U.S. Fully Behind Irrational Attempt to Roll Back Arab Spring

One thing that stands out in the reporting of yesterday's crackdown on the two Cairo sit-ins -- both in stories from David Kirpatrick and Alan Cowell as well as Kareem Fahim and Mayy El Sheikh -- is the number of people who were shot in the head and chest. Kill shots. The point of the coup government was not to peacefully disassemble the Muslim Brotherhood protest encampments, as the Interior Ministry had announced previously, it was to crush ruthlessly and sow terror:

Using heavy armor and deadly weapons, the army and the police swept into Rabaa al-Adawiya and another smaller encampment across town, in Nahda Square in Giza, in what was the third mass killing of civilians since the military took power on July 3. Like the other killings, the government’s gunmen appeared to strike their victims with terrible accuracy, with gunshots to the head and chest.

The New York Times Editorial Page gets it right when it calls this morning for an immediate cut off of military aid to Egypt:

With yet another blood bath in the streets of Cairo on Wednesday, Egypt’s ruling generals have demonstrated beyond any lingering doubt that they have no aptitude for, and apparently little interest in, guiding their country back to democracy. On the contrary, the political obtuseness of Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s de facto leader, and the brutal repression he has unleashed now threaten to produce the worst of all possible outcomes to an already inflamed situation: a murderous civil war.

That would be a tragedy for Egypt, which until recently believed it was on a path to ending decades of repression and dictatorship. And it would be a foreign policy disaster for the United States. Egypt is the most populous and influential country in the Arab world. It is also Israel’s most strategically important neighbor. 

President Obama must make clear his unequivocal opposition to the Egyptian military’s conduct. He can do so by immediately suspending military aid and canceling joint military exercises scheduled for September. These steps can be reversed if the generals change their ways, but, until then, the United States should slam the door on an aid program that has provided the Egyptian military with a munificent $1.3 billion a year for decades. 

Those who argue that this aid gives the United States leverage can no longer do so with a straight face. Time and again, repeated phone calls from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to General Sisi asking for restraint and similar exhortations by Secretary of State John Kerry have been ignored.

This is the last coffin nail in the Obama presidency. Sure, he'll be around for another three-plus years. But his popularity and base of support will continue to erode, the only question is how precipitously.

Obama's success as a politician has always been his ability to tap into people's hopes that he represents something new, something different from the tired, old power politics practiced by elites on behalf of the enormously wealthy. His much ballyhooed speech in Cairo the first six months of his presidency is case in point. His praise for Islam and promised support of democracy have proven to be a complete sham.

Where was Obama yesterday when Egyptian security forces were gunning down protesters with American-supplied weapons? He was vacationing on Martha's Vineyard. According to "U.S. Condemns Crackdown but Announces No Policy Shift" by Mark Landler and Michael Gordon:

As his chief diplomat [John Kerry] was speaking of a “pivotal moment for Egypt,” the president was playing golf at a private club.

While I'm sure the U.S. would prefer the Muslim Brotherhood to "play nice" and participate in the formation of a new government, this does not mean that Obama will do anything to abandon the coup and the Egyptian military:

Analysts said the ferocity of the latest crackdown would put the White House’s strategy to its sternest test yet. “If it looks like the U.S. effectively colluded in a counterrevolution, then all the talk about democracy and Islam, about a new American relationship with the Islamic world, will be judged to have been the height of hypocrisy,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

The United States now stands fully exposed as behind the attempt to roll back the Arab Spring, an aggressively revanchist strategy that seems totally irrational. Can time be made to flow backwards? Obama, Israel and the Gulf Sheikhdoms are going to give it a shot.

Mubarakism is to be brought back in Egypt; in Syria, we're working alongside Wahhabi jihadis to create a caliphate; Iraq is being cracked by the same jihadis. The Middle East is descending into a maelstrom of war and destruction, and the United States under the leadership of a Nobel Peace Prize recipient is a co-conspirator.

My one little act of resistance yesterday is that I cancelled my monthly donation to Obama's 501(c)(4), Organizing for Action.