Egypt
August 23, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Has the misnamed Arab Spring turned into something closer to “Springtime for Hitler”? It certainly raises some of the questions I touched on in “In Larson’s Garden: 10 notes.” Momentous changes are underway in Egypt. Since the election of the man from the Muslim Brotherhood as Egypt’s president, the the regime has taken several steps backward. Morsi is consolidating power in his own hands and distributing it to supporters of
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August 16, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Andy McCarthy blows away the claim that General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, recently installed to head Egypt’s military, has connections with the U.S. in which we should take comfort. The Wall Street Journal made that claim in a profile of Sissi. So, to a lesser degree, has the Washington Post. The claim is important because Sissi’s predecessor did have meaningful connections with the U.S. If Sissi does not, then our position in
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August 14, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Over the weekend, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi – he of the Muslim Brotherhood – ousted the country’s two top military chiefs. The pretext for this power play was the successful sneak attack by Islamist terrorists on Egyptian military personnel in the Sinai peninsula. The Islamists who carried out the attack didn’t succeed in “invading” Israel, but they helped tilt the Egyptian playing field in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi’s
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August 7, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
This past Sunday, heavily armed jihadis stormed an Egyptian army outpost, killed 16 Egyptian solders, and headed toward the Israeli border. There, the Israeli army stopped them. Israel had advance intelligence of the attack. It warned Israelis to leave Sinai, and its heightened alert along the border enabled it to stop the terrorists with no Israeli casualties. Israel shared some of its intelligence about the danger with the Egyptian army.
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July 22, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Rep. Michele Bachmann has come under fire from John McCain, Speaker Boehner, and, of course, the mainstream media, for letters she wrote, along with four of her House colleagues, to various government officials regarding the Muslim Brotherhood. The letters in question are posted on the Congresswoman’s web site. Of greatest concern to McCain and company is Bachmann’s letter to the Deputy Inspector General of the Department of State. That letter
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June 29, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Tom Joscelyn informs us that the new Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, told a fired-up crowd in Tahir Square that he will work to free Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, aka the “Blind Sheikh.” Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a follow-on plot against New York City landmarks. Tom’s article includes some of Morsi’s other greatest
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June 26, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration believes Egypt’s newly elected president Mohammed Morsi – he of the Muslim Brotherhood – could become a U.S. ally. It describes the administration as cautiously upbeat about Morsi. He thus joins a growing list of hostile leaders with whom Obama believes (or believed) he can successfully work. The list includes Assad in Syria, Ahmadinejad in Iran, Putin in Russia, and the folks
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June 25, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Mark Steyn cruelly recalls the wisdom of Obama administration Director of National Intelligence James Clapper regarding events as they were unfolding in Egypt last year. Mark writes: “[D]on’t worry, on the day Mubarak stepped down, America’s Director of National Intelligence, who presides over the most lavishly funded intelligence bureaucracy on the planet, was telling the world that the Muslim Brotherhood is ‘largely secular.’ So that’s okay.” Mark links to the
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June 24, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
As Scott has noted, Mohammed Morsi is the winner in Egypt’s presidential run-off election. Morsi is the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood. He captured 51.7 percent of the vote. His opponent, Hosni Mubarak’s former Prime Minister, gained 48.3 percent. So the Egyptians toppled Mubarak and then nearly elected one of his cronies president. That’s not much of a mandate for Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. But mandates don’t matter; power
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June 24, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Today comes word that the man from the Muslim Brotherhood has been declared the winner of Egypt’s presidential election. For Americans trying to understand the meaning of this development, I don’t know of better commentary than Caroline Glick’s column “The Muslim Brotherhood’s useful idiots,” which anticipated it last week. UPDATE: Providing a little more background and putting an exclamation point on Glick’s column, Breitbart TV has posted the video below,
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June 23, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Tomorrow, the results of the Egyptian presidential run-off election supposedly will be announced. The voting ended a week ago, and the elections commission pledged to declare the winner three days ago. However, it later said it needs more time to review hundreds of complaints lodged by the campaigns. In the meantime, the Muslim Brotherhood has led protests against the military, which has made known its reluctance to transfer power to
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June 21, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
During Power Line’s ten years, we’ve spoken with and/or interviewed heads of state and former heads of state, top ranking U.S. officials, leading jurists, and Republican candidates for president of the United States, including one who may well be elected president this Fall. But I don’t know that we have ever had a conversation with anyone as heroic and inspirational as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose interview with Scott you can
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June 18, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Max Boot argues that the Obama administration should “let the Brotherhood rule in Egypt.” Boot acknowledges, and I agree, that President Obama faces a difficult choice here because “the American interest in democracy appears, in this case, to be at odds with our strategic interest, which is working with the Egyptian military, as we have since the 1970s, rather than trying to deal with the anti-Western, anti-Israel Brotherhood.” But to
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June 17, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The Muslim Brotherhood is claiming that its candidate won the country’s presidential runoff election. The claim is entirely plausible. However, the victory of its candidate may be of far less consequence than the Brotherhood had hoped. For, according to the
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