Another Fine Mess Obama Has Gotten Us Into In Mideast

 

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Foreign Policy: Is it too late, Mr. President, to get a refund on the billions in aid you gave the Islamist thugs in Egypt? How about the F-16s and Abrams tanks you sent? It's now painfully obvious you invested in the wrong regime.

It took just 12 months for Egyptians to drive President Mohamed Morsi and his Islamofascist regime from office after Obama personally congratulated his election as a democratic "milestone."

In just one year, Morsi and his radical Muslim Brotherhood trampled the rights of women and Coptic Christians, censored the press, stacked the judiciary with theocrats and destroyed the economy in the process.

Morsi even demanded the release of jailed al-Qaida terrorists — including the Blind Sheik responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the fatwah giving Osama bin Laden the blessing to launch 9/11.

Yet, at every sordid step along the way, this administration rewarded him with more and more aid and legitimacy on the world stage.

The White House now downplays that role. But the record is clear, starting with his "engagement" of the Brotherhood in 2009 and undercutting of steady ally Hosni Mubarak.

Then came Obama's triumphant "mission accomplished" speech in 2011 in which he obscenely likened Egypt's Islamists with the American revolutionaries.

"Think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston," he rhapsodized, as he and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dispatched a team of diplomats to Cairo to help Morsi take power.

By throwing Mubarak under the bus and America's weight behind anti-Semite Morsi and the formerly banned Brotherhood, Obama not only alienated our most trusted Middle East partner, Israel, but created untold instability in the region.

There's now a good chance Islamists even more radical than the Brotherhood — including al-Qaida operatives — will fill the vacuum left by the bloody coup. Already, terrorists in the Sinai are attacking checkpoints along the Israeli border.

Mideast ill-will toward America, meanwhile, grows worse. Cairo protesters weren't just carrying signs denouncing Morsi. They also waved pickets slamming our own president as well as signs with the X'ed-out photo of the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, who pleaded with protesters to tone things down.

Of all the Mideast policy blunders by this president — from Libya to Turkey and from Syria to Iran — his sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt could prove to be the worst.

In a scathing piece in Foreign Policy magazine, Sen. Ted Cruz aptly called it "one of the most stunning diplomatic failures in recent memory." Obama, he said, yoked America to "a repressive, Islamist regime and the enemy of the secular, pro-democracy opposition."

As Cruz points out, the president could have used U.S. aid as a lever to "extract concessions" from the Morsi regime on human rights, as well as economic and political reforms. Instead, he chose to write blank checks.

Obama blew it. Now Congress must step in and halt remaining aid to the regime, while speaking out on behalf of those honestly seeking democratic reforms.