Egypt’s crackdown sparks review of U.S. aid

What happened

The Obama administration said this week that it was reviewing whether to continue U.S. military and economic aid to Egypt, as the country’s ruling generals intensified their bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. Demonstrations by supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi were put down with brute force, with security forces killing more than 1,000 civilians during raids on protest camps and mosques, and soldiers firing into crowds of unarmed people. In another blow to the Islamist movement, security forces arrested the Brotherhood’s 70-year-old spiritual leader, Mohamed Badie, at a Cairo apartment, charging him with inciting violence. The government said the crackdown was necessary to fight “terrorism,” pointing to a bloody attack this week in the Sinai Peninsula, in which unidentified gunmen killed 25 police recruits. Egypt’s military took control of the country last month, following massive demonstrations against Morsi, who alienated much of the population in the one year he governed as Egypt’s first democratically elected leader.

President Obama—who has refused to call the military’s power grab a coup—appealed to Egypt’s de facto ruler, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, to end the violence, and canceled an upcoming U.S.-Egyptian military exercise, saying “traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back.” With members of Congress demanding action, the president convened his Cabinet and the National Security Council and ordered a case-by-case review of the $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid to Egypt, most of which goes to the military.

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What the editorials said

The military’s horrific violence “does not alter the U.S.’s calculus,” said NationalReview.com. Egypt has been a critical U.S. ally in the region, providing cooperation on terrorism, preferred access through the Suez Canal for American naval vessels, and a peace treaty with Israel. For that reason, we must hold our noses and stand with the generals, who are a better bet for Egypt’s long-term prospects of democracy and stability “than are anti-democratic Islamists.”

But if the violence continues, Egypt could fall into civil war, and devolve into a failed, fractured state like Syria, said The Washington Post.Obama needs to send an unambiguous message that continued repression of the Brotherhood, or the permanent installation of a new autocracy, will leave Egypt isolated from the West. “That means the immediate suspension of all aid and the promise of further sanctions if the deliberate killing of civilians does not stop.”

What the columnists said

“If there was any doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood could not be trusted with power,” said Rich Lowry in the New York Post, its rampaging supporters have removed it. Islamist mobs have burned and looted more than 50 Coptic Christian churches in recent weeks, accusing the beleaguered minority of supporting the military’s takeover. Clearly, our least worst option is to back the military, said Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal. If we cut off aid and remove any remaining influence in Cairo, the generals will simply buy their fighter jets from Russia—paid for with the $12 billion Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia pledged to Egypt following Morsi’s removal.

Egypt stands as “Obama’s greatest failure,” said Peter Beinart in TheDailyBeast.com. His foreign policy has been marked by nuance, caution, and reluctance to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs. But in Egypt, his “attempt to find a middle path has produced the worst of all possible outcomes.” His failure to respond to the coup has emboldened the generals’ violent crackdown, and it’s now clear to everyone in the Muslim world that the U.S. favors democracy “only when our side wins.”

Egypt’s experiment with democracy was likely doomed from the start, said Walter Russell Mead in The-American-Interest.com. The country’s “liberals are too weak and too disconnected from the main currents of their society to govern,” while the Islamists had no interest in building an open, pluralistic society. So we are left where we started in 2011, with a military junta ruling a deeply divided nation. This Egypt might not be the partner America wants, but it’s the one we’ve got.