Posted on 07/08/2013 5:49:25 AM PDT by SJackson
Tahrir Square may have filled up with fireworks after Morsi’s fall, but it’s far too early to count the Muslim Brotherhood out of the game. Not when its best asset is still in the White House.
As the Anti-Morsi protests grew intense, the White House attempted to sell the Brotherhood president on a plan for early elections and a broader coalition. That plan never went anywhere and when the military rolled out its deadline, the administration was left scrambling to head off the inevitable.
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel got on the phone to the Egyptian military and proved to be about as effective as he had been at his confirmation hearing. Secretary of State John Kerry was last seen aboard his yacht at Nantucket. The only consistent thing about Obama’s foreign policy teams is that they hover somewhere between the incompetent and the ineffectual. But that’s because they really don’t matter.
Kerry has as little to do with foreign policy decision making as his predecessor. Like Hillary, Kerry is a “face” to be kept busy with some make-work, in this case the bankrupt Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The real foreign policy decisions are handled by a close circle of Obama advisers who will never have to dance through a confirmation hearing. Hagel and Kerry are just the clowns who get to take the blame.
America under Obama has fairly little political influence. Its only real leverage over Egypt is foreign aid. Whatever threats Hagel and Kerry made to Cairo were not enough to stop the Egyptian military from acting as the arbiters of political succession for a second time. This time without the approval of D.C.
Plan A, the plan to keep Morsi in power with new elections and a coalition with some liberal figures, flopped.
Plan B however may work. Plan B is the plan to get the Brotherhood back into power and it depends on using foreign aid and international investments to pressure the current government into rushing into new elections as soon as possible.
During the last days of Mubarak, there was a split over whether to push the Egyptian leader to call for elections or to force his immediate resignation.
The foreign policy pros wanted Mubarak to go the elections route which would have resulted in a smooth transition of power and would have made the liberal protesters more competitive in a national election, but Obama’s inner circle sidelined the pros and demanded that Mubarak immediately step down. The rushed elections were a gift to the Muslim Brotherhood; the only group with the organization needed to compete and win an election on short notice.
With Morsi, the White House picked the “slow” elections route that it had rejected with Mubarak. Now that Morsi is out, the White House is reverting to calls for “fast” elections and a rapid and immediate transfer of power. The call for fast elections once again benefits the Brotherhood.
But there’s more to Plan B than just another rushed election that would take place soon enough to be characterized by the Brotherhood’s street battles and aggrieved victimization, rather than by policy.
Obama issued a statement in which he not only called for quick elections, but also warned the Egyptian military to “avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters”. The Egyptian judiciary and police appear to have largely ignored his words, but that warning is part of the Plan B strategy to protect the Muslim Brotherhood’s ability to compete in and win a new set of elections.
During his brief reign, Morsi had overseen a regime that used violent militias to kill and torture political opponents. In any other country that would be grounds for criminal charges. But Plan B depends on intimidating the Egyptian authorities into making the same mistake that Mubarak did by setting the Brotherhood loose one more time.
Obama’s statement is unique because he offered no such warnings after the takedown of Mubarak, even though Mubarak loyalists continued to remain politically active and there was no democratically elected government in place.
In response to the common and correct perception among many Egyptians that Obama supports the Muslim Brotherhood, Kerry issued a statement saying, “The United States categorically rejects the false claims propagated by some in Egypt that we are working with specific political parties or movements to dictate how Egypt’s transition should proceed.”
However Obama’s earlier statement in defense of the Brotherhood coupled with the implication that Egypt’s foreign aid was linked to its treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood gives the lie to that defense.
The White House still wants the Muslim Brotherhood to win. It couldn’t head off the mass protests and military action that toppled Morsi, but its Plan B is meant to salvage that disaster by paving the way for a second round of Muslim Brotherhood political victories.
What Team Obama couldn’t manage to do within the military deadline, they hope to be able to manage in the coming weeks and months as Egypt’s new government struggles with economic problems that require international aid. As the Brotherhood’s protests grow, the new government will be caught between a rock and a hard place. And the State Department will be playing the familiar game of forcing a wounded government to make concessions to its worst enemies in exchange for American support.
These are the tactics that turned over China to the Communist Party and Iran over to the Ayatollahs. The treason of the diplomats did not begin in 2008. It began far earlier and hit its peak during the Cold War. And those same reliable tactics will be employed to compel a second Muslim Brotherhood victory.
Plan B requires forcing the Egyptian authorities to do two things. Call elections as soon as possible and avoid arresting or prosecuting Muslim Brotherhood officials and members for their numerous crimes. Every time you see Team Obama or the State Department issuing another statement expressing concern about the protests in Egypt, urging a transition to democracy and condemning the arrest of Brotherhood figures, what you are really seeing is Plan B in action.
Plan A couldn’t keep Morsi in power. Plan B intends to finish what Obama’s Cairo speech started by putting the Muslim Brotherhood back on the throne.
This of course, was a Soviet Plot. Democracy, ala George Washington et al for Egypt? OK Fine, ONLY Literate, tax-paying, male, property owners entitled to vote.
These are the only Worthy Oriental Gentlemen with whom we should be concerned. Remember, in Egypt, a good many of the above would also be Christians. BTW, the British insisted on tolerance for Christians and Jews. As soon as they were kicked out, so were the Jews. Since then,ever-increasing pressure on the Christians is wiping them out.
Fuad II is the Pretender, not on the throne ...’cause there ain’t no throne. Should be.
We talk a lot on these forums about whether Obama is incompetent or he knows exactly what he is doing in destroying America.
I believe he is truly incompetent, but the people running him know what they are doing.
If you want something to fail, you hire incompetents, give them priviledge so they cannot be touched and provide them with a set of rules so ridiculous that if something happened they couldn’t point a finger at anyone.
This is Obamas administration in a nutshell. Just look at everything in the last 5 years, apply my scenario and there you have it.
This is where our GOP gang has been absolutely worthless. Under our very noses, a non-Constitutional branch of government, i.e., government itself as manifested in the agencies and departments ... then bureaucracy... has sprung up to move the representative legislative branch away from the controls control.
The Executive Branch allies itself with the bureaucracy and simply overwhelms the representative and judicial branches. It buys them. To restore the Constitution, all the Congress needs to do is stop writing the checks. Unfortunately, part of every check goes to them ... they have no incentive to stop!
The voters? ROTFLMAO. Checkout a Wal-Mart Checkout. Those are your voters. On appearance alone, 65% of voters would have been arrested on sight in 1950.
As the Anti-Morsi protests grew intense, the White House attempted to sell the Brotherhood president on a plan for early elections and a broader coalition. That plan never went anywhere and when the military rolled out its deadline, the administration was left scrambling to head off the inevitable. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel got on the phone to the Egyptian military and proved to be about as effective as he had been at his confirmation hearing. Secretary of State John Kerry was last seen aboard his yacht at Nantucket... Kerry has as little to do with foreign policy decision making as his predecessor. Like Hillary, Kerry is a “face” to be kept busy with some make-work, in this case the bankrupt Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The real foreign policy decisions are handled by a close circle of Obama advisers who will never have to dance through a confirmation hearing. Hagel and Kerry are just the clowns who get to take the blame.
And I agree— I pray America will WAKE UP before we are made to be like Egypt. But I do worry about that as well.when we were more inclined to be a Religious and Moral people,, we still preferred the supine until late int he game— of late I have come to question if we are yet a Religious or a Moral people.
In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.
He always puts the needs of the Muslims first; even when it comes to protecting America from the savages on its soil. This, coupled with his connections to MB figures, in and out of the White House, is all the admission he needs to make.
Say Bert, is that a photo of the tower of babylon?
No, that’s the tallest building in the world.
To one not acquainted with international architectural/engineering and construction projects one might hold that view. In the truly global marketplace a project of that size and complexity requires input from a multitude of companies from all over.
There is one common denominator. Although dimensions are metric, the discourse among those involved is conducted in the English language.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.