Friday, January 28, 2011

Egypt: A Useful Example

I want to state something obvious about this Egypt situation because I know it’s not obvious to many of my fellow Americans. Let’s be clear about what’s happening. The Egyptian people are rising up to protest an undemocratic, repressive, tyrannical dictatorship – one that has been the second highest recipient of U.S. foreign aid over the past 30 years, second only to Israel. Most of this has been in the form of military aid.

The United States - which espouses values like freedom and democracy, and frequently intervenes in the affairs of foreign countries to allegedly promote these values – has been sending about $2 billion each year for the past three decades to a dictatorial, undemocratic regime with a horrendous human rights record.

Stated more simply: The US has been heavily subsidizing repression in Egypt.

Pardon the redundancy but I’m emphasizing this point because I know it will come as a surprise to a lot of Americans. Prior to this week’s events most were probably unaware of the nature of the Egyptian government and the plight of its people. And it’s likely even less were aware of the kind of money flowing to Egypt from the US.

I’m mentioning it here because in my experience Americans genuinely cannot understand why many foreigners, especially in the Middle East, view the United States so negatively. The US’s support of Mubarak is but one small example of how America comes to be seen as a hypocritical nation that supports violent dictators when it serves its interests to do so, and makes war against them in the name of freedom and democracy when it doesn’t.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

for a different perspective you might take a look at aangirfans site

Anonymous said...

So tony, maybe US is setting up Egypt to be iraqized.
Tony

Anonymous said...

Ben, this could get confusing.
I wouldn't be sure but I think tony is another Aussie. (he may confirm this??)
Tony

Ben There said...

Capital "T" Tony - I was pretty sure that you'd never set up a Blogger account but was starting to wonder.

Lowercase "t" tony - I'll check it out. Thanks for stopping by.

If both of you are Aussies that will be a pretty amusing coincidence.

The Pansy Bastard™ said...

Hypocritical, we are! And confusing as Hell!

Ben There said...

TPB -

Confusing and also confused...