“America and the Brotherhood have united to bring down the Egyptian people”

Showdown in Egypt


"...Amidst the most serious crisis facing Egypt since the fall of Mubarak, whom President Obama strongly pressured to step down in the face of the street protests that Obama audibly supported, Obama has been conspicuous by his virtual silence on the current revolt. Shades, perhaps, of Obama’s turning his back on the dissidents in Iran in 2009 who were in the streets protesting the fraudulent “re-election” of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

With good reason, the anti-Morsi demonstrators believe that the Obama administration is standing by the Muslim Brotherhood-led government against the wishes of the people. “America and the Brotherhood have united to bring down the Egyptian people,” said Hassan Shahin, a member of the Tamarod, or “rebel,” movement.

For example, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson angered many Egyptians planning to take part in the protests when she said last week at a seminar organized by a Cairo research center:

Some say that street action will produce better results than elections. To be honest, my government and I are deeply skeptical. Egypt needs stability to get its economic house in order, and more violence on the streets will do little more than add new names to the lists of martyrs.
Patterson also reportedly asked that Copt Christians not participate in any street demonstrations against the Morsi regime, even though this religious minority has suffered more persecution while Morsi has been in power than they did during Mubarak’s rule.


George Ishaq, a prominent Egyptian Christian, expressed the anger that many of his fellow Christians must have felt against Ms. Patterson. He said on the talk show “The Issue” on Al Hayat, a popular satellite channel, that Ambassador Patterson was “an evil lady who is creating divisions. How is this any of her business? If I saw her walking down the street I would tell her, ‘shut up and mind your own business.’”

Christians are not the only minority group being persecuted in Morsi’s Islamist Egypt. Sunni Salafist fanatics attacked members of Egypt’s tiny Shiite minority late last month. Morsi did condemn the mob attacks, which led to the deaths of four Shiites. However, only a week earlier he had sat on stage with Salafist clerics and did not object to their hate-filled speeches against Shiites.

The Obama administration apparently believes that the elections alone, which brought Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood comrades to power, are sufficient to insulate them against the will of the people until the next election. While in a truly functioning democracy that would normally be true, Egypt is being run by a government that has used the elections as cover to seize all levers of power and trample on the rights of religious minorities and women.

Despite its paying lip service to protection of such rights, the Obama administration has placed no conditions to speak of on the aid it has given to the Morsi regime. Secretary of State John Kerry just released $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt, for example. Despite criticizing the Islamist government from time to time for suppressing free expression and not adhering to other fundamental precepts of a genuinely pluralistic democracy, the Obama administration decided to waive any human rights conditions on its $1.3 billion of aid to Egypt. After all, the Morsi regime has been helping to smooth over some conflicts in the Middle East, the Obama administration reasoned, and building viable democratic institutions takes time.