La primavera de revoluciones que tanto promovio este gobierno nos trae el invierno de los islamistas y posible guerra en el Medio Oriente...

Nuestro Presidente post-racial ha sacado tropas de Afghanistan y supuestamente ls iba a traer a los EEUU. Pero, como les mencione en otro foro que no voy a mencionar por nombre, esas tropas no van a regresar a los EEUU sino que seran usadas por los Neocon's y los intereses economicos para combatir en el medio oriente. Ya veremos si este presidente resulta estar tan lleno de paz y amor como lo esta de guano...


http://theweek.com/article/index/226211/the-trayvon-martin-case-a-timeline

Democratic foreign policy figures press for intervention in Syria
Former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Obama administration officials Ann-Marie Slaughter and Dennis Ross add to pressure on the White House from regional allies and Republican rivals.
August 10, 2012|By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times
A Syrian man sits by a grave after the funeral of a Free Syrian Army fighter… (Khalil Hamra /Associeted…)WASHINGTON — President Obama's vow to limit U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war is being criticized from a usually sympathetic quarter: the Democratic foreign policy establishment.

Senior Democratic foreign policy figures, along with diplomats who have worked for Democratic administrations, are saying the administration needs to do more to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe and preserve U.S. influence in a key Mideast state.

The views of these figures, including former Clinton administration Defense Secretary William Perry and former Obama administration officials Ann-Marie Slaughter and Dennis Ross, add to pressure on the White House from regional allies and Republican rivals as the Syrian conflict has intensified.

"You've seen more calls for action, starting on the right and now on the left," said Jamie Fly, executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a conservative group that advocates a strongerU.S. militaryrole in Syria. He said the evolving nature of the war — including the regime's use of more deadly aircraft, the rising death toll and fear of a growing terrorist presence — has led to more voices calling for action.

The Obama administration has imposed sanctions and diplomatic pressure on the regime of President Bashar Assad. It also is providing nonlethal aid, such as communications gear, to the Syrian rebels.

But the White House fears that military involvement could intensify a sectarian proxy war, and it worries about divisions among world powers and war-weariness at home. Also, Syria has formidable Russian-built air defenses that are supported by Russian personnel.

Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told MSNBC on Thursday that "the reality is that a no-fly zone is not a simple proposition" and would involve putting in troops as well as destroying air defenses "that are among the most sophisticated in the world."

The Democratic critics, while stopping short of proposing a ground invasion, maintain that more must be done.

Perry, secretary of Defense during the Bosnian civil war, said in an email that he favors a "no-fly, no-drive zone" in northern Syria that would provide safety for insurgents and civilians. Ross, a top administration national security aide until November, has also been advocating creation of a safe zone in northern Syria, like the one the United States created in northern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

Slaughter, former head of the State Department's policy planning office, has urged that rebel commanders be supplied with sophisticated antitank and antiaircraft weapons if they commit to protecting civilians and vow to not engage in sectarian killings.

Madeleine Albright, secretary of State under President Clinton, said in an interview that she finds no fault with the Obama administration's efforts to date and would not support a "flat-out military intervention."

But she said the U.S. and other world powers should now be "sorting out whether various humanitarian corridors can be established for the refugees" and whether more can be done to provide humanitarian and logistics aid.

"I'm very concerned about what's happening to the people," she said.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has suggested that the administration and other governments take another look at the idea of creating safe zones in Syria.

Administration officials said this week that they were still considering all the ideas, including no-fly zones. On Friday, they announced new economic sanctions on Syria and a new terrorist blacklisting of Hezbollah, a Syrian-allied Shiite Muslim militia in Lebanon, because it has been providing training and operational aid to the regime.

Meanwhile, the British government announced that it was giving the Syrian opposition $7.8 million in medical supplies and electronic and communications gear.

Fighting and military shelling continued Friday in the Syrian city of Aleppo as rebels said they had regained control of the strategic Salahuddin neighborhood. More than 80 people were killed, including 45 whose unidentified bodies were found in a park in Salahuddin, activists said.

The U.S. role in Syria has divided Republicans as well as Democrats.

The dominant Republican point of view is that of Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who have called for the U.S. to provide arms, intelligence and training to the opposition and to use air power to help protect the de facto safe zones that are taking shape in northern Syria. But some Republican heavyweights, including former secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James Baker, have urged caution.

Mitt Romney, the presumed GOP presidential candidate, has called for more assertive U.S. action on Syria but not offered specifics, suggesting that he is wary of appearing too eager for military action.

Polls indicate that there is not widespread support for a majorU.S. militaryrole in Syria despite the mounting death toll.

About two-thirds of Americans say the United States is not required to intervene militarily in Syria because they believe that it is "important but not vital" to U.S. security, said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

paul.richter@latimes.com

A Times staff writer in Beirut and Times staff writer Henry Chu in London contributed to this report.

Sigue la mata dando... Este cabestro de la Hermandad Musulmana, cuyas raices se extienden a ser aliados de Adolfo Hitler en la 2da guerra mundial, esta a punto de ser la punta de lanza de la proxima guerra en el Medio Oriente.


Has Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Staged a Coup Against the Military?
By Abigail Hauslohner / Cairo | @ahauslohner | August 12, 2012


It would seem that Mohamed Morsy is on a roll. Less than a week after sacking several major security chiefs, the first elected President in Egypt’s history has moved on to tackle the big guns. On Sunday, Morsy fired Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the country’s Defense Minister and powerful chief of Egypt’s military council, with whom the President has been locked in a power struggle since he took office at the end of June. Perhaps no more.

Along with Tantawi, who in the 18 months since the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak has reigned as the most powerful man in Egypt, Morsy sacked his chief of staff, Sami Anan. He fired the head of every service of the armed forces and nullified the June constitutional decree that Tantawi and Anan’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) had released to seize more power for itself. Morsy also appointed a much anticipated Vice President: Mahmoud Mekki, a prominent reformist judge.

If all that comes as a shock to many Egyptians — the Ramadan-subdued streets of Cairo flickering to life with murmurs of excitement shortly after the announcement — it wasn’t a shock to everyone. That includes the military council. General Mohamed al-Assar, a ranking member of SCAF, told al-Jazeera that Tantawi and Anan’s dismissal came through consultation with Morsy. Analysts say that’s because there was a deal involved. “I think the deal is [Tantawi and Anan] get a safe exit, and they hand the country to the Muslim Brotherhood,” says Mamdouh Hamza, a prominent businessman and pro-democracy advocate. “Because quite honestly, if we apply the same law [to the generals] that we applied to Mubarak’s family, Tantawi would be behind bars.”


The notion that immunity may have been exchanged for power troubled some of the country’s liberal youth as well, even as many other Egyptians flocked to Cairo’s Tahrir Square to celebrate what appeared to be the end of an era. “Morsy clearly won’t prosecute any murderers or torturers,” quipped Gigi Ibrahim, a young activist, on Twitter, following the announcement.

But the bigger picture is this, Hamza says: the reshuffle plays into the broader strategy of Morsy’s powerful Islamist alma mater, the Muslim Brotherhood, which most analysts agree is still calling the shots in the presidential kitchen. “They are the only ones in the kitchen, 100%,” says Hamza. “In fact, Morsy might only be the coffee boy in the kitchen.”

Long the only significant challenge to Mubarak’s 30-year rule, the Muslim Brotherhood emerged from last year’s uprising primed to become the largest political force. Its representatives won the lion’s share of parliament; and ultimately, it took the presidency too.

Sunday’s shift marks Morsy’s boldest move yet to reclaim power from the country’s powerful military council. But it follows a similar reshuffle last week in Egypt’s security sector, which included the ousting of an old regime ally, Mourad Mwafi, from the head of the country’s General Intelligence Service. The replacements in the security sector, and indeed in the military, all serve a purpose in the broader scheme of things, analysts say. “The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t do anything off the cuff. Everything is according to plan and may be known for a few months before,” Hamza says.


Tantawi’s replacement, Abdel Fatah el-Sissi, is rumored to be a deeply religious man — perhaps the closest thing on the council to a Brotherhood ally. The new Vice President, Mekki, a top judge, was an early — but secret — Brotherhood pick for the presidency, according to Mohamed Soudan, a high-ranking Brotherhood official in Alexandria.

Along with Morsy’s newly appointed Justice Minister, Mekki will be a valuable asset as the country moves forward in drafting a new constitution. And according to Robert Springborg, an expert on the Egyptian military and a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in California: for every new hire — perhaps regardless of origin — Morsy and the Brotherhood gain an ally. “It’s Morsy and the Muslim Brotherhood who appointed them,” he says. “So their political careers are dependent on Morsy.”

Indeed, that may also be true for the new editors in chief of the country’s state newspapers — appointed last week by the Brotherhood-dominated upper house of parliament, the Shura Council.

The Brotherhood, analysts say, is slowly and deliberately arranging Egypt’s political chessboard. “They had to make sure that the media is in their hands and that the army is under their control before they go and make major changes in the Ministry of Justice and in the justice system,” says Hamza. “The next step will be the new constitution.”

The bold moves, particularly Morsy’s annulment of the military council’s June addendum to Egypt’s constitution — which had granted the military full legislative and certain executive powers — raises some questions of legality, experts say.


“It’s extralegal,” says one foreign NGO worker in Cairo, who has charted similar declarations by the military over the past 18 months. Morsy didn’t nullify all of SCAF’s decrees — only the aspects that hindered presidential power. Whereas the military had, in June, claimed full legislative authority following the Supreme Court’s dissolution of the parliament, Morsy now claims legislative control for himself. He also seized the right — from the generals — to dissolve and replace the committee tasked with drafting Egypt’s new constitution, if the committee is somehow “prevented from doing its duties,” the state-backed Ahram Online news website reported.

Egypt’s powerful generals have largely ignored Egyptian law ever since they issued their first constitutional decree in February 2011, two days after Mubarak stepped down, the NGO official points out: “So why can’t Morsy do it too?” Last February, SCAF suspended Egypt’s 1971 constitution. “They did this to legitimize their own power,” the official adds, because the constitution had stipulated that in the absence of a President, power be handed to the head of parliament or the head of the Supreme Court. Tantawi and his generals had ensured that wouldn’t happen.

But now Morsy may be following in their footsteps. The Islamist President appears — “on paper” at least — to have suddenly amassed “dictatorial powers,” writes Issandr El Amrani, a regional analyst, on his popular blog, the Arabist. For a country still struggling to shrug off the entrenched influence of its military after more than half a century of military rule, that might not be such a terrible thing, El Amrani and other analysts note. Hamza says it’s an important first step in dismantling a junta; if Morsy can remove the military from business and the public sector too, Egypt will be on its way to success, he says. But there’s no telling just how the President and the Brotherhood will move next. As for the paradigm shift and the new powers it seems to entail, says El Amrani: “It will largely come down to how he uses them.”

— With reporting by Caroline Kolta / Cairo


Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/08/12/has-egypts-muslim-brotherhood-staged-a-coup-against-the-military/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true#ixzz23QgPnjk7

Parece que las cosas se le estan yendo de las manos al idolo de obsidiana... Su reaccion timorata lo pone en desventaja hacia noviembre con los judeocristianos.


US ambassador killed in consulate attack in Libya
By ESAM MOHAMED, Associated Press – 1 hour ago
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — The American ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed when a mob of protesters and gunmen overwhelmed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, setting fire to it in outrage over a film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Libya's new president apologized Wednesday for the attack, which underlined the lawlessness plaguing a region trying to recover from months of upheaval.

Ambassador Chris Stevens, 52, died as he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff as a crowd of hundreds attacked the consulate Tuesday evening, many of them firing machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

By the end of the assault, much of the building was burned out and trashed. Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in the line of duty since 1979.
A Libyan doctor who treated Stevens said he died of severe asphyxiation, apparently from smoke. In a sign of the chaos of during the attack, Stevens was brought alone by Libyans to the Benghazi Medical Center with no other Americans, and no one at the facility knew who he was, the doctor, Ziad Abu Zeid, told The Associated Press.

Stevens was practically dead when he arrived close to 1 a.m. on Wednesday, but "we tried to revive him for an hour and a half but with no success," Abu Zeid said. The ambassador had bleeding in his stomach because of the asphyxiation but no other injuries, he said.

President Barack Obama ordered increased security to protect American diplomatic personnel around world. Hours before the Benghazi attack, Egyptians angry over the film protested at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, climbing its walls and tearing down an American flag, which they replaced briefly with a black, Islamist flag.

"I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi," Obama said, adding the four Americans "exemplified America's commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe."

Libya's interim president, Mohammed el-Megarif, apologized to the United States for the attack, which he described as "cowardly." Speaking to reporters, he offered his condolences on the death of the four Americans and vowed to bring the culprits to justice and maintain his country's close relations with the United States.

The three Americans killed with Stevens were security guards, he said.

"We extend our apology to America, the American people and the whole world," el-Megarif said.

The spark for the protests in Libya and Egypt was an obscure movie made in the United States by a California filmmaker who calls Islam a "cancer." Video excerpts posted on YouTube depict Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman in an overtly ridiculing way, showing him having sex and calling for massacres.

But the brazen assaults — the first on U.S. diplomatic facilities in either country — underscored the lawlessness that has taken hold in Libya and Egypt after revolutions ousted their autocratic secular regimes and upended the tightly controlled police state in both countries.

Islamists, who were long repressed under the previous regimes, have emerged as a powerful force and made up the bulk of the protests in both countries.

Moreover, security in both countries has broken down. Egypt's police, a onetime hated force blamed for massive human rights abuses, have yet to fully take back the streets after Hosni Mubarak's ouster in February 2011.

On Tuesday in Cairo, riot police stood by the embassy's walls but continued to allow protesters to climb them for several hours. The protesters, however, appeared to intentionally stick to certain limits: A few entered the embassy grounds to remove the flags and come back, but otherwise the chanting youth stayed on top of the walls without storming the compound or damaging property.

The uproar over the film also poses a new test for Egypt's new Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, who has yet to condemn the riot outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo or say anything about the offending film. The protest was by mostly ultraconservative Islamists.

In Libya, central government control is weak, arms are ubiquitous and militias are pervasive. The consulate in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, is a one-story villa in a large garden located in an upscale neighborhood. By the end of Tuesday night's attack, much of the building was black and smoldering. Libyans wandered freely around the burned-out building, taking photos of rooms where furniture was covered in soot and overturned.

The violence raised worries that further protests could break out around the Muslim world as knowledge of the anti-Islam movie spread. So far, however, the only sign of unrest on Wednesday was a protest by dozens of Gazans in Gaza City. Some of the protesters carried swords, axes and black flags, chanting, "Shame on everyone who insults the prophet." The rally was organized by supporters of the Popular Resistance Committees, a militant group aligned with the ruling Hamas movement.

Afghanistan's government sought to avert an outbreak of protests. President Hamid Karzai condemned the movie, which he describes as "inhuman and insulting." Authorities also temporarily shut down access to YouTube, the video-sharing site where excerpts of the movie were posted, said Aimal Marjan, general director of Information Technology at the Ministry of Communications.

Ultraconservative Islamists also were suspected of being behind the Benghazi attack. Advocating a strict interpretation of Islam, they have bulldozed Sufi shrines and mosques that house tombs in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and other cities, including ancient sites dating back to 5,000 years ago.

Heavily armed, ultraconservative groups like Ansar al-Shariah, or Supporters of Shariah, have claimed responsibility for the attacks on the shrines, declaring Sufi practices as "heretical."

Libya has been also hit by a series of recent attacks that served as evidence of the deep and persistent security vacuum in the country after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi's regime, which was ousted by rebels backed by a NATO air campaign. Many Libyans believe that unrest in their country is in part the work of Gadhafi's loyalists who want to undermine efforts to rebuild the country after last year's ruinous civil war.

Stevens was a career diplomat who spoke Arabic and French and had already served two tours in Libya, including running the office in Benghazi during the revolt against Gadhafi. He was confirmed as ambassador to Libya by the Senate earlier this year.

Before Tuesday, five U.S. ambassadors had been killed in the line of duty, the last being Adolph Dubs in Afghanistan in 1979, according to the State Department historian's office.

The two-hour movie that sparked the protests, titled "Innocence of Muslims," came to attention in Egypt after its trailer was dubbed into Arabic and posted on YouTube.

Sam Bacile, a 56-year-old California real estate developer, said he wrote, produced and directed the movie. Bacile told The Associated Press he was an Israeli Jew and an American citizen. But Israeli officials said Wednesday they had not heard of Bacile and there was no record of him being a citizen. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to share personal information with the media.

Separately, the film was being promoted by an extreme anti-Muslim Egyptian Christian campaigner in the United States.

Bacile said he had not anticipated such a furious reaction. Speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, Bacile, who went into hiding Tuesday, remained defiant. He said he believes the movie will expose Islam's flaws to the world.

"Islam is a cancer, period," he repeatedly said in a solemn, accented tone.
Israel, however, sought to distance itself from Bacile.

"It's obvious we'll have to be vigilant. Anything he did or said has nothing to do whatsoever with Israel. He may claim what he wants. This was not done with or for or through Israel." Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said on Wednesday.

Michael reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Joseph Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

No les voy a mentir...SE LOS DIJE.... El regiment propulsado por nuestro camarada en la casa blanca se ha trnado en aun otra dictadura... El que laadministracion de Obama no haya condenado estos excesos, solo indica que podemos esperar algo parecido aqui. De hcho, hoy diacualquier critica al idolo de barro es considerada "racista"...

Egypt's Mursi faces judicial revolt over decree

By Tom Perry
CAIRO | Sat Nov 24, 2012 2:37pm EST

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi faces a rebellion from judges who accused him on Saturday of expanding his powers at their expense, deepening a crisis that has triggered calls for more protests following a day of violence across Egypt.

Judges in Alexandria, Egypt's second city, threatened to go on strike until it was revoked, and there were calls for the "downfall of the regime" - the rallying cry in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak - during a meeting of judges in Cairo.

Mursi's opponents and supports - representing the divide between newly empowered Islamists and a more secular-minded opposition - have called rival demonstrations on Tuesday over his decree that has triggered concern in the West.

Issued late on Thursday, it marks an effort by Mursi to consolidate his influence after he successfully sidelined Mubarak-era generals in August. It defends from judicial review decisions taken by Mursi until a new parliament is elected in a vote expected early next year.

It also shields the Islamist-dominated assembly writing Egypt's new constitution from a raft of legal challenges that have threatened the body with dissolution, and offers the same protection to the Islamist-controlled upper house of parliament.

Egypt's highest judicial authority, the Supreme Judicial Council, said the decree was an "unprecedented attack" on the independence of the judiciary.

Youths clashed sporadically with police near Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the uprising that toppled Mubarak in 2011, following Friday's violence in which more than 300 people were injured across Egypt. Activists camped out for a second day in the square, setting up makeshift barricades to keep out traffic.

POLARISATION

Liberal, leftist and socialist parties called a big protest for Tuesday to force Mursi to row back on a decree they say has exposed the autocratic impulses of a man once jailed by Mubarak.

In a sign of the polarization in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood - the group that propelled Mursi to power - called its own protests that day to support the president's decree.

At least three Brotherhood offices were attacked on Friday.

"We are facing a historic moment in which we either complete our revolution or we abandon it to become prey for a group that has put its narrow party interests above the national interest," the liberal Dustour Party said in a statement.

Mursi also assigned himself new authority to sack the prosecutor general - a Mubarak hold over - and appoint a new one. The dismissed prosecutor general, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, was given a hero's welcome by several thousand judges who attended the session of Egypt's Judges' Club in Cairo on Saturday.

Ahmed al-Zind, head of the Judges' Club, introduced Mahmoud by his old title, in open defiance of Mursi's decree.

The Mursi administration has defended the decree on the grounds that it aims to speed up a protracted transition from Mubarak's rule to a new system of democratic government.

Analysts say it reflects the Brotherhood's suspicion towards sections of a judiciary unreformed from Mubarak's days.

"It aims to sideline Mursi's enemies in the judiciary and ultimately to impose and head off any legal challenges to the constitution," said Elijah Zarwan, a fellow with The European Council on Foreign Relations.

"We are in a situation now where both sides are escalating and its getting harder and harder to see how either side can gracefully climb down."

RIOT POLICE

Following a day of violence in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Suez, the smell of teargas hung over Tahrir Square.

A handful of hardcore activists hurling rocks battled riot police in the streets near the square, where several thousand protesters massed on Friday to demonstrate against the decree that has rallied opposition ranks against Mursi.

Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of Egypt's most widely read dailies, hailed Friday's protest as "The November 23 Intifada", invoking the Arabic word for uprising. "The people support the president's decisions," declared Freedom and Justice, the newspaper run by the Brotherhood's political party.

The ultraorthodox Salafi Islamist groups that have been pushing for tighter application of Islamic law in the new constitution have rallied behind the decree.

The Nour Party, one such group, stated its support for the Mursi decree. Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya, which carried arms against the state in the 1990s, said it would save the revolution from what it described as remnants of the Mubarak regime.

Mursi is facing the biggest storm of criticism since he won the presidential election in June.

Samir Morkos, a Christian assistant to Mursi, had told the president he wanted to resign," said Yasser Ali, Mursi's spokesman. "The president has spoken to him today but the decision to resign is yet to be taken," Ali told Reuters.

Mursi addressed his supporters outside the presidential palace on Friday. He said opposition did not worry him, but it had to be "real and strong".

Mursi is now confronted with a domestic crisis just as his administration won international praise for mediating an end to the eight-day war between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

"The decisions and declarations announced on November 22 raise concerns for many Egyptians and for the international community," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

The European Union urged Mursi to respect the democratic process, while the United Nations expressed fears about human rights.

Bueno, este tema es tan solo una faceta del desastre de relaciones exteriores del idolo de barro que acaba de reelegir el club de "todos contra el blanco"... pero hay muchas mas aristas desastrosas en esta gesta cataclismica del peor presidente que jamas haya tenido el Pais... Esta reprobado en economia, politica social y ahora en relaciones exteriores...

Creo que hasta en aseo personal se cuelga...

 Como se los pronosticamos, la primavera arabe termino mal...  Los castrenses respondieron y tumbaron a Morsi... Obama ha quedado expuesto como el tigre de papel que siempre ha sido.


Revolt in Egypt Marks the End of America's Illusions About Arab Democracy

By Romesh Ratnesar

July 03, 2013
The apparent military ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi is a triumph for the coalition of protestors who have massed in Tahrir Square in recent days. They include many of the young, secular, tech-savvy activists who captured the world’s imagination more than two years ago, when they helped bring down Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic regime. That’s one reason the Obama Administration hasn’t attempted to stop or even condemn the coup. Morsi’s removal may well empower forces that are more friendly to the U.S. than the Muslim Brotherhood. It also signals the end of a decade-long U.S. project to bring democracy to the Middle East. (Update: The military has deposed Morsi and suspended Egypt’s constitution. Follow the latest developments at Bloomberg News.)

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush initiated a profound shift in U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. would no longer continue to give a blank check to autocratic Arab regimes that deprived their citizens of political liberty. The logic of the Freedom Agenda, as it came to be known, was that democracy would help ease the frustrations of restive Arab populations and stem the appeal of Islamic extremism. That theory was one of Bush’s main justifications for invading Iraq, a decision that ultimately brought to power a government allied with Iran. The Bush Administration also pushed for elections in the Palestinian Authority—which were won by Hamas, an organization committed to Israel’s destruction.

In 2008, Barack Obama staked his presidential candidacy on his opposition to the Iraq war. In office, Obama sought to distance himself from the excesses of the Freedom Agenda, telling a Cairo audience that while the administration supported the democratic aspirations of Egyptians, “no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.” As the Arab Spring unfolded in 2011, however, Obama more openly embraced democratization. The administration gave tacit support to the revolution in Tunisia, publicly called for Mubarak to step down, and undertook military action to aid the rebellion against Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi.

The result has been, in a word, chaos. Of the countries in the Middle East in which the U.S. has supported regime change since 2003, only Tunisia can be said to be anything resembling a stable, functioning state. Even there, Islamist parties have been the biggest electoral winners—just as the Muslim Brotherhood proved the most formidable political organization in Egypt once elections were finally held last year. It’s little surprise that the U.S. has pretty much stopped talking about the goal of implanting democracy in the region. The Obama Administration isn’t pushing for elections in Jordan or Saudi Arabia or Bahrain. Obama has agreed to send arms to the rebels battling Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, but only after they seemed to be on the brink of military defeat. And in Egypt, the U.S. has stood by as tanks have rolled into downtown Cairo and brought down the curtain on modern Egypt’s first democratically elected government.

In strategic terms, this studious inaction may be sensible. There’s little to gain for the administration in propping up incompetent leaders, like Morsi, who have little interest in cooperating with the U.S. anyway. But it’s now impossible for Obama to credibly claim that America supports democracy in the Middle East. The illusion is over. Realpolitik has triumphed over idealism. Happy 4th of July.

Lo que no menciona el articulo son las raices de la Hermandad Musulmana ??


Egypt coup against Morsi is rooted in a decades-long struggle

Since 1952, Egypt's identity has been in a tug of war between Islamists and a secular military state.
 
 
By Jeffrey Fleishman
July 3, 2013, 5:24 p.m.

CAIRO — The passions fueling Egypt's political turbulence arose directly from the "Arab Spring" of 2011, but they have deeper roots in a decades-long struggle over the nation's identity between two authoritarian forces — Islamists and a secular military state.
 
Egypt won its independence from Britain after a 1952 revolution by army officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. From the start, the military was set against the Muslim Brotherhood, a growing and at times violent underground Islamist movement. Strong in the provinces and among professionals, the Brotherhood espoused sharia, or Islamic law, and went so far as to attempt political assassinations to wear down the military-backed government.
 
The Brotherhood's vision inspired both moderate Islamist groups and terrorist organizations across the region. It renounced violence decades ago and concentrated on social and religious programs, but the group was both co-opted and persecuted by successive military leaders who regarded it as a threat to the westward-leaning secular state they envisioned.
 
The organization's bitterness simmered through six decades as military men ran the country, until a popular uprising overthrew President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The army quickly seized control, but the Brotherhood began a political ascendancy that culminated with the election last year of President Mohamed Morsi, the nation's first Islamist leader.
The young protesters and opposition figures who led the revolt against Mubarak were outflanked by the Brotherhood and unceremoniously sidelined by political naivete, conflicting visions and lack of organization. That left the country's fate in the hands of the Islamists and the military. Morsi began accumulating power, ignoring court decisions against his authority, pushing through an Islamist-backed constitution and referring to his opponents as "thugs."
 
In perhaps the most brazen move of his tenure, Morsi, with the help of younger officers, purged the military of top commanders loyal to Mubarak, including Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. The move gave the Islamist leader a narrow space to negotiate a new relationship with the officers, notably Morsi's new armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi.
 
But the state was falling apart. Foreign reserves plummeted, the inflation rate soared, tourism dwindled, power outages spread, gas lines grew and poverty deepened. The Brotherhood was once respected as the most potent — and brave — opposition to Mubarak's police state. It provided services to the poor and, with education and medical programs, bridged the failings of the state in the provinces. But it had never governed.
 
The military grew restless as protests and riots spread, further threatening the economy and even the shipping lanes of the Suez Canal. Morsi placated the army by granting it wide autonomy in the new constitution and promising not to interfere with the parallel business empire the military brass had created for itself.
 
The Brotherhood had inherited a dysfunctional, corrupt state. But the world's largest Islamist organization could not transcend its authoritarian instincts and lost the ability to deal with multiplying crises. Morsi accused remnants of the Mubarak administration, including businesspeople and officials in the courts and security forces, of instigating street unrest and sabotaging his government.
 
There was a degree of truth in that, but Morsi's constant claims of palace intrigue gave the whiff of paranoia and further highlighted his government's inability to solve the nation's many ills. Always hovering in the background was the specter of the old guard, epitomized by Mubarak, who glowered behind sunglasses as he was wheeled into court on charges of murder and other crimes.
 
Morsi had survived many protests and labor strikes, but the June 30 anniversary of his inauguration brought another groundswell against him. A new youth movement known as Rebel energized the opposition, and claimed to have collected 22 million signatures calling for Morsi's resignation.
 
On Sunday, millions of anti-Morsi protesters and tens of thousands of his supporters held rival rallies across the country. The size of the demonstrations stunned the Brotherhood, and provided a pretext for the army to move against Morsi under the guise that it was carrying out the will of the people.
 
The change in atmosphere was epic. Morsi was caricatured as an Islamist version of Mubarak, an uncharismatic, tone-deaf autocrat who alienated the youth and mistook bluster for leadership. Gradually and then very suddenly, the Brotherhood's blend of religion and politics began to buckle.
 
"I don't think there is a future for the Muslim Brotherhood," said Abdelgelil Mostafa, a political analyst and opposition figure. "They're in the midst of political suicide.... These people on the streets will not go home until this dark era ends."
 
The opposition's embracing of the army, which was condemned for human rights abuses and civil liberty restrictions during its rule, signaled how much the Brotherhood was despised. Opposition figures such as Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who once vilified army control, were now asking the generals to reenter the scene in a moment of opportunity for both.
 
"Every minute that passes without the armed forces' intervention to perform its duties and protect the lives of Egyptians will waste more blood, especially since the person in the presidential position has lost his legitimacy and eligibility, and maybe even his mind," ElBaradei said.
 
The military coup that pushed Morsi out leaves Egypt in a new and dangerous phase. Opposition political leaders have proved politically inept, and even they don't have the support of much of the street, which more than the ballot box these days is defining Egypt's democracy.
 
The military — still the most revered of Egypt's troubled institutions — risks going from hero to villain unless it can quickly forge political stability. It is also likely to face retaliation by militant and ultraconservative Salafi groups, some armed with weapons smuggled from Libya, which are angry over the army's pressure on Egypt's first freely elected president.
 
Morsi has been pushed aside in a swift and dramatic fall from grace. For many Islamists, his presidency marked the first step toward transforming Egypt into an Islamic state. The Brotherhood, thousands of whose members were arrested and tortured by Mubarak, will not relinquish that dream easily.
 
"We sacrifice for our country, and I am the first to sacrifice," Morsi told the nation early Wednesday. "If the cost of legitimacy is my life, I will pay it gladly."

 Esto del NY Times:

For Islamists, Dire Lessons on Politics and Power

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and BEN HUBBARD



CAIRO — Sheik Mohamed Abu Sidra had watched in exasperation for months as President Mohamed Morsi and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood bounced from one debilitating political battle to another.

“The Brotherhood went too fast, they tried to take too much,” Sheik Abu Sidra, an influential ultraconservative Islamist in Benghazi, Libya, said Thursday, a day after the Egyptian military deposed and detained Mr. Morsi and began arresting his Brotherhood allies.

But at the same time, Sheik Abu Sidra said, Mr. Morsi’s overthrow had made it far more difficult for him to persuade Benghazi’s Islamist militias to put down their weapons and trust in democracy.

“Do you think I can sell that to the people anymore?” he asked. “I have been saying all along, ‘If you want to build Shariah law, come to elections.’ Now they will just say, ‘Look at Egypt,’ and you don’t need to say anything else.”

From Benghazi to Abu Dhabi, Islamists are drawing lessons from Mr. Morsi’s ouster that could shape political Islam for a generation. For some, it demonstrated the futility of democracy in a world dominated by Western powers and their client states. But others, acknowledging that the coup accompanied a broad popular backlash, also faulted the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood for reaching too fast for so many levers of power.

The Brotherhood’s fall is the greatest in an array of setbacks that have halted the once seemingly unstoppable march of political Islam. As they have moved from opposition to establishment after the Arab spring revolts, Islamist parties in Turkey, Tunisia and now Egypt have all been caught up in crises over the secular practicalities of governing like power sharing, urban planning, public security or even keeping the lights on.

Brotherhood leaders — the few who have not been arrested or dropped out of sight — have little doubt about the source of their problems. They say that the Egyptian security forces and bureaucracy conspired to sabotage their rule, and that the generals seized on the chance to topple the Morsi government under the cover of popular anger at the dysfunction of the state.

Their account strikes a chord with fellow Islamists around the region who are all too familiar with the historic turning points when, they say, military crackdowns stole their imminent democratic victories: Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954; Algeria in 1991; and the Palestinian territories in 2006.

“The message will resonate throughout the Muslim world loud and clear: democracy is not for Muslims,” Essam el-Haddad, Mr. Morsi’s foreign policy adviser, warned on his official Web site shortly before the military detained him and cut off all his communication. The overthrow of an elected Islamist government in Egypt, the symbolic heart of the Arab world, Mr. Haddad wrote, would fuel more violent terrorism than the Western wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And he took aim at Western critics of the Islamists. “The silence of all of those voices with an impending military coup is hypocritical,” Mr. Haddad wrote, “and that hypocrisy will not be lost on a large swath of Egyptians, Arabs and Muslims.”
In Egyptian Sinai just hours later, thousands of Islamists rallied under the black flag of jihad and cheered widely at calls for “a war council” to roll back Mr. Morsi’s ouster. “The age of peacefulness is over,” the speaker declared in a video of the rally. “No more peacefulness after today.”

“No more election after today,” the crowd chanted in response.
After a night of deadly clashes at Cairo University that accompanied the takeover, some ultraconservative Islamists gathered there said their experiment in electoral politics — a deviation from God’s law to begin with — had come to a bad end.

“Didn’t we do what they asked,” asked Mahmoud Taha, 40, a merchant. “We don’t believe in democracy to begin with; it’s not part of our ideology. But we accepted it. We followed them, and then this is what they do?”

In Syria, where the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood once hoped to provide a model of moderation and democracy, some fighters battling President Bashar al-Assad now say it is the other way around. Egyptian Islamists “may have to pursue the armed option,” said Firas Filefleh, a rebel fighter in an Islamist brigade in Idlib, in northern Syria. “That may be the only choice, as it was for us in Syria.”

In the United Arab Emirates, where the authoritarian government just sentenced 69 members of a Brotherhood-linked Islamist group to prison in an effort to stop the spread of Arab spring revolts, Islamists said the crackdowns were driving a deeper wedge into their movement.

“The practices that we see today will split the Islamists in half,” said Saeed Nasar Alteneji, a former head of the Emirates group, the Islah association. “There are those who always call for centrism and moderation and peaceful political participation,” he said. “The other group condemns democracy and sees today that the West and others will never accept the ballot box if it brings Islamists to power.”
“And they have lots of evidence of this,” he said, now citing Egypt as well as Algeria.

Other Islamists, though, sought to distance themselves from what they considered the Egyptian Brotherhood’s errors.
As the military takeover began to unfold, Ali Larayedh, the Islamist prime minister of Tunisia, emphasized in a television interview that “an Egypt scenario” was unlikely to befall his Ennahda movement because “our approach is characterized by consensus and partnership.”
Emad al-din al-Rashid, a prominent Syrian Islamist and scholar now based in Istanbul, said that he “expected this to happen” because of the Muslim Brotherhood’s style of governance. “The beginning was a mistake, a sin, and the Brotherhood were running Egypt like they would run a private organization, not a country,” he said. “They shouldn’t have rushed to rule like they did. If they had waited for the second or third elections, the people would have been asking and yearning for them.”
Hisham Krekshi, a senior member of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood in Tripoli, Libya, said the Egyptian Brotherhood “were not transparent enough. They were not sharing enough with other parties. We have to be sure that we are open, to say, ‘We are all Libyans and we have to accept every rainbow color, to work together.’ ”
Even among Egyptian Islamists there have been signs of dissent from the Brotherhood leadership. The largest ultraconservative party, Al Nour, had urged the Brotherhood to form a broader coalition and then to call early presidential elections, and it finally supported the takeover.
Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a relatively liberal former Brotherhood leader and presidential candidate popular among many younger members, also urged Mr. Morsi to step down to defuse the polarization of the country.
But, said Ibrahim Houdaiby, a former Brotherhood member, “the feeling of exclusion might actually lead to the empowerment of a more radical sentiment in the group that says, ‘Look, we abided by the rules, we were elected democratically, and of course we were rejected, and of course by a military coup, not by popular protest.’ ”



Reporting was contributed by Mayy El Sheikh and Kareem Fahim from Cairo; Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Robert F. Worth from Washington.

Anteriormente y en otrostemas les habiamos anticipado que los efectivos retirados de Afghanistan e Iraq tendrian ya un destino cuajado en otros lares del medio-oriente...  Nuestro "lider maximo" ha emprendido una politica exterior que solo ha resultado en desasttres.  Ahi tienen a Libya y Egipto... Pero eso no es todo. Le van a caer encima a Syria...  Como y porque no es importante.  Esto va desde el saque:


 
Dempsey outlines Syria options, including deployment of ‘thousands’ of ground forces
Published July 23, 2013
FoxNews.com
 
 
The nation's top military officer has laid out five options the Obama administration is considering on Syria, including "limited" strikes against the Assad regime and an all-out campaign to secure chemical weapons that includes "thousands" of U.S. forces. 
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed the options in a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich. The letter was sent Monday as, on the other side of the Hill, the House Intelligence Committee signed off on the administration's call to arm the Syria opposition -- though the committee, which held that up for weeks, continued to voice reservations. 

Dempsey's letter went far beyond arming the opposition in outlining potential options. He sent the letter after taking heat at last week's confirmation hearing from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who pressed Dempsey for his advice on Syria while suggesting the administration had not done enough -- McCain threatened to place a hold on Dempsey's nomination until he got answers. 

In the letter, Dempsey gave five options on Syria beyond providing humanitarian assistance, which the U.S. already is doing. 

At the least invasive end, he said, is the option of training, advising and assisting the rebels. The next level up would be conducting limited strikes on "high-value regime" military targets. 

The three other options are increasingly costly and risky. 

They include: 

• A no-fly zone, which according to Dempsey could cost up to a billion dollars per month and would include shooting down regime aircraft and conducting strikes on their airfields. 
  
  
  
• The establishment of "buffer zones," which would be "specific geographic areas" where the opposition would safely organize and train. This would require thousands of U.S. ground forces, Dempsey said, "even if positioned outside Syria," to protect these zones. 
  
  
  
• A campaign to secure chemical weapons. This would entail destroying portions of Syria's stockpile, interdicting shipments and seizing other components. At minimum, Dempsey said, this would include a no-fly zone and thousands of special operations and other forces to secure critical sites. 
  
  
  

Dempsey stressed that these are just options that have been prepared, and that some options "may not be feasible in time or cost." 

On another front, the House Intelligence Committee gave tentative approval toward arming the opposition. 

Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said that despite "very strong concerns about the strength of the administration's plans in Syria and its chances for success" there was "consensus that we could move forward with what the administration's plans and intentions are in Syria consistent with committee reservations." 

The Intelligence Committee had delayed the administration for weeks from fully implementing its Syria policy, including arming the rebels, Fox News has learned. 
Fox also confirmed that a majority -- but not all -- of the Committee members signed off on moving forward with the plan. 

It was not immediately clear how the new policy would be funded although money could be "reprogrammed" from other accounts, including possibly the defense spending bill.

 
 
 
 
 
 Que bueno que no estamos en guerra con Syria...