The Nile Runs Red
With Blood
By Eric Margolis
August 17, 2013
Lew Rockwell .com
.....Since
Washington preaches democracy, civilian rule, and human rights, it
can’t be seen to be openly backing Egypt’s brutal military and
security forces. So the Obama administration has been pussyfooting
around events in Egypt, pleased to see Egypt’s generals in charge and
the Islamists out of power, but unwilling to say so.
US
Mideast policy is run from five different power centers: the White
House, State Department, Pentagon, CIA and Congress. America’s powerful
pro-Israel lobby gives Congress its marching orders over Egypt,
controlling financial aid, food supplies and weapons deliveries. In
effect, Israel is a sixth player in this game.
Now, the White House has made a significant demarche: after delaying
delivery of a few F-16 fighters, it just cancelled the annual
US-Egyptian Brightstar military exercise, an affirmation of the
Pentagon’s domination of Egypt’s military. This is a blow to the
Pentagon and a boost for Kerry’s State Dept.
Egypt’s 440,000-man armed forces is joined at the hip with the
Pentagon which controls its arms, funding, training, high tech
equipment, promotion lists, spare parts and munitions supply, the latter two
always kept in short supply.
So Egypt’s generals will soon have to sheathe their swords, withdraw
tanks, and fabricate a figurehead civilian government that at least
looks somewhat real, instead of the army-installed cigar-store Indians
now supposedly running the government.
This will mollify Washington. After all, the US happily backed and
financed
the brutal Mubarak military regimes for three decades, turning a blind
eye to its torture, executions and massive human rights
violations.
Western media obediently lauded the Mubarak dictatorship as a pillar of
Mideast stability (US code talk for status quo).
Expect a rapid return to Mubarakism once the bloodshed dies down, and likely
his release from jail. The prisons will fill again, the torturers will
work overtime and Egypt will return to full-blown military-police state
led, most likely, by General al-Sisi, who looks every inch a modern
dictator in his dark sunglasses and medals.......
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