Egypt

Cop out on COP27: Strange new respect edition

Featured image “Global warming” was decried as the cause of the apocalypse until relatively recently. Now it is “climate change,” apparently because the data refused to comply. The UN’s latest “climate change” jamboree was convened in Sharm el-Sheikh last week and produced what I thought was a widely heralded agreement to transfer funds from productive countries to unproductive countries. This is of course to ward off the apocalypse. Where is the Jonathan »

The horror! Trump congratulates Egyptian leader. . .just as Obama did

Featured image Fresh from attacking President Trump for congratulating Vladimir Putin over his re-election, the mainstream media now tut-tuts Trump for congratulating Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. For example, the Washington Post’s story notes, pointedly, that “Barack Obama declined to invite Sissi to the White House because of concerns about his human rights record.” However one views Trump’s call to Putin ( this was my take), Sissi stands in a very different position. »

White House wisely pushes back on questionable Mattis selection

Featured image Eliana Johnson reports that some White House officials are opposing the selection by James Mattis of Anne Patterson for the position of undersecretary of defense for policy. The opposition reportedly stems mainly from Patterson’s actions as U.S. ambassador to Egypt in the Obama administration. Eliana explains: Patterson worked closely with former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Islamist government. She came under fire for cultivating too close a relationship with »

Assault on Mosul begins, presaging another defeat for ISIS

Featured image Iraqi forces have commenced an offensive to retake the city of Mosul, ISIS’s last main stronghold in Iraq. According to the Washington Post, the battle will be waged by tens of thousands of Iraqi troops, perhaps as many as 80,000. The forces will consist of Kurdish peshmerga soldiers, Sunni tribal fighters, army, police, Shiite militias, and elite counterterrorism units. The U.S. will back their effort with air support and “advisers” »

Mubarak’s acquittal — what does it mean?

Featured image Hosni Mubarak, his sons, and other close aides have been acquitted of the criminal charges against them. The charges pertained to actions taken by the Mubarak regime to maintain power during the 2011 revolution. The acquittal says nothing about the merits of the charges, just as a guilty verdict under the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime would have told us nothing. The verdict should, I think, be viewed as a political decision. »

Ambassador who sided with Muslim Brotherhood spearheads State Department’s anti-ISIS effort

Featured image John Kerry has assembled a three-person team to lead the State Department’s efforts against ISIS. Two of the members — Gen. John Allen and Brett McGurk — seem unobjectionable. The third, Anne Patterson, is another matter. In announcing her central role, Kerry praised Patterson as “one of our nation’s top diplomats deeply respected in the region.” But Patterson is not respected in Egypt, where she served as ambassador during the »

New Middle East reality should shatter West Bank myths

Featured image To superficial observers of the Middle East, the latest round of fighting in Gaza looks like a replay of previous rounds. Once again, it seems, Israel pounded Hamas but didn’t crush it. But there was something different this time around. This time, Hamas was far more isolated diplomatically. Egypt, the Saudis, and the Palestinian Authority all showed “no sympathy” for Hamas (as President Obama would say). Indeed, unlike President Obama »

Egypt a year after Morsi

Featured image One year after the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, Daniel Pipes finds the situation in Egypt “pretty awful”: In the debate over the proper role of Islam in the lives of Egyptians, the dividing lines have only increased, spawning violence, further extremism, and a sense that the country’s split between Islamist and anti-Islamist factions will last for many years. Even the dividing lines among Islamists and among anti-Islamists are hardening. The »

The Carter-Obama parallel

Featured image James Kirchick compares the foreign policy records of Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter. He finds that President Obama’s is worse. I agree with Kirchick. As he explains, Carter eventually saw the error of his weak ways and changed course, though it took a series of major setbacks for him to accomplish this. With Obama we have had the serious setbacks — e.g., the Benghazi attacks, the rise of al Qaeda »

Obama foreign policy successes? Not Egypt

Featured image According to Richard Engel, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, you would be “hard-pressed to find” one country with which the U.S. has improved its relations since President Obama took office. By contrast, you can easily find countries where Obama has made our relations worse. Abe Greenwald finds plenty of such countries in just one region — the Middle East. Indeed, his article in the May edition of Commentary is called “He’s »

No springtime for Sisi in Egypt

Featured image Egypt held its presidential election this week. Army strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was elected with 93.3 percent of the vote. A margin like that can only be explained by large-scale fraud, non-turnout by those who support other candidates, or both. I can’t speak to whether there was fraud, but certainly voter turnout was low. The government claims that turnout was 46 percent, well below the 80 percent Sisi had called »

Obama gets Egypt backwards

Featured image I was elated when the Egyptian military overthrew the elected government of Muslim Brotherhood man Mohamed Morsi. Under Morsi, Egypt seemed on the road to becoming an Islamist state. The overthrow looked like the lesser of two evils. It still does, but the lesser evil is gaining ground. Earlier this week, for example, an Egyptian court sentenced 683 people to death after a brief mass trial. The most serious charge »

CRB: Digging up a new past

Featured image The new issue of the Claremont Review of Books that we have been featuring this week includes pieces by Charles Murray, Harvey Mansfield, Walter Russell Mead, John Bolton, Joseph Epstein, Michael Nelson, and many others. The new issue lives up to my billing of the CRB as providing a virtual education in politics with each issue, if a reader thinks through the implications of the arguments made in the issue’s »

Obama cuts U.S. aid to Egypt, but why?

Featured image President Obama has decided to withhold a significant amount of military aid to Egypt. The primary focus will be on the shipment of a dozen AH-64D Apache helicopters that were part of an $820 million order back in 2009. The U.S. will continue to provide spare parts for U.S. military equipment Egypt already has. And it will continue to support counterterrorism initiatives and security efforts in the Sinai, where Egypt »

The Clinton Foundation’s man in Cairo was also the Muslim Brotherhood’s

Featured image The Washington Free Beacon reports that a senior Muslim Brotherhood official who, until fairly recently, was employed by the William J. Clinton Foundation, was arrested in Cairo on Tuesday and charged with inciting violence. The official, Gehad el-Haddad, had been serving as one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s top communications officials. In that capacity, while the Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt, he “push[ed] the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist agenda in the foreign press, »

History gives Obama a back kick

Featured image One of President Obama’s most disagreeable attributes is his presumption (and, I would submit, certitude) that much of the conventional wisdom is wrong. In fairness, some conventional wisdom will always be wrong. And Obama, or at least his operatives, have demonstrated the error of some standard views of American politics. But this isn’t an enormous accomplishment. Modern U.S. politicking is a work in progress. Most successful presidential campaigns contribute breakthroughs »

History refuses to cooperate with Obama in the Middle East

Featured image The Washington Post rarely delivers great news to my door step. Today is an exception, although it’s not clear that the Post recognizes it as such. Here’s the Post’s lead headline: “Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood appears at risk of falling apart.” And here’s the opening paragraph of the story by Liz Sly and Mary Beth Sheridan: The world’s most influential Islamist movement is in danger of collapse in the land of »