girls. WW3 is moving closer toward being a reality. The war to end all wars and probably civilization is almost upon us. And we owe it all to the religion of peace and the high minded leftists who support diversity. Take it all in folks. This is a teachable moment, and possibly one of the last teachable moments in human history.
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Dude your a retard,your mind is obsessed with conflict.
Me and BF have our share of arguments but i gotta agree at least to some extent.
Where ever you look in the world and there is Islam there is procecutions and violence.
Funny how you are not alloved to compare Islam with Nazi's they have the exact same view on a lot of things including jews
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Ya'll look for a massive Latin protest sometime in the future (far bigger than the last one) influenced by this one...
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Source: Reuters
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a key U.S. ally against al Qaeda, said on Wednesday he will not seek to extend his presidency in a move that would end his three-decade rule when his current term expires in 2013.
Eyeing protests that swept Tunisia's leader from power and threaten to topple Egypt's president, Saleh also vowed not to pass on the reins of government to his son. He also appealed to the opposition to call off protests as a large rally loomed.
"I present these concessions in the interests of the country. The interests of the country come before our personal interests," Saleh told his parliament, Shoura Council and members of the military.
"No extension, no inheritance, no resetting the clock," he said, making reference to ruling party proposals on term limits that had been seen as designed to enable him to run again.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/02/us-yemen-pres...
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Oh boy. Pan Global Islamist Caliphate is not as far a stretch as I once thought.
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Source: WSJ
ISTANBUL—Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's pledge to stand down in September isn't enough and he should go immediately, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday, marking his second intervention in as many days in support of opposition protesters.
"The people expect a very different decision from Mubarak," Mr. Erdogan told Turkish journalists during a visit to Kyrgyzstan, the news channel NTV reported. "The current administration does not inspire trust so far as the democratic change wanted by the population is concerned."
President Hosni Erdogan said late Tuesday that he would step down after elections this year, bowing after 29 years in power to a popular uprising that has begun to reshape the Middle East.
His announcement in a televised address came under pressure from massive demonstrations, the wavering support of his military and a call from U.S. President Barack Obama for him to begin to make way for a new leader.
Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703960804...
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Despite what the far left, obama, DU, HP, and the other naive dolts think, this really does not look like it will end well. Erdogan is an islamist himself.
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Is Obama’s goal war in the Middle East? Or is he simply incompetent like Jimmy Carter?
AIPNews.com ^ | 2-2-2011 | Tom Hoefling
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Washington, DC – With Obama’s coddling of the opposition in Egypt, which is led by the radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and the administration’s apparent willingness to mainstream this extremist group politically, one must ask hard questions concerning motivations. Although, whether the Obama State Department is completely incompetent or truly craven in their dealings with this severe security threat to the entire Middle East region, the result is almost certainly going to be the same: an abrogation of Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, and the uniting of a country we’ve armed with some of the most sophisticated weaponry with the most radical forces for war from Cairo to Tehran.
The whole world is watching, and it is obvious that the conclusions that are being drawn; by our friends and by our enemies; are not good. The extreme forces whose only goals are the establishment of a worldwide jihadist caliphate, the destruction of our most important ally, the nation of Israel, and the death of as many Americans as they can bring about, are taking great comfort and encouragement from the events in Egypt. And our friends are concluding that the United States is at best unreliable as any sort of guarantor of the peace, and at worst is now allied to some degree or another with their enemies.
The similarities to what happened under a weak Democrat President in 1979 are striking, although Jimmy Carter took a much more passive role in the tragic downfall of Iran than Barack Obama seems to be taking in Egypt.
Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton seems to know how to simply shut up. Every time they open their mouths they are making things infinitely worse for the United States and for the stability of Egypt. Is this purposeful? Or are they and their minions simply stupid?
Obama is reportedly asking President Mubarak to step down immediately, even though he has said he would not run in the next election which is scheduled for later in the year. If thousands of people in the streets are the deciding factor in such historic matters, matters that are critical to a nation’s stability, and a whole region’s peace, why was Obama so quiet when the same thing happened in Iran, before that radical regime crushed the dissent of its young people under its boot? Why is Obama himself still in office? After all, last fall well nearly two million Americans marched against his policies in Washington, DC. Why do the demands of a Muslim Brotherhood-inspired mob have to be acceded to, while the concerns of patriotic Americans marching peacefully can safely be ignored?
So, again, one must ask the key question: Is Obama’s goal the destabilization of the Middle East and war? Has he made friends with our enemies and enemies of our friends? Or is he just dangerously naïve and incompetent? Take your pick. The result is the same. Our enemies will make sure of that.
President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy wasn’t perfect, but his firm Peace through Strength stance drove back the forces of tyranny throughout the world, granting billions of people, including Americans, the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of liberty in the ensuing decades. Our enemies feared and the friends of freedom were empowered and encouraged.
Barack Obama’s policy, which is at best one of weakness, is certain to bring about war, and death, and destruction, and tyranny for God only knows how many of our fellow human beings. And America herself is not immune to the consequences, as we learned in two world wars and on 9-11-2001.
Tom Hoefling is the founder and chairman of America’s Party/America’s Independent Party and is the editor of AIPNews.com . He can be reached at tomhoefling@gmail.com.
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Why America Always Gets Revolutions Wrong
Townhall.com ^ | February 2, 2011 | Ben Shaphiro
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Revolution is the word of the day in the Middle East. The reaction in the American media and government is pure puzzlement. Who is revolting? Why? Should we support them or oppose them?
The fact that nobody seems to know what in hell is going on in Egypt, Tunisia, Albania and Jordan is yet another black mark on the American intelligence establishment, which has spent far too long playing patty-cake with dictatorial governments while failing to infiltrate and research popular movements in the Middle East.
It is also yet another horrible manifestation of America's benighted foreign policy when it comes to revolutionary movements. Since the Woodrow Wilson administration, American presidents have consistently mishandled revolutions abroad: Russia, Italy, Germany, Korea, Cuba, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Honduras, among others. Those failures stem from two conflicting notions embraced by liberal American presidents since Wilson. First, liberal presidents champion the ideas of "self-determination" -- the idea that all populations have to decide their own future without extraneous help. Second, liberal presidents support the practical separation of civilian populations from the governments they elect.
Both of these principles are fictions. And working in tandem, they have crippled America's foreign policy, creating a catch-22: populations are supposed to pick their leaders without imperialist/colonialist interference, but those same populations cannot be held responsible for the leaders they pick. The result is American noninterference with burgeoning revolutions, then utter inability to cope with the results.
In practical terms, this means that the United States must uphold the dictators originally installed "by the people." We can't get rid of those dictators, since they were supposedly brought to power through popular means. We won't get rid of those dictators because if we did, we would have to deal with the reality that the people may in fact be just as problematic as the governments they select.
The first practical experiment in this catch-22 occurred in 1917 with the Russian Revolution. Wilson watched with approval as a hodgepodge of anti-tsarist popular movements ousted the unpopular dictators. Then Wilson watched in mild irritation as that movement, led by Alexander Kerensky, was ousted by the better organized and more militant Vladimir Lenin and his communists. While America interfered in a half-hearted way, by 1918, Wilson was preaching in his famous Fourteen Points speech that Russia would have to make "independent determination of her own political development."
When the communists took over, America quickly shifted into a defensive mode, opposing the Red regime while claiming that it was unrepresentative of the populace. The result: the most evil regime in human history reigning over half of Europe, sponsoring large swaths of like-minded evil regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America -- and an American policy that coddled that regime for decades until Reagan.
The pattern repeated itself in Korea, where the United States under Truman refused to go all the way in stopping the North Koreans. Instead, MacArthur was fired for suggesting that America target the root of the problem in China. In Vietnam, the left protested that the Vietnamese people wanted communism, that Ho Chi Minh was a man of the people, and that any significant incursion into Cambodia was unthinkable. It repeated itself in Iran, where the left insisted that we allow the shah to fall, but now watch from afar as the mullahs crush all dissent.
Most recently, the pattern has repeated itself in the Gaza Strip, where the United States pushed for the installation of democratic institutions and then had to face the unpleasant reality that the electoral majority of the Palestinian population is radically evil in its anti-Semitism and Islamism. Instead of facing that fact, the United States under President Obama has chosen to legitimize Hamas by ripping Israel as intransigent.
Now the pattern is repeating itself in Egypt. President Obama's administration has taken the conflicting position that Hosni Mubarak is not a dictator, but that he must make way for democratic reforms. Obama's minions have stated that the Egyptian people seek freedom, even as they parlay with the Muslim Brotherhood (Obama has kowtowed to the brotherhood himself, inviting them to his 2009 Cairo speech). Obama's messengers have labeled prospective Egyptian leader Mohammed ElBaradei a Nobel Prize winner as though it is a real qualification, even though he is also a soft agent of Iran.
Instead of seeking out and supporting the most pro-America strain within the Egyptian revolution, Obama has sat idly by, still following in the footsteps of Wilson. When an anti-democratic movement shoves its way forward and usurps power, Obama will sit idly by, abiding by those same Wilsonian dictates. And when America has no one to deal with in Egypt but the radicals the Egyptian people have selected, we will appease them, all the while sighing over what might have been.
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ABC's Amanpour Comes Under Attack In Cairo
Broadcasting & Cable ^ | 2/2/11 | Ben Grossman
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ABC's Christiane Amanpour said Wednesday that she and a crew came under attack from a "mob" on the same day CNN's Anderson Cooper reported the same. Amanpour wrote in a reporter's notebook released by ABC News that the attack came after trying to film on a bridge into Tahrir Square. "An angry mob surrounded us and chased us into the car shouting that they hate America," she said. "They kicked in the car doors and broke our windshield as we drove away."
(Excerpt) Read more at broadcastingcable.com ...
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Yeah, this is going to end well. ::) ::)
Obama: "These mobs are an inspiration to me" - WWWTTTFFF????
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Dinesh D'Souza may have misread Obama's methods, but he nailed his ideology right on the head.
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EGYPT: Opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei says he fears coming 'bloodbath'
latimes.com ^ | Feb. 2, 2011
Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate emerging as Egypt's paramount opposition leader, told the Al Jazeera news agency that he feared Wednesday's violent confrontation in Cairo could escalate into a "bloodbath."
"I'm extremely concerned, I mean this is yet another symptom, or another indication, of a criminal regime using criminal acts," ElBaradei, former head of the U.N. nuclear agency, said of the provocative charging of demonstrators by loyalists of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "My fear is that it will turn into a bloodbath."
ElBaradei said Mubarak's regime "does not want to listen to the people, does not want to understand that they need to go," adding that the president's insistence on staying in office through fall elections only strengthens the resolve of Egyptians that he must resign "immediately, before the country goes down the drain."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
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ElBaradei showing his true colors. Trying to drive Egypt into civil war.
ElBaradei’s Ultimatum to Mubarak: 48 Hours to Leave the Country
Egyptian uprising idol Mohammed ElBaradei has ordered Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to leave the country by Friday - or he will be a "dead man walking" and not just a lame-duck president.
The aging Egyptian leader, reportedly suffering from cancer, insists he will remain in power. He said Tuesday night, "This dear country is my country ... and I will die on its land."
Mubarak dramatically announced he will not run in September's presidential elections, but shortly afterwards, U.S. President Barack Obama dealt him a stinging slap, stating that a transition to a new government should begin "now."...
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142095
Let the blood flow!
ElBaradei pretty much annointed himself leader of this "revolution". I already smell another dictator in the making. One who is an Iranian puppet.
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ElBaradei showing his true colors. Trying to drive Egypt into civil war.
ElBaradei’s Ultimatum to Mubarak: 48 Hours to Leave the Country
Egyptian uprising idol Mohammed ElBaradei has ordered Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to leave the country by Friday - or he will be a "dead man walking" and not just a lame-duck president.
The aging Egyptian leader, reportedly suffering from cancer, insists he will remain in power. He said Tuesday night, "This dear country is my country ... and I will die on its land."
Mubarak dramatically announced he will not run in September's presidential elections, but shortly afterwards, U.S. President Barack Obama dealt him a stinging slap, stating that a transition to a new government should begin "now."...
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142095
Let the blood flow!
ElBaradei pretty much annointed himself leader of this "revolution". I already smell another dictator in the making. One who is an Iranian puppet.
El Bariedi reminds me exactly of Lenin and how that went down in 1917.
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Good video James.
No onder DU, Obama, HP and the rest the far left consider that to be an inspiration.
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The pro-Islamic Supremacist BBC said that there's a "carnival atmosphere" in Egypt right now. Apparently people battling each other in the streets, looting shops and killing each other = carnival.
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The far left communists/marxists/progressives/leftists are just praying that this leads to a toppling of israel or at least a massive war against them. Or perhaps Obama stcking a final shiv to Israel in favor of his islamist masters.
This whole disgusting episode is very transparent - Egypt going down is seen as a blow to the USA and Israel.
To the far left and the likes of obama and his treasonous ilk - anything that weakens the USA & Israel can only be a good thing.
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If we can get 2 million to DC to protest the ObaMugabe Admn - does that mean he will resign and step aside?
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I have to say, (and I felt slightly guilty) I laughed and almost cheered when I saw pro government factions riding in on horseback and camel to smash protestors heads in with sticks. It was both funny and heroic in an almost cartoonish sort of way. Did anyone else find the image mildly hysterical?
The middle east really lives in another time period. Perhaps that is why most who live there are barbaric animals.
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I have to say, (and I felt slightly guilty) I laughed and almost cheered when I saw pro government factions riding in on horseback and camel to smash protestors heads in with sticks. It was both funny and heroic in an almost cartoonish sort of way. Did anyone else find the image mildly hysterical?
The middle east really lives in another time period. Perhaps that is why most who live there are barbaric animals.
Not going to lie, it was a pretty badass sight. Those dudes got some serious stones to ride into a crowd of that size and start bashing heads in.
Apparently there are Coptic Christians aligning themselves with Mubarak as they know of the coming genocide should the Brotherhood take power.
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Egyptian Foreign Ministry Says Obama Inciting Violence
FoxNation.com ^ | Feb 2
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The Egyptian foreign ministry appears to be rejecting President Obama's call for an immediate transition from the government of President Hosni Mubarak -- and says that such calls are inciting violence. "What foreign parties are saying about 'a period of transition beginning immediately' in Egypt is rejected," said foreign ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki, adding that such calls "inflame the internal situation in Egypt."
(Excerpt) Read more at nation.foxnews.com ...
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"Never let a crisis go to waste"
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EDITORIAL: Egypt’s blood on Obama’s hands?--White House is fanning flames of Islamic revolution
The Washington Times ^ | February 2, 2011 | Editorial
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President Obama is signaling the Egyptian opposition that their time has come. In a terse statement last night, Mr. Obama announced a “moment of transformation” had arrived in Egypt, “the status quo is not sustainable” and a new government must begin to form “now.” An administration official later reiterated, “the key part of the statement was ‘now.’ ” Today the formerly peaceful protests in Egypt turned violent. It turns out that words do have consequences.
Egypt is at a crossroads, a time of suspense when change could come gradually and peacefully, or quickly with maximum instability. The White House has chosen to back the latter course, which will play into the hands of the best organized, most radical factions, which in this case is the America-hating Muslim Brotherhood.
The Obama administration is strangely adamant that Muslim religious parties have to play a key role in the new government, and U.S. officials reportedly are reaching out to the Muslim Brotherhood behind the scenes. White House wishes aside, an Islamist government is not in Egypt’s interest and certainly not in the interest of the United States. The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to increase the influence of shariah worldwide and reverse the progress Egypt has made in becoming a more Western, more secular state. Its foreign policy was succinctly summed up by brotherhood leader Muhammad Ghannem, who said the Egyptian people should “be prepared for a war against Israel.” None of this will be good for America, the Mideast or the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
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Well PETA will be happy... no horses were harmed in the making of that video. :-\
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Heard reports tonight that hamas and iran are funneling cash to the mob to keep them in the streets and to stir up trouble.
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Looks like Mubarak is pushing back after bama told him to leave.
Why obama would demand immediate resignation is another WWWTTTFFF move from this idiot.
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Ha ha ha MSNBC running lower banner before that protests and signs are all saying "US OUT OF EGYPT".
And here we have the moron obama siding with the MB. Unreal how stupid this kenyan mugabe is.
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Ha ha ha MSNBC running lower banner before that protests and signs are all saying "US OUT OF EGYPT".
And here we have the moron obama siding with the MB. Unreal how stupid this kenyan mugabe is.
They're just misunderstood. ::)
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How do these people even know who they are throwing rocks at?
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How do these people even know who they are throwing rocks at?
From what I've seen, it looks to be anything invented after 1000 CE. Cars, Bicycles, Journalists, etc.... :D
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Seems very primative. I have seen water ballon launchers that could hurl roxks probably 100 yards or so and these bozos are still tossing rocks from 25 yards away?
Gggeeeezzz.
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Check sherief's response to mine on the G/O board...
It's in the Sherief Shalaby thread.
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The Muslim Brotherhood’s Penetration of the Obama Administration
Frontpagemagazine ^ | 2-3-11 | Jamie Glazov
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Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, founder, editor and publisher of the popular and award-winning weblog AtlasShrugs.com. She has won acclaim for her interviews with internationally renowned figures, including John Bolton, Geert Wilders, Bat Ye’or, Natan Sharansky, and many others, and has broken numerous important stories — notably the questionable sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign. Her op-eds have been published in The Washington Times, The American Thinker, Israel National News, Frontpage Magazine, World Net Daily, and New Media Journal, among other publications. She is the co-author (with Robert Spencer) of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America.
FP: Pamela Geller, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
Well, perhaps for those who are familiar with your work and with your book, it is not a big surprise for them that Obama has endorsed a role for the Muslim Brotherhood in a new, post-Mubarak government for Egypt.
I would like to narrow in with you today about the Muslim Brotherhood’s penetration of the Obama administration. What can you tell us about this Islamist penetration of the White House?
Geller: Thanks Jamie.
The first thing we need to realize is that the Muslim Brotherhood operates in the United States under a variety of names and organizational umbrellas. Technically, there is no “Muslim Brotherhood” in the United States. But the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others are – according to a document captured in a raid and released by law enforcement in 2007 during the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial) – Brotherhood-linked organizations.
FP: Right, and crystallize for us why we need to be concerned about Brotherhood-linked organizations in the U.S.
Geller: Because, Jamie, that same captured document explains that the Muslim Brotherhood’s mission in the U.S. is “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
FP: And people with ties to these organizations are involved with the Obama Administration, right?
Geller: Yes they are, Jamie, in various ways. On the first day of his presidency, the President showed an eagerness to be friendly toward the Brotherhood: he chose Ingrid Mattson, president of ISNA to offer a prayer at the National Cathedral during inaugural festivities on January 20, 2009.
Superficially, Obama’s choice was understandable: Ingrid Mattson was a Canadian convert to Islam who carefully cultivated the image of a moderate spokesperson. But ISNA has even admitted ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, which calls itself “one of the wings of Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.”
Mattson has also tried to set Jews and Christians against one another. Speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in March 2007, Mattson said: “Right-wing Christians are very risky allies for American Jews, because they [the Christians] are really anti-Semitic. They do not like Jews.”
But Obama didn’t seem to care about any of that. And so she prayed for Barack Hussein Obama on January 20, 2009. And it gets worse: after that, Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s Senior Advisor for Public Engagement and International Affairs and a longtime, close Obama aide, asked Mattson to join the White House Council on Women and Girls, which is dedicated to “advancing women’s leadership in all communities and sectors – up to the U.S. presidency – by filling the leadership pipeline with a richly diverse, critical mass of women.”
A hijab-wearing leader of a group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorists and Islamic supremacists – that’s diverse, all right!
FP: Yes diverse all right. I wonder why we haven’t heard Mattson coming to the defense of victims of honor killings and denouncing the Islamic theological teachings that serve as a buffer for those killings. It would be interesting to know what she would have to say about your article, Honor Killing: Islam’s Gruesome Gallery, where you humanize this tragedy by showing us the faces of dead victims and surviving victims of Islamic misogynist violence.
But I guess we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for Mattson to comment. I encourage all of our readers to look at that Gallery to not only get an idea of the viciousness of Islamic gender apartheid, but also of what kind of people Obama is has around him — since they are the ones who are complicit in and sanction this violence.
Ok, let us move on. Tell us more about the Muslim Brotherhood presence in the Obama Administration.
Geller: In June 2009, Obama appointed a Muslim, Kareem Shora, to the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Shora had been executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a group that had generally opposed anti-terror efforts since 9/11 – as have all the Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups in the U.S. But more worrisome was Obama’s appointment of another Muslim, Arif Alikhan, to be Assistant Secretary for Policy Development at the Department of Homeland Security. Alikhan is affiliated with the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), which is another highly deceptive Brotherhood-linked group.
FP: Why did the President make these appointments?
Geller: These appointments were obvious attempts to show the Muslims of the United States and the world that anti-terror efforts were not anti-Islam or anti-Muslim. Shora and Alikhan would stand as moderate Muslims within the DHS, living illustrations of the iron dogma that all Muslims aside from a tiny minority were loyal Americans who abhorred Osama bin Laden and everything he stood for. But when he made the appointment, Obama didn’t notice, or didn’t care, that as deputy mayor of Los Angeles, Alikhan (who has referred to the jihad terrorist group Hizballah as a “liberation movement”) had blocked an effort by the Los Angeles Police Department to gather information about the ethnic makeup of area mosques.
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FP: You mean to conduct surveillance in Los Angeles-area mosques?
Geller: No, Jamie. This was not an effort to close down Los Angeles mosques, or to conduct surveillance of them. There was no wiretapping or interrogation involved. No one would be jailed or even inconvenienced. Los Angeles Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing explained in 2007: “We want to know where the Pakistanis, Iranians and Chechens are so we can reach out to those communities.” But even outreach was too much for the hypersensitive Muslim leaders of Los Angeles: they cried racism, discrimination, and “Islamophobia” until the LAPD dropped the plan. And Arif Alikhan spearheaded their drive against this initiative.
Did Obama want him to bring to the Department of Homeland Security a similar sensitivity to the quickly wounded feelings of Muslims? I expect so.
FP: Talk a bit about that.
Geller: We are all well aware of Obama’s oft-stated commitment to defending and spreading the ideology of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Remember: in Cairo on June 4, 2009, Obama boasted that “the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it….I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal.” Five days later, as if to show that Obama was serious about what he said in Cairo, his post-American Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Essex County, New Jersey, charging that the county had discriminated against a Muslim woman, Yvette Beshier.
Beshier was a corrections officer, and had been forbidden to wear her khimar, or headscarf, while working. When she refused to comply, the Essex County Department of Corrections (DOC) first suspended and then fired her – the khimar was not part of the uniform, and corrections officers were expected to conform to uniform policy. But such policies, of course, were drawn up before the days of politically correct multiculturalism. Instead of simply expecting employees to conform to company rules, now the company had to adapt to the religious particularities of its Muslim employees: Barack Obama’s Justice Department sued on Beshier’s behalf.
When Obama in Cairo boasted about fighting for hijab-wearing women in the United States, he promised to “punish” infidels for not submitting to the dictates and whims of Islam. The lawsuit that followed less than a week later showed that he was in earnest.
It was almost certainly the first time that the United States Justice Department had filed a lawsuit in order to enforce an element of Sharia, Islamic law.
On duty, Yvette Beshier, like all her fellow corrections officers, should have worn religiously neutral garb. Off duty, she could have dressed any way she wanted. But ultimately the Justice Department’s suit wasn’t really about the dress code at the Essex County Department of Corrections at all. It was about asserting Islamic practices in the U.S., and establishing and reinforcing the precedent that when Islamic law and American law and custom conflicted, it was American law that had to give way.
And that’s just how the Muslim Brotherhood would want it.
FP: Interesting. I wonder when Obama will make an announcement that will defend Muslim women’s right not to veil and not to fear physical violence or acid attacks on their faces when making that decision? Aqsa Parvez was killed by her father, in part, for not veiling. I wonder why Obama didn’t come to Aqsa’s defense? Thank you, Pamela, by the way, for coming to Aqsa’s defense.
So let’s talk about the upheaval in Egypt. What do you think of how Obama is handling the situation?
Geller: Obama approved of a role in the next Egyptian government for the Muslim Brotherhood just as a Brotherhood leader was calling for war several days ago with the tiny Jewish state. It was telling. What better way to unify the ummah than with tried-and-true, religiously mandated Islamic anti-semitism? For all of those quisling clowns desperately trying to scrub the Muslim Brotherhood, this declaration of war was a good hard slap in the face.
Further, it’s interesting how the Muslim Brotherhood is blaming Israel for Mubarak’s regime. They’re not blaming the $300 billion the US has pumped into Egypt. The Camp David Peace Accord (no matter how cold a peace it established) was a good thing. Now we hear that Obama’s would-be peace partners, the Muslim Brotherhood group Hamas, are going to destroy the accord. But they want peace with the Jews; get it? Me neither.
Obama has been secretly supporting this revolution for three years. Why? He ignored the people of Iran marching against the annihilationist mullahcracy of Iran. He gave his tacit support to mass slaughter where millions took to the streets.
Anyone who, like Obama, sees a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt as a good thing secretly dreams of the annihilation of Israel. Big media is not giving you the story. Instead they have the Muslim Brotherhood’s U.S. group on, CAIR, calling in from Egypt (and mis-identifying Ahmed Rehab of CAIR as a “democracy activist”). And that was FOX. It’s that bad.
I don’t believe Obama “lost Egypt”; I believe he kicked it to the curb.
FP: Pamela Geller, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.
And we encourage all of our readers to get their hands on Ms. Geller’s book, co-written with Robert Spencer, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America.
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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/02/03/the-muslim-brotherhood%e2%80%99s-penetration-of-the-obama-administration/
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Barack Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood
Frontpagemagazine ^ | 2-3-11 | Robert Spencer
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Now that Barack Obama has given a green light to Muslim Brotherhood participation in a new Egyptian government, it is unlikely that the organization will be kept out of power. And since the Brotherhood is the largest and most ideologically committed group in Egyptian politics, most likely it will end up in the driver’s seat in any new regime, and set the nation on course toward becoming an Islamic state.
Obama almost certainly knows all this, and yet approved of Brotherhood involvement anyway. A look at some of his appointments, associations and activities shows that this should come as no surprise.
Starting in the earliest days of his administration, Obama showed an intense desire to establish friendly ties with the Islamic world, while showing little or no interest in examining his chosen partners in dialogue and targets for attempts at rapprochement for ties to jihad terrorism or Islamic supremacism. His uncritical stance toward Islamic organizations included American groups with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the Brotherhood’s stated goal of “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.”
Obama’s first attempt at outreach to Muslims came when he chose the head of a Muslim Brotherhood-linked group that had been named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case to give a prayer during his inauguration ceremonies. Ingrid Mattson, who was then president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), offered this prayer at the National Cathedral on Obama’s Inauguration Day – despite the fact that the previous summer, federal prosecutors rejected a request from ISNA to remove its unindicted co-conspirator status.
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There is no record of Obama ever asking Mattson to explain ISNA’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. On the contrary: he sent his Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett to be the keynote speaker at ISNA’s national convention in 2009.
Even worse, in April 2009, Obama appointed Arif Alikhan, the deputy mayor of Los Angeles, as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development at the Department of Homeland Security. Just two weeks before he received this appointment, Alikhan (who once called the jihad terror group Hizballah a “liberation movement”) participated in a fundraiser for the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Like ISNA, MPAC has links to the Muslim Brotherhood. In a book entitled In Fraternity: A Message to Muslims in America, coauthor Hassan Hathout, a former MPAC president, is identified as “a close disciple of the late Hassan al-Banna of Egypt.” The MPAC-linked magazine The Minaret spoke of Hassan Hathout’s closeness to al-Banna in a 1997 article: “My father would tell me that Hassan Hathout was a companion of Hassan al-Banna….Hassan Hathout would speak of al-Banna with such love and adoration; he would speak of a relationship not guided by politics or law but by a basic sense of human decency.”
Al-Banna, of course, was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Terror researcher Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project has documented MPAC’s indefatigable and consistent opposition to virtually every domestic anti-terror initiative; its magazine The Minaret has dismissed key counterterror operations as part of “[t]he American crusade against Islam and Muslims.” For his part, while Alikhan was deputy mayor of Los Angeles, he blocked a Los Angeles Police Department project to assemble data about the ethnic makeup of mosques in the Los Angeles area. This was not an attempt to conduct surveillance of the mosques or monitor them in any way. LAPD Deputy Chief Michael P. Downing explained that it was actually an outreach program: “We want to know where the Pakistanis, Iranians and Chechens are so we can reach out to those communities.” But Alikhan and other Muslim leaders claimed that the project manifested racism and “Islamophobia,” and the LAPD ultimately discarded all plans to study the mosques.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a pro-Sharia group; and Obama’s chief adviser on Islamic affairs, Dalia Mogahed, is a pro-Sharia Muslim. In their Gallup survey published under the hubristic title Who Speaks for Islam? What A Billion Muslims Really Think, Mogahed and Saudi-funded dhimmi pseudo-academic John Esposito cooked their data to increase the number of Muslim “moderates,” counting as “moderate” Muslims who wanted Sharia rule, hated America, supported jihad-martyrdom suicide bombing, and opposed equality of rights for women. Mogahed also defended Sharia on a British TV show, saying it amounted to “gender justice.”
Mogahed’s defense of Sharia came on a show hosted by a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international organization that is banned as a terrorist group in many nations worldwide. Hizb ut-Tahrir is openly dedicated to working toward the imposition of Sharia and the destruction of all governments around the world that are constituted according to any other political philosophy — including Constitutional republics.
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In light of all this, it is no accident that Obama specifically invited representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood to attend his notorious speech to the Islamic world in Cairo in June 2009. Nor should it come as any surprise that he is taking a sanguine view of the Muslim Brotherhood’s taking part in a new Egyptian government.
After all, Brotherhood operatives are in the American government and working closely with it, thanks to Barack Obama. Why shouldn’t the same situation prevail in Egypt?
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US response to Egypt draws criticism in Israel
Feb 3, 7:26 AM (ET)
By AMY TEIBEL
JERUSALEM (AP) - President Barack Obama's response to the crisis in Egypt is drawing fierce criticism in Israel, where many view the U.S. leader as a political naif whose pressure on a stalwart ally to hand over power is liable to backfire.
Critics - including senior Israeli officials who have shied from saying so publicly - say Obama is repeating the same mistakes of predecessors whose calls for human rights and democracy in the Middle East have often backfired by bringing anti-West regimes to power.
Israeli officials, while refraining from open criticism of Obama, have made no secret of their view that shunning Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and pushing for swift elections in Egypt could bring unintended results.
"I don't think the Americans understand yet the disaster they have pushed the Middle East into," said lawmaker Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who until recently was a Cabinet minister and who is a longtime friend of Mubarak.
"If there are elections like the Americans want, I wouldn't be surprised if the Muslim Brotherhood didn't win a majority, it would win half of the seats in parliament," he told Army Radio. "It will be a new Middle East, extremist radical Islam."
Three decades ago, President Jimmy Carter urged another staunch American ally - the shah of Iran - to loosen his grip on power, only to see his autocratic regime replaced by the Islamic Republic. More recently, U.S.-supported elections have strengthened such groups as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories and anti-American radicals in Iran.
"Jimmy Carter will go down in American history as 'the president who lost Iran,'" the analyst Aluf Benn wrote in the daily Haaretz this week. "Barack Obama will be remembered as the president who 'lost' Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, and during whose tenure America's alliances in the Middle East crumbled," Benn wrote.
Israel has tremendous respect for Mubarak, who carefully honored his country's peace agreement with Israel after taking power nearly 30 years ago.
While relations were often cool, Mubarak maintained a stable situation that has allowed Israel to greatly reduce its military spending and troop presence along the border with Egypt.
He also worked with Israel to contain the Gaza Strip's Hamas government and served as a bridge to the broader Arab world. Israeli leaders have said it is essential that whoever emerges as Egypt's next leader continue to honor the peace agreement.
For more than a week, Egyptians fed up with deepening poverty, corruption and 30 years of Mubarak's autocratic rule have massed across the country to demand his ouster. The backlash has forced Mubarak to announce he won't run in September elections, but that has not appeased protesters, who want him out now.
In the course of the turmoil, the Obama administration has repeatedly recalibrated its posture, initially expressing confidence in Egypt's government, later threatening to withhold U.S. aid, and lastly, pressing Mubarak to loosen his grip on power immediately.
"We want to see free, fair and credible elections," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Wednesday. "The sooner that can happen, the better."
Critics say the U.S. is once again confusing the mechanics of democracy with democracy itself.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed similar sentiments this week when he warned that "if extremist forces are allowed to exploit democratic processes to come to power to advance anti-democratic goals - as has happened in Iran and elsewhere - the outcome will be bad for peace and bad for democracy."
So far, no unified opposition leadership or clear program for change has emerged in Egypt. Historically the leading opposition in Egypt has been the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that favors Islamic rule and has been repressed by Mubarak throughout his tenure.
Many young people see the former director of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, as Egypt's democratic hope, but critics say he is out of touch with Egypt's problems because he has spent so many years outside of the country.
The calls for democracy inside Egypt have put the U.S. in an awkward position of having to balance its defense for human rights with its longtime ties to an authoritarian regime that has been a crucial Arab ally.
In Israel, critics say the U.S. has suffered a credibility loss by shaking off Mubarak when his regime started crumbling.
"The Israeli concept is that the U.S. rushed to stab Mubarak in the back," said Eytan Gilboa, an expert on the U.S. at Bar-Ilan University.
"As Israel sees it, they could have pressured Mubarak, but not in such an overt way, because the consequence could be a loss of faith in the U.S. by all pro-Western Arab states in the Middle East, and also a loss of faith in Israel," he said.
Raphael Israeli, a professor emeritus of Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, echoed a widely felt perception that before the unrest erupted, the Obama administration paid only lip service to the lack of human rights in Mubarak's authoritarian regime.
"If Obama were genuinely concerned with what is going on in Egypt, he should have made the same demands two years ago (when he addressed the Muslim world in Cairo) and eight years and 20 years ago. Mubarak didn't come to power yesterday."
"As long as there are no problems, the oppression works," Israeli said. "If the oppression doesn't work, suddenly it becomes urgent. That's unacceptable."
________________________ ______________
Obama is making carter look like a genius.
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(http://tundratabloids.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/ikhwan.gif)
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Napolitano and Muslim Brotherhood affiliates met secretly
Canada Freepress ^ | February 3, 2011 | Jim Kouri
________________________ ________________________ ____
Last year, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet and her senior staff secretly met with a select group of Muslim, Arab, and Sikh organizations. Among the mix were three organizations directly associated with an outlawed terrorist entity — the Muslim Brotherhood, who are involved in the current uprising in Egypt.
Walid Phares, director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, criticized the partnership concept: “Through the so-called ‘partnership’ between the Jihadi-sympathizer networks and U.S. bureaucracies, the U.S. government is invaded by militant groups.” Just recently, a Washington, DC-based legal group uncovered documents from the Department of Homeland Security that detail a two-day meeting on January 27 and 28, 2010, between DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian “community leaders.”
...Judicial Watch reports they obtained documents that include a list of participating individuals and organizations in Napolitano’s meeting with individuals with controversial radical ties, including:..
....In addition to the attendee list and biographies, the documents also included internal DHS email correspondence, talking points for Secretary Napolitano and a meeting agenda. Among the highlights:..
...
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
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Napolitano and Muslim Brotherhood affiliates met secretly
Canada Freepress ^ | February 3, 2011 | Jim Kouri
________________________ ________________________ ____
Last year, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet and her senior staff secretly met with a select group of Muslim, Arab, and Sikh organizations. Among the mix were three organizations directly associated with an outlawed terrorist entity — the Muslim Brotherhood, who are involved in the current uprising in Egypt.
Walid Phares, director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, criticized the partnership concept: “Through the so-called ‘partnership’ between the Jihadi-sympathizer networks and U.S. bureaucracies, the U.S. government is invaded by militant groups.” Just recently, a Washington, DC-based legal group uncovered documents from the Department of Homeland Security that detail a two-day meeting on January 27 and 28, 2010, between DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian “community leaders.”
...Judicial Watch reports they obtained documents that include a list of participating individuals and organizations in Napolitano’s meeting with individuals with controversial radical ties, including:..
....In addition to the attendee list and biographies, the documents also included internal DHS email correspondence, talking points for Secretary Napolitano and a meeting agenda. Among the highlights:..
...
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
Not surprising. Napolitano is one stupid fuck.
(http://barenakedislam.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/cartoon111009-vi.jpg)
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BF:
I posted som materials long ago abot Obama and his marxist cousin Raila Odinga. Did you ever see that stuff? Of course I was called a nut for posting it,but it seems more relevant than ever in light of this.
I'll bump it. But I'm warning you, be prepared to be horrified.
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We need Wyatt Earp back in the White House.
(http://img211.imagevenue.com/loc1183/th_62353_George_W_Bush_Cowboy_Hat_122_1183lo.jpg) (http://img211.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=62353_George_W_Bush_Cowboy_Hat_122_1183lo.jpg)
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Mubarak to Obama: 'You don't understand'
Politico ^ | 2/3/11 | Ben Smith
From Christiane Amanpour's interview with the Egyptian president:
While he described President Obama as a very good man, he wavered when I asked him if hour felt the U.S. had betrayed him. When I asked him how he responded to the United States' veiled calls for him to step aside sooner rather than later, he said he told President Obama "you don't understand the Egyptian culture and what would happen if I step down now."
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
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Obama is going to have blood on his hands if he keeps up his community organizer rabble rousing street ghetto punk routine.
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Obama was warned about Egypt
MSNBC ^ | Feb. 3, 2011
Stephanie O'Sullivan, the Obama administration's nominee for principal deputy director of national intelligence, said today that the U.S. intelligence community warned the administration of instability in Egypt at the end of last year 2010 but didn't foresee when or how it would come.
"We didn't know what the triggering mechanism would be for that," she told the Senate Intelligence Committee at her confirmation hearing, according to Reuters. "And that happened at the end of the last year."
(Excerpt) Read more at worldblog.msnbc.msn.com ...
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ElBaradei, Brotherhood reject government talks
msnbc ^ | 2/3/11 | msnbc
Opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei and the Muslim Brotherhood have spurned the government's offer to discuss Egypt's future, Reuters and the Middle East network Al Arabiya report.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldblog.msnbc.msn.com ...
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FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU
Obama pals provoked Egypt chaos
Radicals began stirring trouble months before current crisis
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Posted: February 02, 2011
8:46 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
Mug shots of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn
JERUSALEM – Months before protests erupted throughout Egypt aimed at toppling the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, President Obama's own associates provoked anti-regime chaos on the streets of the now embattled Middle East country and longtime U.S. ally.
Egypt has accused the Obama administration of championing the protests and of pressuring Mubarak to resign. The main opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, stands to gain a major foothold in the region as a result.
Yesterday, hundreds were wounded and at least one person was killed as thousands of Mubarak supporters clashed with anti-government protesters in Cairo, with some throwing petrol bombs, wielding sticks and charging on horses and camels.
A similar scene unfolded in January 2010, when Obama associates provoked chaos in Egypt in an attempt to enter the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to join in solidarity with the territory's population and leadership.
WND reported at the time those protests were led by former Weather Underground terrorists William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn – close Obama associates for years.
Another protest leader was Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink, a far-left activist organization formed in 2002 to protest America's war in Iraq. The group previously met with Hamas and with leaders of the Taliban. Evans was a fundraiser and financial bundler for Obama's presidential campaign.
(Story continues below)
Also protesting in Egypt was Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the anti-Israel Electronic Intifada website. WND previously reported Obama spoke at pro-Palestinian events in the 1990s alongside Abunimah. At one such event, a 1999 fundraiser for Palestinian "refugees," Abunimah recalls introducing Obama on stage.
The Gaza saga began when the radicals arrived Dec. 31, 2009. Evans appealed to Suzanne Mubarak, wife of Egypt's president, to allow some 1,400 activists to cross from Egypt into neighboring Gaza to march there, deliver humanitarian aid and stage a protest at an Israeli border crossing with thousands of Palestinian Gazans. Egypt's Interior Ministry had said the march was illegal and a threat to national security.
Mubarak reportedly offered to allow only 100 activists to cross into Gaza. The decision was at first reportedly accepted by Evans but was later rejected, leading to protests throughout Cairo all week under a heavy police presence.
The rioters claimed some of the protests were violent.
A press release by organizers claimed: "Members of the Gaza Freedom March are being forcibly detained in hotels around town as well as violently forced into pens in Tahrir Square by Egyptian police and additional security forces. Reports of police brutality are flooding a delegate legal hotline faster than the legal support team can answer the calls. The reports span from women being kicked, beaten to the ground and dragged into pens, at least one confirmed account of broken ribs, and many left bloody."
The website BigGovernment.com notes author Philip Weiss wrote of witnessing Ayers' and Dohrn's involvement in the debate about whether to accept Egypt's offer of allowing only a limited number of protesters to enter Gaza.
"As for the Egyptian statement that only hooligans were staying behind in Cairo ... Dohrn said that the principle of 'All or none' was a miserable one for activist politics. ... A European man in a red keffiyeh screamed at her that she was serving the fascisti. Her partner Bill Ayers gently confronted him and asked him why he was so out of control."
Dohrn later wrote on a blog that she was briefly detained at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo following protests there by her group.
"Bill and I went to the American Embassy at 10 am and asked to see the Ambassador. We were ushered into a holding pen a block away from the embassy building where we joined 35 people already there, surrounded by Egyptian soldiers," she wrote.
Protests also were staged in front of other foreign embassies as well as in a public area in central Cairo.
Eventually, the protesters accepted the Egyptian offer of allowing about 100 marchers into Gaza. The marchers indeed entered Gaza and were reportedly met on the Gaza side by Hamas' former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
"We have managed to overcome the occupation plans and we will surely meet at the al-Aqsa Mosque and in Jerusalem, which will remain Arab and Islamic," Haniyeh declared.
Evans squarely blamed Israel for Egypt's refusal to allow her group to cross en masse into Gaza.
"It's obvious that the only reason for it is to make Israel happy. Israel is behind the refusal – what other excuse could there be?"
Close Obama associates
Abunimah traveled in some of the same political circles as Obama in the 1990s. Abunimah previously described meeting with Obama at a fundraiser at the home of Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, reportedly a former PLO activist. Khalidi was also a close associate of Obama.
"[Obama] came with his wife. That's where I had a chance to really talk to him," Abunimah recalled. "It was an intimate setting. He convinced me he was very aware of the issues [and] critical of U.S. bias toward Israel and lack of sensitivity to Arabs. ... He was very supportive of U.S. pressure on Israel."
According to quotes obtained by Gulf News, Abunimah recalled a 2004 meeting in a Chicago neighborhood while Obama was running for his Senate seat. Abunimah quoted Obama telling him "warmly" he was sorry that "I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race."
"I'm hoping when things calm down, I can be more up front," Abunimah reportedly quoted the senator as saying.
Abunimah said Obama urged him to "keep up the good work" at the Chicago Tribune, where Abunimah contributed guest columns that were highly critical of Israel.
Ayers, meanwhile, became a name in the 2008 presidential campaign when it was disclosed the radical worked closely with Obama for years.
Ayers helped launch Obama's political career with a fundraiser in his home. Obama served on the board of a Chicago nonprofit alongside Ayers. The terrorist later hired Obama to serve as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a job Obama later cited as experience that helped qualify him to run for public office.
While at the CAC, Obama and Ayers both granted funds to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
WND columnist Jack Cashill has produced a series of persuasive arguments that it was Ayers who ghostwrote Obama's award-winning autobiography, "Dreams from My Father."
Ayers and Dohrn were two of the main founders of the Weather Underground, which bombed the New York City Police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. The group was responsible for some 30 bombings aimed at destroying the defense and security infrastructures of the U.S.
Characterizing the Weather Underground as "an American Red Army," Ayers summed up the organization's ideology: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents."
"Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon," Ayers recalled in his 2001 memoir, "Fugitive Days." "The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them."
Ayers brandished his unrepentant radicalism for years to come, as evidenced by his now notorious 2001 interview with the New York Times, published one day after the 9/11 attacks, in which he stated, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
Ayers posed for a photograph accompanying the New York Times piece that showed him stepping on an American flag. He said of the U.S.: "What a country. It makes me want to puke."
Obama champions anti-Mubarak protests
According to a senior Egyptian diplomat speaking to WND, Frank Wisner, a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt, specifically told Mubarak yesterday the U.S. would not continue to support his rule and he must step down.
The Obama administration dispatched Wisner to Egypt last weekend to report to the State Department and White House a general sense of the situation in the embattled country.
WND broke the story yesterday the Egyptian government has information Wisner secretly met earlier this week with a senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Issam El-Erian.
The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to spread Islam around the world, in large part using nonviolent means. Hamas and al-Qaida are violent Brotherhood offshoots.
The latest information is not the first charge by the Egyptian government that the Obama administration has been working with or encouraging the opposition to Mubarak.
Last week, a senior Egyptian diplomat stated the Egyptian government suspects elements of the current uprising there, particularly political aspects, are being coordinated with the U.S. State Department and Obama administration.
The senior Egyptian diplomat told WND the Mubarak regime suspects the U.S. has been aiding protest planning by Mohamed ElBaradei, who is seen as one of the main opposition leaders in Cairo.
ElBaradei, former International Atomic Energy Agency chief, has reinvented himself as a campaigner for "reform" in Egypt. He is a candidate for this year's scheduled presidential elections.
ElBaradei arrived in Cairo just after last week's protests began and is reportedly being confined to his home by Egyptian security forces.
He is seen as an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Last weekend, the London Telegraph reported the U.S. Embassy in Cairo in 2008 helped a young dissident attend a U.S.-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.
The Telegraph would not identify the dissident, but said he was involved in helping to stir the current protests. The report claimed the dissident told the U.S. Embassy in Cairo that an alliance of opposition groups had a plan to topple Mubarak's government.
The disclosures, contained in U.S. diplomatic dispatches released by the WikiLeaks website, show American officials pressed the Egyptian government to release other dissidents who had been detained by the police.
The White House has been almost openly championing the unrest in Egypt.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for an "orderly transition" to democracy in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood is the main opposition group.
Obama reportedly voiced support for an "orderly transition" in Egypt that is responsive to the aspirations of Egyptians in phone calls with foreign leaders, the White House said.
Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough, speaking in a White House webcast, also urged the government and protesters in Egypt to refrain from violence.
Read more: Obama pals provoked Egypt chaos http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=258925#ixzz1CwSqSOL0
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[youtube]Al-Jazeera's offices torched amid Egypt unrest
Associated Press ^ | Feb. 4, 2011 | JENNY BARCHFIELD
Posted on Friday, February 04, 2011 3:45:34 PM by Free ThinkerNY
PARIS (AP) -- Al-Jazeera's offices in Cairo were stormed and torched and its website hacked Friday, the Arab broadcaster said, as a top U.N. rights official called attacks on journalists "a blatant attempt to stifle news" about pro-democracy protest.
The Qatar-based television network Al-Jazeera said its Cairo office was burned along with the equipment inside it, and called the attack an attempt by Egypt's regime or its supporters to hinder its coverage of the uprising in Egypt.
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
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Egypt: The American Debate Has Gone Stark, Raving Crazy
Gloria Center ^ | 2/3/2011 | Barry Rubin
Posted on Saturday, February 05, 2011 12:38:39 AM by mojito
As I pointed out recently the mass media in America generally presents only one side of the debate nowadays. Then, it publishes nonsense which survives because it is protected from the withering critique it deserves. And even people who should know better are just losing it.
[....]
But why should we deal with real experience when we can engage in wishful thinking?
Consider the following chart:
Who in the Middle East could the United States depend on five years ago to support its basic policy goals? Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey
Who in the Middle East can the United States basically depend on today? Israel, Iraq (?), Jordan (until next week?), Saudi Arabia
Who in the Middle East is likely to oppose basic U.S. policy goals today? Egypt (soon), Gaza Strip (Hamas), Iran, Lebanon (Hizballah), Libya, Sudan, Syria. Turkey
Might there be a trend here?
(Excerpt) Read more at gloria-center.org ...
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Breaking News: Failed Assassination Attempt on Egyptian VP Kills Two Bodyguards
Fox News ^ | Feb 4, 2011
Breaking News: Failed Assassination Attempt on Egyptian VP Kills Two Bodyguards, Sources Tell Fox News
Only a banner so far.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
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;D
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Obama Said to Fault Spy Agencies’ Mideast Forecasting
Source: The New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Obama has criticized American spy agencies over their performance in predicting and analyzing the spreading unrest in the Middle East, according to current and former American officials.
The president was specifically critical of intelligence agencies for misjudging how quickly the unrest in Tunisia would lead to the downfall of the country’s authoritarian government, the officials said.
The officials offered few details about the president’s concerns, but said that Mr. Obama had not ordered any major changes inside the intelligence community, which has a budget of more than $80 billion a year. On Friday, a White House spokesman said spy agencies had given Mr. Obama “relevant, timely and accurate analysis” throughout the crisis in the Middle East.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/world/middleeast/05ci...
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;D
Damn 33, that .gif is just wrong. I'm not thrilled with Barry, but damn...lol
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It is what it is. We all know where obamas affections lye, and its not with this country in the least bit.
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Obama was "picked" to stir the pot in the eyes of the elitists.
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ElBaradei: The Israelis Have A Peace Treaty With Mubarak, Not With The Egyptian People
The Business Insider ^ | 2/6/2011 | Gregory White
________________________ ________________________ ___
Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the key leaders of Egypt's protest movement, has brought his country's peace treaty with Israel into doubt in an interview with Der Spiegel.
From the Der Spiegel Interview:
SPIEGEL: Are you now saying that a government that included participation by the Muslim Brotherhood would continue on with Mubarak's policies toward Israel?
ElBaradei: No. Something the Israelis also need to grasp is that it's impossible to make peace with a single man. At the moment, they have a peace treaty with Mubarak, but not one with the Egyptian people. The Israelis should understand that it is in their long-term interest to have a democratic Egypt as a neighbor, and that it is prudent to
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
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;D
OMG
You are a sick sick man...
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OMG
You are a sick sick man...
You could put George W Bush there and it would be equally valid.
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You could put George W Bush there and it would be equally valid.
Sure is. Pretty sad when you think about it all that bowing to some fat asses who just happen to be born on top of a shit load of oil.
Pathetic really
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Sure is. Pretty sad when you think about it all that bowing to some fat asses who just happen to be born on top of a shit load of oil.
Pathetic really
So long as we refuse to drill and explore and produce our own natural resources, we will be beholden to these criminals.
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So long as we refuse to drill and explore and produce our own natural resources, we will be beholden to these criminals.
Any info on much oil that potentially could be drilled/pulled up from US soil?
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Any info on much oil that potentially could be drilled/pulled up from US soil?
We have hundreds of years of natural gas, coal, oil, etc between the Bakken fiels, the natural gas in PA & NY, the oil off the coats, the oil in alaska, etc.
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We have hundreds of years of natural gas, coal, oil, etc between the Bakken fiels, the natural gas in PA & NY, the oil off the coats, the oil in alaska, etc.
And its not used because of fear oil leaks, pollution etc..?
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And its not used because of fear oil leaks, pollution etc..?
Partially.
But its like saying you are not going to do surgery becaue yo are afraid of a scar afterwards.
Oil goes back to $150 a barrell or $5 a gallon - we are FFUUUCCCKKKEDD
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Partially.
But its like saying you are not going to do surgery becaue yo are afraid of a scar afterwards.
Oil goes back to $150 a barrell or $5 a gallon - we are FFUUUCCCKKKEDD
Good reply
So instead we buy the oil from these arab fuckers.
Imagine we drilled ourselves and got the hell out of the middle east sound sweet doesnt it..? :)
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Good reply
So instead we buy the oil from these arab fuckers.
Imagine we drilled ourselves and got the hell out of the middle east sound sweet doesnt it..? :)
A smart plan would be to turn to our own resources and combine that with truly exploring more efficient/sustainable energy. Not just pay lip service to it and continue to pay the ME creatures top dollar for it.
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Tide turns in favour of Egypt's Brotherhood in revolt
Sun Feb 6, 2011 6:04pm GMT
Print | Single Page[-] Text - By Samia Nakhoul[/b]
CAIRO (Reuters) - The first time Essam el-Erian, went to jail, he was 27. Last Sunday, he left prison for the eighth time at the age of 57.
The medical doctor's crime for each incarceration was belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most influential and best-organised Islamist opposition movement and long feared by President Hosni Mubarak, Israel and the United States.
Egypt's courts have repeatedly rebuffed the Brotherhood's requests for recognition as a party on the grounds that the constitution bans parties based on religion.
Now the world could not look more different to the past three decades when Brotherhood members were repressed, arrested, tried in military courts and shunned by the Egyptian government.
After the last tumultuous days of popular revolt against Mubarak, it is now the government that is seeking out the Muslim Brotherhood to discuss Egypt' future.
Mubarak's Vice President Omar Suleiman met opposition groups on Sunday in talks joined for the first time by the Brotherhood.
The once outlawed group is finally well-placed to play a prominent role as Mubarak's government struggles to survive after 30 years in power.
I've been in and out since 1981," said Erian, a leading figure in the Brotherhood. "I have seen all forms of torture. I have been suspended by ropes, beaten, electrocuted and left outside in the cold for hours. I must say the treatment improved along the years and because of my age."
"All this only increased my resolve," said Erian. "The Mubarak regime exists to monopolise not only power but wealth."
Erian was among 34 Brotherhood members who walked out of Wadi Natroun prison last Sunday after relatives stormed the jail, overcame the guards and freed the prisoners during protests which spilt out of control across the country.
Erian, rounded up last month during preparations for the protests, went straight from jail to Tahrir Square, the epicentre of anti-Mubarak protests.
POWER THROUGH THE BALLOT?
His group has been active in the uprising. But decades of repression have taught the Brotherhood to take a backseat and it is anxious to maintain the impression that the Islamists are one part of the wider protest movement.
"We're not seeking power but our participation is a duty under a democratic and independent process. Our goal is to make sure the identity of society is Islamic," Erian said.
"It is the right of everybody to compete and if people like us then where is the problem? We have sacrificed a lot...It is our right to win a majority as in any country, like Turkey."
The popular uprising against Mubarak sent off alarm bells in Israel and the United States. They fear the Islamist movement might end up in power through the ballot and would eventually achieve its ultimate aim of implementing Sharia law in Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood is certainly hostile to Israel and the United States's policy in the region. It has historic links with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and shares its belief in armed struggle against Israel.
But unlike the militant groups that fought Mubarak's rule in the 1990s the Brotherhood has an overwhelmingly lay leadership of professionals with modern educations -- engineers, doctors, lawyers, academics and teachers. The core membership is middle-class or lower middle-class.
The government's willingness to talk to the Brotherhood is a political shift with historic proportions and testimony to the perseverance of a movement seen by analysts as playing a long waiting-game.
Western governments have until now avoided direct contacts with the Brotherhood, for fear of angering the government. But they have not been able to brand the group, which renounced violence in the 1950s, a "terrorist" organisation.
In such a disfigured political environment it is impossible to judge the real popularity of the Brotherhood. In parliamentary elections in 2005, the first stages of which were relatively fair, the Brotherhood won 88 of the 165 seats they contested. In the latter stages police stopped people voting.
ISLAMIC IDENTITY
The crackdown failed to dent the movement's drive to expand its popular base through charity and social work.
Brotherhood ideology steadily seeped into schools, households, the media, bookshops and even clothing shops. Much of this Islamic resurgence stems from social dislocation, economic hardship and political frustration.
Arab defeat in the 1967 war with Israel, the political vacuum opened after the collapse of President Gamal Abdel Nasser's secularist pan-Arabism in the 1970s, and a sudden peace with the Jewish state after years of enmity gave impetus to Islam as a competing and substitute ideology.
But for the Islamists the issue goes beyond the immediate future to a political landscape in which they believe they are steadily dominating by seeding the terrain with people of faith.
Many Brotherhood leaders, most of whom have been jailed for years, believe that the future is for Islam as long as they are patient, determined and resolute.
They are confident that Islam and sharia (Islamic law) will eventually rule and they are working to achieve that goal.
The Brotherhood, founded in 1928, wants democracy, except governed by the main principles of the Sharia. It had for long demanded greater political freedom, freedom of expression, free and fair elections where people of all trends are represented.
Supporters also dominate most of Egypt's main professional syndicates, have strong presence at universities and run thousands of charities providing health care and education.
But perhaps the most novel element in its manifesto is that it advocates "jihad," innovative interpretation of the Koran to bring Islamic law in tune with the demands of changing times.
FEAR OF IRANIAN MODEL
Liberals involved in the uprising are also worried about the Brotherhood's ambitions -- that they will capitalise on an uprising, launched by a mixture of political and secular forces, to emerge on top as happened in Iran during the 1979 Revolution.
He said the dynamics of Egyptian politics have changed from the 1990s when the Brotherhood versus the government was the only game in town.
The January 25 uprising has revealed a diversity in liberal movements which could see the creation of new political parties.
"The situation cannot be compared to the past. I don't think the experience can be repeated or compared with Iran in the same way but of course there are fears," Diaa Rashwan, an expert at al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said.
"Nobody can predict the future but the uprising was against a dark regime. We could have something better, but we could also have chaos as something may happen to spoil and sabotage this uprising."
© Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved
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Carter: Muslim Brotherhood nothing to fear
Houston Chronicle ^ | February 16, 2011 | Joe Holley
________________________ ________________________ _____________-
Former President Jimmy Carter told an Austin audience Tuesday evening that he expects Egypt to hold elections in September and that he doesn't worry about the Muslim Brotherhood wielding inordinate influence.
"I've known members of the Muslim Brotherhood," he told an audience at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library. "They're not anything to be afraid of."
The 39th president and Nobel Prize winner said he believes the Muslim Brotherhood is likely to form a political party, but polls suggest their support is only about 15 percent. "There's no possibility at all that they would prevail," he said. He said he expects to see "a secular, non-religious government."
Carter said the finest man he ever met during his presidency was Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, whose assassination in 1981 ushered in the three-decade-long rule of Hosni Mubarak.
Although the Egyptian military has been in power for more than 50 years - through the presidencies of Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak - Carter said he believes the military will cede political power and allow "competitive elections both for the parliament and the presidency. "I believe there's good chance the military will give up political power," he said.
....At 86, Carter looked remarkably fit. For nearly an hour and a half he answered questions in a strong voice and in intricate detail about world events and the work of the Carter Center in developing nations. He told the Austin audience that the most significant accomplishment of his presidency, he believed, was keeping the peace. "We never dropped a bomb, we never fired a bullet, we never launched a missile while I was president," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.chron.com ...
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Carter opened his trap, the kiss of death for a democracy in Egypt
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Carter needs to take his peanut farmin', yellow teeth havin', worst president of the modern era ass back to nowhere Georgia and shut the hell up...The guy was a total disaster president in EVERY way, but now all of a sudden he has a clue how to solve all the worlds problems.
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And President Obongo can't say anything-- He certainly can't support the people of these countries because he refused to do the same for the Iranians. Now, the terrorist organizations that rule the region will create a power vacuum and turn the middle east into one big terror conglomerate.
Lebanon is next and Jordan will soon follow.
Change we can believe in!
Bump
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Bump
EDITORIAL: Egypt’s blood on Obama’s hands?--White House is fanning flames of Islamic revolution
The Washington Times ^ | February 2, 2011 | Editorial
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President Obama is signaling the Egyptian opposition that their time has come. In a terse statement last night, Mr. Obama announced a “moment of transformation” had arrived in Egypt, “the status quo is not sustainable” and a new government must begin to form “now.” An administration official later reiterated, “the key part of the statement was ‘now.’ ” Today the formerly peaceful protests in Egypt turned violent. It turns out that words do have consequences.
Egypt is at a crossroads, a time of suspense when change could come gradually and peacefully, or quickly with maximum instability. The White House has chosen to back the latter course, which will play into the hands of the best organized, most radical factions, which in this case is the America-hating Muslim Brotherhood.
The Obama administration is strangely adamant that Muslim religious parties have to play a key role in the new government, and U.S. officials reportedly are reaching out to the Muslim Brotherhood behind the scenes. White House wishes aside, an Islamist government is not in Egypt’s interest and certainly not in the interest of the United States. The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to increase the influence of shariah worldwide and reverse the progress Egypt has made in becoming a more Western, more secular state. Its foreign policy was succinctly summed up by brotherhood leader Muhammad Ghannem, who said the Egyptian people should “be prepared for a war against Israel.” None of this will be good for America, the Mideast or the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
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I wouldn't call that a bad move 333. Egyptians want democracy, Obama nor Bush nor any president of the USA can stop the will of the people. You want him to go in and bomb them or something?
If you put all of the US eggs in Mubarak's basket, you end up being hated yet again by another country in the middle east. Exactly what the US does not need.
Worked out well for you didn't it moron?
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"I wouldn't call that a bad move 333. Egyptians want democracy, Obama nor Bush nor any president of the USA can stop the will of the people. You want him to go in and bomb them or something?
If you put all of the US eggs in Mubarak's basket, you end up being hated yet again by another country in the middle east. Exactly what the US does not need. "
This is perhaps one of the most naive comments I have ever read. Islam and democracy are not compatible, not opinion it is fact. Mubarak, Gadhaffi et all saw islamist's as a threat, and treated them as such.
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And President Obongo can't say anything-- He certainly can't support the people of these countries because he refused to do the same for the Iranians. Now, the terrorist organizations that rule the region will create a power vacuum and turn the middle east into one big terror conglomerate.
Lebanon is next and Jordan will soon follow.
Change we can believe in!
bump
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What I fear is going to happen is that radical crazies are going to swoop in once the power vacuum is created leaving many of these well intentioned people in a far worse situation.
ObaCarter is seen as weak and ineffective and we can already hear people like el bariedai taking shots at this admn for its handling of things these past two years, specifically the ridiculous cairo speech. Funny, everyone over there sees through his empty slogans, bs, false premises, false moral equivalencies, etc, and yet, we still have a kneepadding msm, idiotic 46 percent still hypnotized by this crap, and not seeing the chaos being created.
Can't vote present anymore, time to put up or shut up.
bbbooommmmmmm