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unhappycamper

(60,364 posts)
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 07:27 AM Jun 2014

Egypt turns its back on Uncle Sam

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-100614.html



Egypt turns its back on Uncle Sam
By Dilip Hero
Jun 10, '14

Since September 11, 2001, Washington's policies in the Middle East have proven a grim imperial comedy of errors and increasingly a spectacle of how a superpower is sidelined. In this drama, barely noticed by the American media, Uncle Sam's keystone ally in the Arab world, Egypt, like Saudi Arabia, has largely turned its back on the Obama administration.

As with so many of America's former client states across the aptly named "arc of instability", Egypt has undergone a tumultuous journey - from autocracy to democracy to a regurgitated form of military rule and repression, making its ally of four decades appear clueless.

Egypt remains one of the top recipients of US foreign aid, with the Pentagon continuing to pamper the Egyptian military with advanced jet fighters, helicopters, missiles, and tanks. Between January 2011 and May 2014, Egypt underwent a democratic revolution, powered by a popular movement, which toppled President Hosni Mubarak's regime. It enjoyed a brief tryst with democracy before suffering an anti-democratic counter-revolution by its generals.

In all of this, what has been the input of the planet's last superpower in shaping the history of the most populous country in the strategic Middle East? Zilch! Its "generosity" toward Cairo notwithstanding, Washington has been reduced to the role of a helpless bystander.
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