US supported elections that put Muhammad Morsi in power in Egypt, but they soon turned on him and began to support military dictator Sisi, who overthrew him. Now Morsi is headed to jail and the dictator Sisi is assured by Obama that US aid will continue to flow...
US supported elections that put Muhammad Morsi in power in Egypt, but they soon turned on him and began to support military dictator Sisi, who overthrew him. Now Morsi is headed to jail and the dictator Sisi is assured by Obama that US aid will continue to flow...
US supported elections that put Muhammad Morsi in power in Egypt, but they soon turned on him and began to support military dictator Sisi, who overthrew him. Now Morsi is headed to jail and the dictator Sisi is assured by Obama that US aid will continue to flow...
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams, who is the co-host.
He's also the executive director of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Good to have you here today, Daniel.
Thank you.
Good.
I'd like to talk a little bit about an event going on in the media today.
We've just read recently that one of our good guys that we helped get in office, they ended up putting him in prison.
He only lasted for one year.
What's the story?
Why is Morsi in jail from Egypt?
I mean, did we make the wrong choice?
Or what's going on?
Or did democracy not work out the way we thought?
Well, it's funny how you point out the short memory we have of what happened in Egypt starting in 2011.
This was after Tunisia.
This was the great Arab Spring uprising where this longtime military dictator, Hosni Mubarak, was finally overthrown by the people in the streets.
They were going to have an election, and the U.S. was behind it.
As a matter of fact, they were behind Arab Spring more than people realized at the time.
But they were behind it.
The people elected Mohammad Morsi, who was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, at the time very, very, very popular in Egypt, democratically elected.
Very soon, however, unrest took over Egypt.
There were protests, there was violence, and then there was the overthrow of the Democrat Morsi by another military dictator, Sisi, who was also supported by the U.S.
Well, haven't we been supporting these military dictators in Egypt for a long, long time?
I mean, more than just Mubarak.
But he was there over 30 years.
You know, I looked up to find out how much money Egypt has gotten since World War II.
And in today's dollars, it's like $124 billion.
I wonder how far that could have gone if it would have been pumped into our economy.
Maybe our unemployment rate could have been a little lower or something along those lines instead of pumping it into the military-industrial complex, building weapons that go to Egypt that get wasted or transferred or used against us.
But I think this is just a miss, a mess.
You know, I wanted to be cynical about this whole thing.
You know, that Morsi's now in jail.
I wonder if they're going to put up a sign now and say, mission accomplished.
You know, of course, they would never admit this was the mission, but it is so bad, you know, that we flip-flop around, we pick and choose, and then when it doesn't go our way, then we get rid of these dictators, and we wonder why there's not peace in the world.
So it costs us a lot of money.
I think we lose credibility.
I just don't see how this can continue that much longer for financial reasons.
Sure.
But Morsi was convicted this week, as you mentioned, and it was for the arrest and torture of protesters back in 2012.
So that's what he's convicted of.
That's when he was president.
Of course, these protesters, not to excuse, I'm sure there was torture, but these protesters were intent on overthrowing him.
So that's why they arrested as if, you know, if we went down to the White House and maybe flew a helicopter on the Capitol grounds or something, you know, we'd be arrested too.
Doesn't excuse it.
But what I find really, you know, appalling, the double standards, is he's being judged by this government of a military dictator, Sisi, who himself has sentenced at least 1,200 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to death for being and outlawed the political party and arrested the leader of the party.
So here's a guy who's killed thousands, putting this fellow in jail who was elected, who's done some arrests and some torture.
But he's our guy.
We have more control of him.
He's a military guy, and Morsi was probably, you know, not a civil libertarian, but he was somebody that was probably more independent, and that's why we had to get rid of him.
But I think this is not going to work out well.
I think this will go badly.
And I think the real tragedy, the issue here is why are we as a people, which permits our government as a government controlled by special interests, to be obsessed and determined that everybody's self-interest, and they sell it to the American people, that we have to pick sides.
Supporting Egypt's Military00:01:55
Now, if you and I were voting and we're in Egypt and we look at Al-Sisi and we look at Morsi, we say, well, neither one comes our way.
But we support these guys.
I mean, just think.
Mubarak was there for 30 years and tens and even longer term, over $100 billion.
And now, wasn't one of the conditions that El-Sisi got from us is, yeah, we're going to support you as long as you take our money.
We want to still have our hand in it.
Exactly.
As a matter of fact, just last month, President Obama announced that he was lifting the restrictions on selling military weapons to Egypt.
And at the same time, he assured SISI that the U.S. will continue to send him that $1.3 billion a year, most of it, as you said earlier, to buy American weapons and to enrich the military-industrial complex.
You know, so often we've heard the stories about how the weapons end up in the hands of the bad guys.
You know, when it goes to Syria or Iraq, it ends up in the hands of ISIS, and even the stuff in Libya ends up in the hands of the radical.
I haven't heard directly, I don't know if you've heard of any stories where some of the weapons in Egypt end up in the other hands.
I think that's a potential danger, but I haven't heard that happening yet.
Have you?
I don't know.
I mean, I think, you know, the transport of weapons from, certainly from Libya to Syria around 2011-2012 has been pretty well documented.
And I think certainly fighters from Egypt have participated as well.
I mean, I would not be at all surprised that some of these have made its way.
But it seems like our argument should be strong enough.
Don't send them any more weapons.
Don't support, try to pick between two guys that we don't endorse.
Why don't we just take the advice of the founders?
Stay out of the entangling alliances.
Stay out of the internal affairs of other nations.
The world would be better off, I am absolutely convinced.