27 March 2012 By Jacob G. Hornberger The current controversy over U.S. foreign aid to
Egypt highlights perfectly the moral bankruptcy of
U.S. foreign policy and what such a policy has done to
our nation. For the past three decades, the U.S. government has
been funneling billions of dollars to the military
dictatorship in Egypt. Notice the operative word in that sentence:
dictatorship. Why is that word important? Because dictatorship equals tyranny. There is
simply no way around it. A dictatorship is a
tyrannical regime, one that oppresses its own
citizenry, oftentimes brutally. The fact that this particular dictatorship is a
military dictatorship makes the situation even worse.
Military dictatorships are renowned for their
brutality, tyranny, and oppression, always under the
guise of maintaining "order and stability" within the
nation. Some thirty years ago, the military dictatorship in
Egypt declared a state of emergency, owing to the
terrorist assassination of Egypt's president. As with
all such emergencies, it was supposed to be temporary.
As part of the emergency, the military dictatorship
assumed extraordinary powers, including the authority
to arrest and incarcerate people without due process
of law or trial, torture them, and execute them. Today, those tyrannical powers are still in
existence. In fact, the military dictatorship's
exercise of such powers for the past 30 years is one
of the reasons that Egyptian citizens finally took to
the streets in revolution. The military dictatorship was obviously hoping that
by offering up Egypt's longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak,
the people would be satisfied. That would leave the
military dictatorship in place and in continued
control of the country. In fact, the military has made it clear to the
Egyptian people that it has absolutely no intention of
relinquishing power. It is permitting the Egyptian
people to establish a democratic system but only with
the understanding that that the military, not the
democratically elected officials, will ultimately in
charge. For the last 30 years, it has been the U.S.
government, with monies extracted from the American
taxpayers through the IRS, that has been helping to
maintain this dictatorial regime. The discomforting
truth is that the tyranny under which the Egyptian
people have long suffered has been maintained,
supported, and embraced by the U.S. government. And it cannot be said that such support has come
reluctantly. On the contrary, the militaries of both
countries have worked arm in arm to maintain the
dictatorship's hold on power. The Pentagon has helped
train military personnel of the dictatorship and,
again, the U.S. government has funneled tens of
billions of dollars in cash and weaponry into the
regime, all of which has helped the dictatorship to
continue its brutal control over and oppression of the
Egyptian people. In fact, don't forget that when the CIA kidnapped a
suspected terrorist in Italy, it renditioned the man
to Egypt to be tortured, not only because the Egyptian
military dictatorship is one of the U.S. government's
partners in its "war on terrorism" but also because
U.S. officials have to be thoroughly familiar with
Egyptian military's skill at extracting information
from people through torture. Of course, through it all, neither Egyptian
officials nor U.S. officials have viewed the
dictatorship's actions as tyrannical. On the contrary,
in the eyes of the Egyptian national-security state
and the U.S. national-security state, the Egyptian
dictatorship has been doing nothing more than
maintaining "order and stability" and protecting the
nation from the "terrorists," in partnership with the
U.S. national-security state. Recently the annual payment of $1.3 billion (with a
"b") in U.S. foreign aid to the Egyptian dictatorship
was coming due. The problem is that in order to make
the payment, the U.S. secretary of state, Hillary
Clinton, is required by law to certify that the
recipient of the aid isn't infringing on human rights
and freedom. However, the law has an escape clause. The
secretary of state can issue a waiver of the
requirement, enabling the foreign aid to flow into
Egypt without making the required certification. There were some people within the government
opposing the waiver owing to Egypt's current
prosecution of several foreign organizations for
engaging in "pro-democracy" political activity without
the legally required government registration.
Apparently, that's the only reason they're objecting —
not because the money is going to fund a tyrannical
military dictatorship. However, in the end Clinton decided to issue the
waiver. Why did she do that? One reason is that the Egyptian regime, having been
threatened with a cutoff of the aid, decided to
release the American defendants charged in the
non-registration criminal proceedings. But there is another fascinating aspect of this
tale of horror. It turns out that the Egyptian
military supposedly lacked the funds to pay American
arms suppliers for the weaponry they had agreed to
purchase from them. They said they needed the $1.3
billion to make the payments under their weapons
contracts. A default in those contracts would require
the companies to lay off workers, which obviously
would not be a good thing in an election year in which
Clinton's boss, President Obama, is running for
reelection on the basis that he would be a better
job-creator-in-chief than his Republican opponent. To confirm their longstanding support of the
Egyptian regime, Victoria Nuland, the State
Department's spokesman, was quoted in a March 23,
2012, New York Times
article: "The secretary's decision to waive is
also designed to demonstrate our strong support for
Egypt's enduring role as a security partner and leader
in promoting regional stability and peace." Do you see what I mean? Do you see anything in that
statement that would demonstrate a reluctance to fund
a tyrannical military dictatorship or a regret for
having funded a brutal dictatorship for decades? Do
you even see an acknowledgement that this is a brutal,
tyrannical military dictatorship that is being funded?
No. Again, the national-security state in both
countries view all of this not as tyranny but instead
as a means to maintain "order and stability and to
protect the nation from the "terrorists." As the Times article points out, there was a
pressing deadline — the money that needed to pay
international arms sellers like Lockheed Martin: "A
looming deadline for payments, however, forced the
issue before then, and the White House and Pentagon
pressed for a waiver, officials said. A White House
spokesman referred questions to the State Department,
and the Pentagon did not respond to requests for
comment." What was Lockheed Martin's role in all this? It is
supplying warplanes and military tanks to the Egyptian
military dictatorship and getting paid for it with the
foreign aid that now will be sent to Egypt. As Laura
F. Siebert, a company spokeswoman put it, "Lockheed
Martin values the relationship established between our
company and the Egyptian customer since the first
F-16s were delivered in the early 1980s." "Customer"? That's quite a "customer." Never mind
that the "customer" is a brutal, tyrannical, military
dictatorship. And never mind that the warplanes and
tanks being delivered to this "customer" enable the
"customer" to maintain its tyrannical hold over the
Egyptian citizenry. It's obvious that Lockheed Martin
sees things just as U.S. officials do — that the
Egyptian and U.S. governments are just good partners
who are maintaining "order and stability" and
protecting Egypt and the United States from the
"terrorists." Another fascinating and revealing aspect of this
entire phenomenon is how the U.S. military-industrial
complex has divided up the manufacture of the
component parts of the military tanks that are being
delivered to the Egyptian military dictatorship.
According to the Times, "The M1A1 components
are built in factories in Alabama, Florida, Michigan,
Ohio and Pennsylvania, several of them battleground
states in an election that has largely focused on
jobs." Obviously, that gives people in more states a
greater financial stake in the outcome. Make no mistake about it: If Egyptian citizens ever
retaliate for the U.S. government's role in their
oppression, U.S. officials will simply respond with,
"They just hate us for our freedom and values." That's what passes for freedom and values in
today's America. Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of the
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