Originally posted by Oliver North
interesting fact that I never see reported when people are talking about military aid and such with Egypt:For all that America does give (1 billion), the UAE gives twice that and the Saudis 4 times as much. As symbolic as these gestures are, for the Egyptian military American aid is a drop in the bucket.
I agree about the hypocrisy though, it is amusing in a terrible way.
Originally posted by Oliver North
huh, I hadn't thought of that
If America cut off all military aid, training, and weapons' sales to the Middle East the long term effect would be a huge boom for the Chinese and Russian arms industries, but the long term effect would most likely be a precipitous drop in the quality of Middle Eastern armies. Compare Syria (supplied by Russia and China) to Egypt. Even if the Muslim Brotherhood were to militarize as the Syrian opposition did, I don't see them being nearly as successful as the Free Syrian Army, not with the Egyptian military equipped as it is.
The situation is getting worse, especially in the Sinai. I hope this doesn't turn into another Syria. As bad as things are in the Middle East, it's nothing compared to the chaos that would ensue if Egypt fragmented. At the same time, I really don't want peace and stability to be achieved at the cost of a massacre. As I said before, Egypt's military CAN restore order, but it would be at the cost of Egypt's existence as a civil nation.
In all honesty, it's difficult to see an easy way out for Egypt. Even if everything with the ruling party was fine (and of course that's a big issue in of itself), the clear problem is a military with far too much political clout. It's near impossible to run a democracy in that situation, and the problem here is that the military shrewdly saved its own skin by deposing Mubarak, and hence survived the Arab Spring with its power intact. The military has long been Egypt's curse.
It's terrible, of course, but in a way this situation has finally created an opportunity. Like I say, the military has been shrewd, and they didn't even depose Morsi until they got political assent from the judiciary and the supreme religious leader etc, which did give them a layer of respectability to be acting in the people's interests. But now they've started, basically, shooting on sight, that layer has gone and now the opportunity may exist to break their power.
But if that just ends up in an Islamist-dominated society lacking what we would recognise as proper rights in a free nation, then it was all for nothing.