Despite earlier commitments from the White House and a bipartisan bloc of congressmen, the Obama administration is postponing the transfer of billions of dollars and advanced weaponry to Egypt.
Of course, the reversal on the part of the Obama administration by no means signals a shift away from an interventionist policy in foreign affairs to a non-interventionist policy — where the United States ceases its engagement in nation building and meddling in foreign quarrels and begins minding its own business. Nor does it mean that the administration suddenly “discovered” that there is no authorization for foreign aid in the U.S. Constitution.
So why the reversal on the part of the Obama administration?
According to Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, the United States “will continue to hold the delivery of certain large-scale military systems and cash assistance to the government pending credible progress toward an inclusive, democratically elected civilian government through free and fair elections.”
The statement issued by the State Department announcing the delay mentioned the lack of “credible progress” toward free elections as a contributing factor.
A bloody crackdown by the military on supporters of Mohamed Morsi following his ouster prompted a review of the planned shipment.
Among the weapons being withheld from Cairo, there are a dozen F-16s; about that many AH-64 Apache helicopters; four M-1/A-1 tank kits; and an undisclosed number of Harpoon missiles.
Perhaps the reneging has less to do with Egypt’s lack of electoral fair play and more to do with President Obama’s desire to punish the currently ruling regime for ousting his friends in the Muslim Brotherhood from the positions of power.
Writing for Human Events in 2011, Robert Spencer reveals a few of President Obama’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
President Obama, Spencer writes:
made sure to invite Brotherhood leaders to attend his notorious speech to the Islamic world in Cairo, Egypt, in June 4, 2009. Starting in the earliest days of his administration, he showed an intense desire to establish friendly ties with Brotherhood-linked organizations—despite the Brotherhood’s stated goal of “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.”
Obama first reached out to the Brotherhood when he chose the leader of a Muslim Brotherhood-linked group that had been named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case to give a prayer during his inauguration ceremonies. Ingrid Mattson, then-president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), offered this prayer at the National Cathedral on Obama’s Inauguration Day—despite the fact that the ISNA has admitted its ties to the Brotherhood. The previous summer, federal prosecutors rejected a request from the ISNA to remove its unindicted co-conspirator status.
Obama didn’t ask Mattson to explain the ISNA’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. On the contrary: He sent his senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, to be the keynote speaker at the ISNA’s national convention in 2009.
Even worse, in April 2009, Obama appointed Arif Alikhan, the deputy mayor of Los Angeles, as assistant secretary for policy development at the Department of Homeland Security. Just two weeks before he received this appointment, Alikhan (who once called the jihad terror group Hezbollah a “liberation movement”) participated in a fund-raiser for the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).
Like the ISNA, MPAC has links to the Muslim Brotherhood. In a book titled In Fraternity: A Message to Muslims in America, co-author Hassan Hathout, a former MPAC president, is identified as “a close disciple of the late Hassan al-Banna of Egypt. “The MPAC-linked magazine The Minaret spoke of Hathout’s closeness to al-Banna in a 1997 article: “My father would tell me that Hassan Hathout was a companion of Hassan al-Banna. … Hassan Hathout would speak of al-Banna with such love and adoration; he would speak of a relationship not guided by politics or law but by a basic sense of human decency.”
The late al-Banna, of course, was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Apart from those ties, Spencer chronicles the ties between members of the Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood:
The Muslim Brotherhood is a pro-Sharia group. Obama’s chief adviser on Islamic affairs, Dalia Mogahed, is a pro-Sharia Muslim. In their Gallup survey published under the hubristic title “Who Speaks for Islam? What A Billion Muslims Really Think,” Mogahed and Saudi-funded dhimmi, or non-Muslim, pseudo-academic John Esposito cooked their data to increase the number of Muslim “moderates,” counting as “moderate” Muslims who wanted Sharia rule, hated America, supported jihad-martyrdom suicide bombing, and opposed equality of rights for women. Mogahed also defended Sharia on a British TV show.
Last month, The New American listed similar links to the group present in the White House:
Links between the Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood may not come as a complete surprise. InvestigativeProject.org reports, “Six American Islamist activists who work with the Obama administration are Muslim Brotherhood operatives who enjoy strong influence over U.S. policy.”
Front Page Magazine identified the six operatives:
Arif Alikhan — assistant secretary for policy development for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Mohammed Elibiary — homeland security advisor.
Rashad Hussain — special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
Salam al-Marayati — Obama advisor, founder of Muslim Public Affairs Council and its current executive director.
Imam Mohamed Magid — Obama’s sharia czar, Islamic Society of North America.
Eboo Patel — advisory council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.
And, perhaps the gun with the most smoke was uncovered in the cache of documents discovered by the Egyptian military after running Morsi out of town. Reportedly, this “treasure trove” revealed financial links between the Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to that report, “one such document is a list of Muslim Brotherhood officials receiving secret bribes in U.S. currency, paid out by the U.S. consulate, amounting to millions of dollars.”
Of course, these accusations are nearly impossible to substantiate given the provenance of some of them and the president’s power to quash the others.
What is now undeniable, however, is that when the Muslim Brotherhood held the reins in Egypt, the president promised billions in aid and an advanced arsenal of American arms. When they were sent packing, the pipeline dried up.
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He is the host of The New American Review radio show that is simulcast on YouTube every Monday. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at [email protected]
