America’s ambivalent reaction to the Egyptian military coup last week belies the long-standing ties between the American and Egyptian militaries in general and the close US ties to new junta leader Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi in particular.
Sissi’s rise from a relatively anonymous one-star general to the head of the military and now the de facto head of state came after studies at the US Army War College, and the perception of Sissi as “US-friendly” was a big part in getting him into the Defense Ministry, in succeeding former junta head Field Marshal Tantawi, and has left the Obama Administration entirely comfortable with the prospect of military rule in Egypt.
Indeed, the coup is in many ways made in American in general, with US training focusing during the Mubarak era on keeping “Islamic extremism” stifled by force. Is it any wonder that when a once-banned Islamist party won the election, it struggled to keep the military comfortable and fell in less than a year?
In that sense the US Congressional support for the coup isn’t surprising, and with lecturers at the war college openly expressing hope that Sissi’s coup “could set an example” for the rest of the region on how to oppose democratically elected “radicals,” it is no wonder that Egyptian protesters see an American hand in all of this.
Jason, have you ever heard that us government having a academy for peace..? Now having said that: USA is a militarism regime they are good at producing officers that can be used later in time, but when it comes to Egypt and Egyptians this one is by the people and from the people and for the Egyptian people, now if Muslim brotherhood is sacrificed then be it.
It is not to surprising. Iraq Afghanistan etc all stink of neocolonialism and the purpose of colonialism is to control markets and the supply oft raw material for state favored corporations. In our case military industrial complex.
Colonialism has been proven very bad economics.
Coup seems to have sent a signal through the Islamic world that western stile democracy will never except sharia based system and That change will only come at the point of a bayonet. It turns out that per pew that ~70 of the people in Islamic countries favor sharia. So this is very good news for military industry who welcome the possibility ofperpetual war.
It is a ill wind that blows nobody good.
Just because the Islamists are not in power, it doesn't mean they are going to go away… The radicals will always find the funding required to carry on their perceived purposes…like destroying the meddling western infidels. If the US, in particular, doesn't change the way we treat the rest of the world, we will always be a target for extremists – regardless of which general is in charge. The problem with the US is our foreign policy. Change that and perhaps, in a century or two, we might not have to gird ourselves for the inevitable terrorist attacks. Just sayin'…