Generally speaking, my top concern regarding the US government is it’s massive spending problem. Or, if you prefer, it’s massive debt problem, which is about $17 trillion, if you do not take into account the empty Social Security Trust Fund and other obligations we have no way of honoring. And one way that we waste a lot of money is by sending it to foreign countries either to be squandered by elites in those countries, or worse yet, used against us.
One example of an unwise use of our tax dollars may have been continuing to fund the Morsi regime and Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, especially after he declared his decisions above the law and not subject to any review. We did not withdraw our support as he began to curtail civilian liberties in his quest to create an Islamic state. President Obama continued to support Morsi throughout this process, even though it was clear he was not abiding by democratic principles, and that he was not really an ally of the United States.
There is disagreement of course about the nature of the recent overthrow of the Morsi government, and clearly the military removed him from power and are going to hold elections to replace him along with creating a new constitution. I will not argue semantics with those who call this a coup, because in a strictly literal sense it probably is. Having said that, in all but the most literal sense I would argue that this was a legitimate overthrow of the government by the people of Egypt. Call it a revolution if you like, the military did not act until 17-20 million Egyptians flooded the streets and demanded that Morsi step down. The military leaders gave Morsi the option of instituting reforms, which he refused to do. In my opinion, they stepped in to keep the peace, and to carry out the obvious will of the people. If it was a coup it was a very strange coup. That is like calling our American Revolution an unlawful secession from Britain.
As I said, I think we have a spending problem and foreign aid is part of that problem. It may have been wise to cut off aid to Egypt when Morsi abandoned democratic principles. But timing is important here. Since we did not cut off aid before, including when they ousted Hosni Mubarak, cutting off aid now would, in my opinion, send exactly the wrong message to the Egyptian people. This is a fledgling democracy, stumbling along and making some mistakes. We were a young democracy once, and we made mistakes.
I generally know I am on the right track when I disagree with John McCain. Senator McCain has apparently been smoking some pretty good stuff lately. He is now demanding that we cut off aid to Egypt, while also demanding that we supply the Syrian rebels with not just guns but the BIG guns. Already the guns we are supplying to Syria are ending up going to Assad’s forces. At least in Egypt we know where the aid will end up; in the hands of the military where it always ends up. In Egypt the military is the stable part of the leadership, and they just did the will of the people by removing a democratically elected totalitarian, which is ordinarily a contradiction in terms but not in the Middle East. I would further argue that they had to discard the results of a democratic election in order to preserve their liberty, which in many ways is a much more valuable thing. The citizens of Russia and China arguably have the former but not the latter.
Although Jeffrey Goldberg says he admires John McCain, he is with me on this one and wrote a good article on why we should maintain aid to Egypt.
Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute makes a good case for continuing aid as well. He has a nice explanation in the form of a video.
Or this link:
And this from the New Yorker on the violence in Cairo:
I think we need to reduce what we spend on foreign aid, but cutting aid to Egypt right now would send exactly the wrong signal.
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