The more things change, the more they remain the same:
A top Muslim Brotherhood official has warned that any cuts in U.S. aid to Egypt could affect Cairo’s peace treaty with Israel – the latest sign that Egypt’s emerging political forces intend to call Washington’s bluff over the diplomatic dispute triggered by a crackdown on non-governmental organizations.
Egyptian judges have referred 16 Americans and 27 others linked to NGOs for trial, accusing them of using foreign funds to encourage disruptive protests. Among the targeted NGOs whose assets and funds have been seized are the U.S. government-funded International Republican Institute and National Democratic Institute.
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Any U.S. aid cut to Egypt, top MB lawmaker Essam el-Erian told the pan-Arabic al-Hayat newspaper, would violate the U.S.-brokered 1979 peace agreement with Israel.
The Jerusalem Post quoted Erian as saying that if the U.S. cuts aid to Egypt, the MB would consider changing the terms of the peace treaty. He is warning that the U.S. should understand that “what was acceptable before the revolution is no longer.”
Erian chairs the parliamentary foreign affairs committee and is deputy leader of the MB’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).
The FJP was an early critic of the crackdown on the NGOs (although it also said Egyptian NGOs should get their funding from Egyptians). But threats to cut U.S. aid appear to have rallied various factions behind the government, feeding into long-held suspicion of and hostility towards the West.
I just scanned the text of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1979. Tribute is not mentioned, nor is aid, neither in substance nor in amount.
I guess if you want to wrap your head around providing $1.3 billion to a regime that turns hourly more hostile to our interests, it would help to have the intellect of a senior vice president on the Council of Foreign Relations:
James Lindsay, senior vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that while Americans would naturally be upset if the recipients of their hard earned money are ungrateful, “gratitude isn’t the primary objective of U.S. foreign aid”
“Washington doles out aid primarily based on calculations about how to advance U.S. strategic interests. And the United States certainly has great interests at stake in how Egypt’s political transition plays out even if it doesn’t have a lot of influence over where it ends up.”
Great interest + not a lot of influence = $1.3 billion per year.
They could pay me half that, and I would not just be greatly interested, but fascinated – riveted even – with about the same amount influence. Even more interest with no loss of influence at half the cost?
Hey, these are tough economic times, but I’m willing to do my part.
I can’t help it: I’m a giver. I give.
Took me more than two years to earn that amount at Western Airlines – “The Only Way To Fly!”
1.3 Billion? What were you doing, SCD, robbing a different casino every time you laid over in Vegas? Or did you mean just the measly 650 million “half the cost” bit ?
As long as we’re making up clauses to treaties maybe we should point out the one where we promise to refrain from bombing the Aswan dam.
I don’t think there’s much doubt that Israel could last against the Egyptian military longer than Egypt could last without aid.
I’m pretty sure that Egypt was kept sweet on the proposed peace treaty with a separate codicil between just the US and the Arab Republic which promised them aid every single year and a separate amount of military aid every year and a Bright Star every other year.
You know that was just the way Jimmy and Cyrus rolled back then. Peace at any price!
However, if the majority of Egyptians don’t want our stinking money my democratic principles are pretty cool with just saying no more for you Egypt. It would be interesting as the maniacs take over more of Egypt if Israel just bricked up all of its border crossings with Gaza and punted the problem to Egypt. Let Egypt send them the oil,food, building supplies, water and everything else they require.
“gratitude isn’t the primary objective of U.S. foreign aid”
“Washington doles out aid primarily based on calculations about how to advance U.S. strategic interests.
I’d think that an intelligent position and would accept it if I thought for a minute our interests were actually being “advanced” but as I see things (admittedly I have a limited view) our interests aren’t advancing. Rather they are retreating. No pun intended.
You are too smart and clear-headed to get a job with those guys.
“We never pay anyone Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
The end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost.”
We will see if we stick to Kipling’s immutable truth, or we pour additional billions of taxpayer money into a regime that is now a sworn enemy.
No no URR,
This Republic started out paying the bulk of federal revenues to the Barbary pirates and only stopped when they stupidly attacked one of our warships. We payed the “Dane” geld for decades and so did all of those in Europe that could scrape up the scratch. None of them ever lifted a finger against the pirates and slavers.
It truly takes Foggy Bottom types to understand that kind of reasoning.
Staff report a strange flop-flop-flop sound at Monticello.
Statue at Jefferson Memorial has done a facepalm.
Next demand — remove “to the shores of Tripoli” from the Marines’ Hymn.
“Millions for defense, sir, not one cent for tribute.”
If we could say it to the French then, why not the clowns in Cairo today? Oh, wait, I think I know the answer..sigh.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when any sort of uprising in a Muslim nation is worthy of our support….well, maybe, sort, kinda, if, well, I’m not sure, let me call Libya today and find out what they want….
A President who, I cannot use any other term, purposefully undermines the security of our nation, and that of many others….
I like the idea of quietly telling the Egyptians that if they want to argue, the money will be made available to the Israelis.
+1000000
We’ll see how long they last in a war with the Israelis. Without our tech rep support, I doubt their F-16s and M-1A1s will be running for very long. Without our supplies and spare parts, they definitely won’t be.
Think about what $1.3 billion could buy here.
- A new stretch of interstate.
- A couple of real frigates to replace the tired old Figs. Not the LCS pile of crap with a popgun, big helo deck and pie-in-the-sky mission modules.
- 10 F-35C Lightning strike fighters or 23 Superbugs, two aircraft that would be a lot better use of resources than trying to curry favor with a regime that is going to be Mullahs, Part II, Revenge of the Sunni.
Obama lost us Egypt with his dithering on Mubarak. Sure, old Hosni was a bastard and corrupt as hell. But he was pro-American and kept a lid on all of the nuts for the most part.
As we always show when dunderheaded progressive morons with empty spaces in their skull cavities like Carter and Obama are elected, being America’s friend is not the best thing to be. Carter was the president who lost us Iran forever. Obama did the same for Egypt. And why is it that we elect Democrats to the highest office in the land again? We’ve got to clean up the mess of Watergate, right? It’s the economy, stupid? We need C-H-A-N-G-E? Right….
Sometimes I wonder, aloud, if the progressives are in the business of foreign-policy sabotage. Results seem to bear that hypothesis out.
Is it too late to park an Iowa class BB in the Suez near Cairo and point all 9 16″ VW throwers in that general direction? I mean, if you got to send a message, send a BIG one.
The WON! already sent it. He’s more interested in denying the American worker a living wage, than giving the MB a fistful of dollars, so they may continue to threaten the stability of the region and the world….
we’d first have to build one, as they’ve all be scrapped or “demilitarized” as floating museums.
Not that I’d object to building some (would also be a great way to create jobs in the ship building industry)
but I fear under the current union and government regulations, constant threat of lawsuits for gazillions in damages if someone stubs her toe, etc. etc. it would take rather too long to be of practical use in the current situation 
We can’t build them anymore. All of the industrial infrastructure necessary to do that, the big forges, big steel mills, big presses, etc., has already been either scrapped or shipped to China.
Egypt can bluster as they have been rendered less important….Israel would likely wipe up the map with what stands as the present state of things.
I say send a message that unless things improve ASAP, the foreign aid will be cut back and don’t get any ideas about playing with the Suez Canal….we would see that as a grave error of judgment.
SK1,
The sticky thing about that is, eventually you have to back up your words. Egypt knows this guy hasn’t the seeds, and know that, in a couple years won’t have the means, either. Because he is helpfully dismantling US defenses, including our nuclear arsenal.
The entire world knows we’ve got a castrated Poodle for POTUS.
Tasteless Milk Chocolate he is, unlike his wife, who is at least genuine Dark Chocolate. Whatever you say against the First Lady, you must admit that she has a nice, big, ample bottom. Like Venus!
do what exactly? Send in a few Tomahawks to bomb an empty bit of desert floor (the way Clinton did whenever he got angry)?
There’s little more the US can do right now, the military is utterly crippled, every able bodied man and woman is in the field in Afghanistan almost and the rest is trying to scrape up enough money to provide for some training and maintenance in the hope they’ll not get RIFfed just yet if only the appear to be busy with something.
We apparently aren’t going to have a CHOICE about giving… or giving in.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_NUCLEAR_WEAPONS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Yet ANOTHER reason in AN INCREASINGLY LONG LINE of reasons to consider re-locating the Duck-Blind, Peter Gun.
Union of Concerned Scientists…three lies in four words. Impressive.
If I made that statement to someone here in the good ol’ US of A, wouldn’t I be arrested for extortion?
Just askin’
MikeyB
Not if you are with the Black Panthers you wouldn’t.
Not with this AG, anyway.
“I am modifying the deal. Pray that I do not modify it further.”
As many smart knowledgable people have been pointing out since ‘way before I existed, the Council on Foreign Relations is not just an un-American institution, but an actively anti-American institution. Eff the damned Globalists!
1.3 billion, divided by $100K, is 13000 people with enough money in Cairo to buy elections.
The population of Egypt is about 81 million. 44% of Egypt are poor, barely or unable to purchase 2500 calories per day at a cost of just over $300 US dollars per year and some services.
That’s 35.6 Million poor people, so 1.3 billion would give each of them $36, or roughly 10% in extra earnings. Or it would feed 3.7 Million Egyptians for a year. I wonder how they would vote?
Instead of giving it to their government to dole out as they see fit, let’s change the arrangement and give it directly to their poor and see what happens. As a bonus this would also get Sally Struthers off of my television screen. A win-win! Time to call my Congresswoman!
– Max