Egypt
September 13, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
According to multiple reports on U.S. Marine Corps blogs, the Marines defending the American embassy in Egypt were not permitted by the State Department to carry live ammunition. This decision, of course, limited their ability to respond to attacks like those this week on the U.S. consulate in Cairo. Or, as one Marine blogger put it, the decision “neutralized any U.S. military capability that was dedicated to preserve. . .life
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September 13, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama claims to have learned that, as president, you can’t “shoot first and aim later.” Yet today, our self-congratulatory chief executive did just that. In an interview on Wednesday night, Obama said of Egypt, “I don’t think that we would consider them an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy.” Actually, Egypt is, by law, an ally of the United States. It was designated as a Major Non-NATO
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September 13, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Bill Otis offers another suggestion for how Mitt Romney should address the atrocity in Libya and his opponents’ claims that Romney erred in criticizing the Obama administration’s initial statement about that atrocity. I post Bill’s suggested statement because it is a near-perfect expression of how I view the matter. Whether it would be politicially wise for Romney to make this statement is a separate question. My inclination would be to
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September 12, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Barack Obama, the man who never in his life has taken responsibility for anything, has started trying to shift the blame for the State Department’s too-revealing response to the Cairo embassy mob attack. Our friend Jennifer Rubin has the scoop: Right Turn has learned that the ambassador to Egypt, longtime foreign service officer Anne W. Patterson, was not in Egypt during the siege of the embassy. According to sources directly
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September 12, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The attacks on the U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya should not have surprised the Obama administration, nor should the deadly nature of the Libyan attack have been unexpected. As David Pryce-Jones notes: The murderers of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues in Benghazi were Salafis, that is to say Muslims who believe in returning to the violence and conquest of the early years of Islam. A few
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September 11, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Worked up over YouTube videos depicting Mohammad in an unflattering light, Islamists in Cairo attacked the United States embassy in Cairo today. They seized and burned the American flag while trying to replace it with a black flag bearing the inscription: “There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his messenger.” Hey, message received. The embassy issued the following statement: The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns
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September 4, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The Obama administration is set to eliminate a significant portion of Egypt’s $3.2 billion debt to the U.S. According to the Washington Post, the debt-relief package will likely approach $1 billion. Obama plans to grant this relief even as Egypt’s Islamist president Morsi cracks down on his domestic opponents, seeks control over the Sinai, and cozies up to Iran. The only concession Morsi appears to have made to the U.S.
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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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