Check out this photograph of protesters against the Morsi regime in Egypt.
The demonstrators maintain Morsi has become a power-hungry autocrat who is intent on making the Muslim Brotherhood Egypt’s permanent ruling party.
They also blame the Obama administration and U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson for propping up Morsi and facilitating the Muslim Brotherhood’s power grab.
“We are very critical of the Obama administration because they have been supporting the Brotherhood like no one has ever supported them,” Shadi Al Ghazali Harb, a 24-year-old member of Egypt’s Revolutionary Youth Coalition, told the Washington Free Beacon on Friday afternoon during a telephone interview from Cairo.
The White House is “the main supporter of the Brotherhood,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the American support this president would have fallen months ago.”
See also this–a sign carried by Egyptian demonstrators: “Wake Up America, Obama Backs Up a Fascist Regime in Egypt”
…to which PowerLine responds:
Well, yes. So he does. What is bizarre is that Obama hasn’t just tolerated the Brotherhood’s rise to power, he has abetted it. It would be defensible to argue that we have little power to influence events in Egypt, and, moreover, attempts on our part to exercise influence are likely to backfire; therefore we should stand aside and do nothing. But why Obama would consider it a good idea to put America’s thumb on the scale on the side of the Brotherhood is beyond me.
The Obama administration has also–through its ambassador–asked the Coptic Church to urge its members not to participate in the demonstrations against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The ( Coptic) Pope politely informed her that his spiritual authority over the Copts does not extend to political matters.
Regardless, many Egyptian activists are condemning Patterson for flagrantly behaving like the Muslim Brotherhood’s stooge. Leading opposition activist Shady el-Ghazali Harb said Patterson showed “blatant bias” in favor of Morsi and the Brotherhood, adding that her remarks had earned the U.S. administration “the enmity of the Egyptian people.” Coptic activists like George Ishaq openly told Patterson to “shut up and mind your own business.” And Christian business tycoon Naguib Sawiris—no stranger to Islamist hostility—posted a message on his Twitter account addressed to the ambassador saying “Bless us with your silence.”
The post at the link notes that:
Among other things, under Morsi’s rule, the persecution of Copts has practically been legalized, as unprecedented numbers of Christians—men, women, and children—have been arrested, often receiving more than double the maximum prison sentence, under the accusation that they “blasphemed” Islam and/or its prophet. It was also under Morsi’s reign that another unprecedented scandal occurred: the St. Mark Cathedral—holiest site of Coptic Christianity and headquarters to the Pope Tawadros himself—was besieged in broad daylight by Islamic rioters. When security came, they too joined in the attack on the cathedral. And the targeting of Christian children—for abduction, ransom, rape, and/or forced conversion—has also reached unprecedented levels under Morsi.
Yet Obama’s ambassador attempted to dissuade these persecuted Christians from protesting against their persecutors!
More at Pam Geller’s site. Note the picture with the sign saying “Obama Supports Dictator Morsi.”
It is hard to avoid the feeling that Obama is more sympathetic to radical Muslim organizations and regimes than to the millions of more moderate Muslims who would prefer modernization and civil liberties rather than strict shariah and violent aggression against other faiths. Whether or not that has truly been his intent, it is certainly the way his policies have worked out in practice.
“is beyond me.”
No, it’s not. The enemy of the United States and the American people is the friend of the State Dept.
It’s simple.
God [American’s governing elites] Hates you.
I can just see Instapundit with this line: “People said that if I voted for Romney the US would support dictatorships in the Middle East.” With regard to Turkey and Egypt, it is true.
In Obama’s defense, he didn’t know anything about this. He was at the mosque.
“What is bizarre is that Obama hasn’t just tolerated the Brotherhood’s rise to power, he has abetted it”
It is not at all bizarre. Hussein is a Muslim and he supports the Ikwan, and the Iranian Revolution.
Barry Rubin argued that Obama and his advisers believe there are important differences between good Islamists (the MB, Erdogan) and bad Islamists (AQ) and are following a strategy of supporting the good Islamists.
Of course, if the distinctions Obama sees between the various Islamists are more matters of tactics and style than of basic goals, Obama’s strategy is worse than worthless. But of course a guy as smart as Obama couldn’t possibly be making such a fundamental mistake.
Speaking of Erdogan, Claire Berlinski reports from Istanbul.
If only Comrade Obama knew of this, he would stop it immediately. I apologize for using the Soviet emigre sentence other than it was intended.
Regardless of who governs Egypt can anyone enlighten the willfully ignorant, educate the credentialed, energize the lazy, heal the sick, feed the hungry? Can the problems of Egypt be solved without great suffering?
Obama’s statement that the Egyptians are still coming to terms with democracy once again shows his ignorance of history. I suppose the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s didn’t exist. Except for, you know, whites keeping the brown and black man down.
Granted, British presence could still be heavy-handed at times during the ’22-’52 period, but to say they don’t know how to deal with democracy is both ignorant and condescending. Or, in other words, typical of the guy.
“to say they don’t know how to deal with democracy is both ignorant and condescending”
He’s pandering to his base. They’re ignorant and condescending, so it works out for everybody.
An important post by Scott Johnson at PowerLine this morning. Excerpts:
“Yet it is painfully obvious from his statement in Africa yesterday that Obama seeks to preserve Mohammed Morsi as president of Egypt. Morsi is the man from the Muslim Brotherhood and it has been the project of Obama’s “smart diplomacy,” as he views it, to place the United States on the crest of the rising wave of Islamism in the Middle East. Obama is fine with the Muslim Brotherhood. He wants to help us overcome our inordinate fear of Islamism.
Thus we had the spectacle of his Director of National Intelligence promoting the self-refuting assertion that the Muslim Brotherhood is a ““very heterogeneous group, largely secular.” Obama isn’t much for the self-evident truths on which the United States was founded, but his DNI has left us a classic self-evident falsehood (subsequently disavowed).
For a progressive kind of guy, Obama has a tropism for leaders in the troglodyte mold. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is of course anathema to Obama, but Obama’s best friend in the Middle East is Turkey’s Islamist Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan. The contrast is striking and not to Erdogan’s favor.”
and
“Obama helped preserve the rule of the mullahs in Iran at a key moment of peril presented by the popular uprising against them in 2009.
Obama would love to find a way to get the United States aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hamas branch in Gaza and Iran’s Hezbollah subsidiary in Syria and Lebanon. They are the logical terminus of his Middle Eastern fantasies. In the Middle East, anyway, Obama is riding the wave of the eighth century.
Outside the Middle East, Obama has thought he could befriend Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Obama longs to sell out to him. Obama seems not to notice Putin’s czarist pretensions or even Putin’s contempt for Obama.”
Read the whole post: Wave of the Eighth Century
Putin is merely being strong.
He’s the best Russian Leader since Nicholas I, if not Alexander II.
I’ll take a swap.
I am absolutely gob-smacked at how Champ and his fellow horsemen of the Apocalypse have managed to piss off absolutely everybody, on all sides of the protests in Egypt. It takes a real gift to be able to alienate and offend everyone.
The current regime is totally committed to post-modern, progressive, critical race theory, leftist ideology.
Nothing else matters.
Everything they have done becomes comprehensible once that is realized.
Anyone who believes that they have the traditionally held best interests of the US as their primary concern are, at best, naïve fools.
I wouldn’t expect Egypt to be well governed under any regime, but this should be an improvement. Nasser hanged members of the MB. Is it too much to ask that Morsi get the same? It is so rare that tyrants get justice.