Ex-official: Obama should've pegged Egypt as coup at once

[Astrad]

The Obama administration should have immediately labeled the July 3 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi a military coup and cut off aid, former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told CNN on Thursday.
The administration is struggling with how to respond after more than 600 people were killed when the U.S.-backed military raided the encampments of demonstrators protesting Morsi's ouster. President Obama announced Thursday he was canceling next month's joint military exercises with Egypt in response and warned of possible further steps.


“I think we missed an opportunity six weeks ago to call it a coup,” Crowley told CNN. “The fact that we haven't undermines the credibility of the United States in the region.”

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/317335-ex-state-department-spokesman-obama-should-have-denounced-egypt-coup-on-day-1#ixzz2c8fVKqD4
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I agree with Crowley

[CJCRANE]

1. IMO Repubs defending the Muslim Brotherhood

are just latching onto an easy way to attack Obama.

[MineralMan]

3. It's not just Republicans defending the MB.

Not by any stretch of the imagination. There are DUers doing that, too.

The Middle East is a strange thing, politically.

[Igel]

5. Sometimes you defend what you don't like ...

Because you need to defend something much larger that you do like.

I don't twist and contort my values to conform to the need to support a man. Of such things are cults of personality made.

Obama's really quite insignificant in this matter. He only matters in that by defending the coup and backing off from anything like strong criticism, he hurts the US's standing. If this wasn't a coup, what would a coup look like? Because even with Allende, even with Musharraf, even with the attempted coup against Chavez, there was a reasonably large group of people that backed the coup. Therefore we can't call those coups, not officially.

In this, even as you admit, it's an easy way to attack Obama. But it's also a violation of principle, and we shouldn't let knee-jerk support for the man force us to a bloody coup a peaceful transition to popular democracy.

[JCMach1]

2. We gave them the green light for the massacre...

[CJCRANE]

4. It's a cying shame. It seems that the MB in Egypt were relatively peaceful.

This massacre will radicalize them.

[mick063]

6. This is a regional "Rock, paper, scissors"

The democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood was removed from power by the Egyptian military. Waiting in the wings is Al Qaeda, which puts religious ideology above democracy in contrast to the Muslim Brotherhood which is an actual political party within democracy.

Al Qaeda welcomes this coup. Many Egyptians that would have grasped democracy will now look for a more combative stance. Al Qaeda can fuel Egyptians with the notion that the United States backed this coup. That the United States is the real culprit behind the loss of their representative voice. In light of the US inability to control the Egyptian military, Egypt can now be officially called prime recruiting ground for Al Qaeda.

If the US opposes democracy, Al Qaeda can argue, then democracy is a farce. After the failure of democracy, only radical Islam can free them.



The corporations that own our government desire this. It is a freshly planted crop of future terrorists to combat.