With friends like these...
From the Washington Post, with thanks to Sugar Quub:
The House yesterday rejected a $570 million cut in U.S. military aid to Egypt after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell issued a last-minute warning to lawmakers that the action would damage relations with a close Middle East ally "at a very sensitive moment in the region." Although the 287 to 131 vote was lopsided, the administration and military contractors who sell U.S.-financed weaponry to Egypt took seriously the threat of a cut and worked behind the scenes to head it off.Before the vote, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice made calls to some lawmakers, who were also on notice from arms companies that the shift could result in job losses in home districts. "It was a full-court press," said Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), who offered the amendment to the $19.4 billion foreign aid bill for 2005.
Egypt is the center of anti-Americanism in the Arab and Muslim world. Its press is violently and hysterically anti-American and antisemitic (not just anti-Israel). The government claims it can "do nothing" about this, whenever questionis are raised -- but just let a single item appear about the grooming of Mubarak's son for the presidency, or a hint of the stratokleptocracy (rule by corrupt and thieving military men), and that paper, and the writer, are read the riot act. Apparently anything that damages the standing of Mubarak can be controlled, but the same control is impossible when murderous hysteria and hatred are whipped up against America and Israel.
Why does Egypt receive military aid at all? Against whom will this aid be used? Is it mighty Libya, now mostly disarmed? Could it be that Egypt, outraged at the behavior of the northern Sudanese Arabs, will attack them? So far, Egypt has not shown the slightest indignation about the Jihad being conducted from Khartoum over the past 20 years, though it will, to "please the Americans," engage in some desultory attempts to persuade the Sudanese government to pretend to engage in pretend negotiations.
That weaponry can only be used in three ways. First, and obviously, against Israel -- either directly, or by funneling weapons to the PLO in Gaza or terrorists elsehwere. Second, it can be used by the Egyptians if, within the decade, and with the Arab Muslims having murdered or otherwise destroyed most of the Christian and animists in southern Sudan, and the non-Arab Muslims, or distinctly inferior (in the Arab view) "mawalis" (for never forget that Allah provided the Qur'an in Arabic, to the "best of people" -- the Arabs -- and in their language), will be ready to threaten Ethiopia if it dares to divert any of the Nile headwaters for its own desperate irrigation needs (Egypt believes it has a divine right to the Nile waters; no other countries need apply, especially not if they are black Christians, as Ethiopians are seen to be still, despite the widespread and deliberate efforts, from within Ethiopia, by Muslims to carry out da'wa and overwhelm the Christians).
And third, all such weaponry potentially can fall into hands even more malevolent and deadly than those of the plump Egyptian generals. It is known that many in the Egyptian ruling class were in the pay of Saddam Hussein, and delivered military secrets to him that likely included secrets about American weaponry, American plans. Egypt is full of people who are sympathizers with Al Qaeda and Gemaaa Islamiyya; many are well-placed. The celebrated Ayman al-Zahahiri, for example, a former surgeon, comes from a most important family -- his great-uncle was Azzam Pasha, the Secretary of the Arab League, who back in 1948 threatened the Jews of Mandatory Palestine with such a "massacre the likes of which would not have been seen since the days of the Mongols." The notion that all of these people are marginal, or easily identified and rooted out, is nonsense.
Back in the early 1980s, there were battles royal over military aid to Saudi Arabia, most notably that involving the AWACS. Every Saudi hireling jumped into the lobbying picture, to present Saudi Arabia as what it was not then, and never has been -- a "staunch ally" of the United States, a "friend" whose good will we needed. No, we needed nothing of the sort -- we needed to bring Saudi Arabia to heel, or at least to see it clearly, as the hostile polity with a hostile ideology that it is. Had we done so, we might have begun to impose taxes on gasoline and similar taxes, in order to recapture oligiopolistic rents. But the siren-song (choirmaster: Prince Bandar, he of the Plantagenet hunting-lodge Wychwood, and the Aspen estate, where a small mountain was knocked down at his demand so that he might better enjoy the view) of all those ex-ambassadors who came trooping in, and the Fred-Dutton P.R. campaign, and every single company doing business with Saudi Arabia, including the Whitney Corporation with its hospital contracts, and United Technologies, and of course the oil companies -- oh, they certainly had American interests in mind, didn't they? Just the way those companies lobbying for a continuation of the absurd foreign aid, now nearly $60 billion, that is being sent to a country that has opposed every element of American foreign policy, that has failed to meet a single one of its solemn commitments under the Camp David Accordss, and that fans the anti-American and anti-Israel flames throughout the Arab and Muslim lands.
What exactly would Egypt have to do in order to get the American government to cut off all aid? Anything short of an outright invasion, it would seem, will not do it.
The Bush Administration has a chance to show that it understands that no Muslim country can be permitted to acquire major weaponry -- all of it is a potential threat, whether in Iraq, or Iran, or Syria, or Saudi Arabia, or Egypt itself. That an intelligent attempt was made to stop the self-defeating farce of "aid to Egypt" (what is it that the Egyptians threaten? What is it they can do if such aid is cut off? Cease to be so wonderfully cooperative? Start an anti-American campaign in their press which has been so pro-American? Stop their scrupulous adherence to the requirement, under the Camp David Accords, that they will cease all "hostile propaganda" against Israel? Start behaving badly toward the Copts, whom the Muslims in Egyptian have treated so very wonderfully? Oppose our taking strong measures to disarm Iraq, or possibly Iran?
What, exactly, could the Egyptians threaten that they do not already do? The example of the threat to cut a mere $30 million from American aid, which quickly got Egypt's attention, and made it hastily arrange a new trial for Saad Eddin Ibrahim (the "reformer" who opposes corruption, but shares the deep animus toward Israel, and supports the Jihad against it, however tarted up it may be as a campaign of "nationalist aspirations" by the "Palestinian people blah blah blah..." One gets tired of this Rami-Khoury sort of nonsense, so favored by NPR.
Tom Lantos was right. He was not attempting to "punish" Egypt but to make clear that the mixture as before won't do. American taxpayers should simply not be funding those who, fundamentally -- and not just the "fundamentalists" if I may continue the polyptoton -- do not wish them well, and indeed, hate them. For we are Infidels. And it is not right that we should prosper, and they should not. Islam is "to dominate and not be dominated." The world, for Muslims, is turned upside down. It is contra fedem, contra naturam. It cannot be. The topsy-turviness must end. It is Islam that should prevail, always and everywhere. And if we can convince the Infidels to fund us, through Combat and Call, possibly more of the latter and less of the former, well -- all the better.
Lantos was trying to inject some sense. Some, no doubt, were cowed into voting against his resolution, but only because the Administration continues not so much to speak with forked tongue, but to think with dimidiated mind. Get a grip, fellows. Think about Islam, think about what Egypt has done, has voted, has spoken, has acted (or failed to act) over the past 30 years.
Yes, Sadat was wonderful (actually, he wasn't), and so in lieu of flowers it was awfully grand of you Americans to keep sending $2 billion a year. But really, he's been a dead a while, hasn't he?
Get real.
Why does America give millions of dollars to countries that will use it for bullets to shoot the donor!!Was looking at Jihadunspun site where
there was a virulent Eygptian article attacking U.S.A.Just one of many on websites.
I say cut ALL aid to the jihadist Islamic countries. And make sure there is a UN blockade preventing any other country from providing arms to them as well. Not that it will make much difference at this point, they are armed to the teeth already. Economic aid should be dependent on them becoming a democratic, open and free society, with equality for all people regardless of religion, color etc. And I'll add, turning in all weapons. Let them toss rocks when they get mad.
I guess we're just suicidal. I remember how we constantly gave all kinds of aid and subsidized loans to the USSR and its satellites in the 70s.