[Peace-discuss] at Daily Kos: If We Cut Aid to Egypt's Military, Would We Die?

[Robert Naiman]

I've decided that the joint headline for these two articles should be:

"Confusingly, Admin Semi-Announces De Facto Suspension of U.S. Aid to Egypt"


On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 9:08 PM, Carl G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:

> In fact, the reports are contradictory:
>
> The NYT said, "The Obama administration has taken preliminary steps to
> withhold financial aid to the Egyptian government ... it is curtailing
> economic assistance, *not the much larger military aid* on which Egypt’s
> generals depend."
>
> Senator Leahy's spokesman was quoted as saying that it is the senator's
> understanding that "aid to the Egyptian military has been halted, as
> required by law.”
>
> Of course it's typical of the "most transparent administration in history”
> [sic Obama] to multiply its lies. It's the great traditon: the best line
> Christopher Hitchens ever wrote (if he wrote it) was the title of his book
> on the Clintons: "No One Left to Lie To."
>
>
> On Aug 19, 2013, at 8:26 PM, Robert Naiman <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>
> wrote:
>
> > This report isn't exactly right. Josh Rogin, the reporter at Daily
> Beast, is often sloppy, sometimes very sloppy. Here he claims to
> exclusively report that it has cut off aid secretly, whereas the NYT
> basically reported largely this same information earlier, without the
> secrecy claim.
> >
> >
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/world/middleeast/leaving-military-aid-intact-us-takes-steps-to-halt-economic-help-to-egypt.html
> >
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 8:06 PM, Carl G. Estabrook <
> galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
> > http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.542414
> >
> > If the Obama administration, almost by accident, does the right thing,
> it has to do it secretly!
> >
> > Placing military aid to Egypt "on hold" doesn't make much difference.
>  US policy is consistent and consistently shameful.
> >
> >
> > On Aug 19, 2013, at 5:55 PM, Robert Naiman <naiman at justforeignpolicy.org>
> wrote:
> >
> >> I wish it were true about Gaza. But unfortunately it is not, I don't
> think - not that the behavior of the Israeli military wasn't as extreme in
> an objective sense, but that it was not widely perceived in the same way in
> the U.S. Many more Americans know and understand what has happened in Egypt
> than knew and understood what happened in Gaza, including the role of the
> U.S.
> >>
> >> I agree that the consequences of withdrawing the aid are unknown. But
> the actual dollar number is not, I don't think, the whole story. U.S. aid
> brings access to "prestige" U.S. weapons. U.S. military aid is widely
> perceived as a U.S. "seal of approval." The withdrawal of U.S. military aid
> is likely to have a knock-on effect in Europe and at the IMF and the World
> Bank. It might also have an impact on Egyptian elite opinion. We don't
> know; it's uncharted terrain. If nothing else, it would be a good learning
> experience. And if it's a jump ball, we should cancel it. There are
> certainly more productive uses for $1.3 billion.
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 5:37 PM, Carl G. Estabrook <
> galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
> >> Of course, the behavior of the Israeli military in Gaza was "so extreme
> that it's pretty hard to explain (justify) the policy of supporting the
> [Israeli] military in any kind of public forum." Nevertheless, Obama et al.
> managed it.
> >>
> >> It's not even clear that the threat of withdrawing the $1.3 billion the
> US gives the Egyptian military annually would mean very much, except as
> propaganda. The US' other chief client in the region, Saudi Arabia, and the
> GCC give much more than that each year, and Saudi Arabia has already said
> that they will step in to "help Egypt" (i.e., fund the military) "if
> Western nations cut aid packages to Cairo over a crackdown on extremists."
> >>
> >> After all, what's a client for?
> >>
> >>
> >> On Aug 19, 2013, at 5:13 PM, Robert Naiman <
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> If nothing else, this precedent is going to be extremely useful the
> next time we are told we must bomb or invade country X because of human
> rights. So, it's in our long-term interest to make the current juncture as
> big a scandal as possible. And, I think the outcome is uncertain once it
> comes into the spotlight. The behavior of the Egyptian military is so
> extreme that it's pretty hard to explain (justify) the policy of supporting
> the Egyptian military in any kind of public forum. That will cause the
> Obama Administration to try to triangulate, and in a volatile situation,
> triangulation could have unpredictable consequences. For example, the Obama
> Administration has refused to call the coup a coup, but says it is going to
> implement the law as if it had made a determination that a coup had taken
> place. The consequences of that if the Egyptian military does not change
> course are not totally predictable.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 4:55 PM, Carl G. Estabrook <
> galliher at illinois.edu> wrote:
> >>> But it's not 'the Pentagon' as an independent actor that's setting
> policy. The policy of controlling the world's major energy producing region
> (including the governments that emerge from the Arab Spring) is set by -
> and for the benefit of - the American 1%, and enacted by its chief minion,
> the US president.
> >>>
> >>> They have no interest in "restoring democracy," except under the
> specialized definition where (1) democracy = doing want the US government
> demands, and (2) the appearance (but usually not the reality) of democracy
> is helpful in getting a population to acquiesce in USG policy rather than
> pursuing their own interests.
> >>>
> >>> But of course you're right that we should demand that the Obama
> administration stop paying for murder and terror in Egypt, as part of the
> demand that it stop committing murder and terror around the world.
> >>>
> >>> --CGE
> >>>
> >>> On Aug 19, 2013, at 2:51 PM, Robert Naiman <
> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Suppose that the U.S. cut off aid to Egypt's military, as required by
> U.S. law, and suppose that in retaliation the Egyptian military said to the
> Pentagon, "OK, big boy, from now on you have to give us the same notice for
> overflights as you give everybody else, and your warships have to wait in
> line at Suez just like all the other ships." And suppose this continued
> until democracy was restored.
> >>>>
> >>>> I can certainly see how that would be sad for the Pentagon. But from
> the point of view of everyone else in America who isn't the Pentagon -
> everyone who has to stand in line all the time - would it be so terrible?
> Would we die? Could we somehow muddle through?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/19/1232299/-If-We-Cut-Aid-to-Egypt-s-Military-Would-We-Die
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Robert Naiman
> >>>> Policy Director
> >>>> Just Foreign Policy
> >>>> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> >>>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Peace-discuss mailing list
> >>>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> >>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Robert Naiman
> >>> Policy Director
> >>> Just Foreign Policy
> >>> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> >>> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Robert Naiman
> >> Policy Director
> >> Just Foreign Policy
> >> www.justforeignpolicy.org
> >> naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Robert Naiman
> > Policy Director
> > Just Foreign Policy
> > www.justforeignpolicy.org
> > naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
>
>


-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
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