Six-plus hours from the moment the Commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces announced to his nation that the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government of President Mohamed Morsi had been ousted, the administration of Barack Obama responded in diplomatic-speak, affirming that the president is quite unhappy with the military coup. A carefully crafted threat to cancel future U.S. foreign aid to the North African nation was also released in an official presidential statement by the Office of the Press Secretary.
Speaking initially in the plural then shifting to the singular, the White House statement signaled Obama’s displeasure with Mosri’s removal as well as the suspension of the heavily Sharia Law-influence Constitution of Egypt:
Nevertheless, we are deeply concerned by the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsi and suspend the Egyptian constitution.
I now call on the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process.
The administration gave a hearty two-thumbs-up to the Morsi government last summer via Presidential spokesman Jay Carney:
We believe in the importance of the new Egyptian government upholding universal values, and respecting the rights of all Egyptian citizens — including women and religious minorities such as Coptic Christians.
Millions of Egyptians voted in the election, and President-elect Morsi and the new Egyptian government have both the legitimacy and responsibility of representing a diverse and courageous citizenry.
Yesterday ‘s statement also contained a plea to the Egyptian military “to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters.”
After his election last year, Morsi flooded his government with members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood (MB), many of them Jihadists who have often called for the destruction of the State of Israel. The Morsi government has also been accused of paying lip service to the plight of Egypt’s roughly 8,500,000 Catholic and Orthodox Coptics.
While his government has openly pledged to protect the minority Copts, there have been open and savage attacks on them by roving gangs of MB members and other Morsi supporters. The most egregious example of MB violence against Christians was the assault on the Orthodox Coptic St. Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo, which was referred to by many as “a battleground.” As the MB assaulted the cathedral’s compound, resulting in two dead and nearly 100 wounded Christians, local police stood by and did nothing. Eventually some of them joined the attack.
The Question of the $1.2B a Year We Send Egypt…
Commander of the Egyptian Armed Forces, General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, stated yesterday that the Egyptian equivalent of the American Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would be sworn in as interim president on July 4, 2013. Nonetheless, in what more than a few D.C.- watchers consider a tissue paper-thin threat to the revolutionaries now in power, the Obama official statement gave them a cryptic warning:
Given today’s developments, I have also directed the relevant departments and agencies to review the implications under U.S. law for our assistance to the Government of Egypt.
