IPFS News Link • Egypt
Egyptian coup should trigger broad re-examination of U.S. militarization of Middle East
• Kevin Martin and Josh Ruebner, The HillThe Obama administration has engaged in astounding linguistic jiu-jitsu
to avoid calling the Egyptian military’s ouster of President Mohamed
Morsi what it most obviously is: a coup. The president refuses to dub
Morsi’s overthrow a coup because doing so would automatically trigger a
suspension of all U.S. foreign aid to Egypt, according to the Foreign
Assistance Act. Cutting off weapons transfers to Egypt, which, at $1.3
billion per year is the second largest recipient of U.S. military aid
behind Israel, would, in turn, crimp U.S. efforts to further inundate
the Middle East with weapons. To underscore the Obama’s administration’s
contempt for this law, the Pentagon delivered four F-16 fighter jets to
Egypt just days after its military placed Morsi under house arrest.
After the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, President Lyndon Johnson wisely warned
that "this last conflict has demonstrated the danger of the Middle
Eastern arms race of the last 12 years. Here the responsibility must
rest not only on those in the area - but upon the larger states outside
the area...We have always opposed this arms race, and our own military
shipments to the area have consequently been severely limited." Yet,
both he and his successors threw this caution to the wind, giving Israel
and Egypt alone more than $100 billion in military grants and loans
since then. While most of this money has been appropriated ostensibly to
undergird the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, in fact it has
directly impeded democracy in Egypt and especially freedom, justice and
equality for the Palestinians.
Not only is the Obama administration clearly ignoring the law by keeping open the spigot of weapons to Egypt in the aftermath of the military’s coup; it also turns a blind eye to the law by providing Israel $3.1 billion in military aid per year, despite the fact that Israel clearly violates the Arms Export Control Act by using U.S. weapons not for “internal security” or “legitimate self-defense,” but to perpetuate its 46-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip and to commit gross and systematic human rights abuses against Palestinians, such as the injuring and killing of civilians, the demolition of Palestinian homes, and the illegal colonization of Palestinian land.
Not only is the Obama administration clearly ignoring the law by keeping open the spigot of weapons to Egypt in the aftermath of the military’s coup; it also turns a blind eye to the law by providing Israel $3.1 billion in military aid per year, despite the fact that Israel clearly violates the Arms Export Control Act by using U.S. weapons not for “internal security” or “legitimate self-defense,” but to perpetuate its 46-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip and to commit gross and systematic human rights abuses against Palestinians, such as the injuring and killing of civilians, the demolition of Palestinian homes, and the illegal colonization of Palestinian land.