Cruz: US 'Entrenched as Enemy of the Secular, Pro-Democracy Opposition' in Egypt

Cruz: US 'Entrenched as Enemy of the Secular, Pro-Democracy Opposition' in Egypt

on Wed, 3 Jul 2013

On Thursday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) penneda scathing editorial in Foreign Policy ripping President Obama’s ambiguous foreign policy on Egypt. The Obama administration has hinted that it will cut aid to Egypt should the military depose Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi. “Unlike the angry, disaffected youth who raged through the Arab Spring in 2011, these crowds, like those in the recent protests in Turkey, were made up of middle-class citizens protesting against a regime with an unpleasant tendency to trample on the rights of women, Christians, and Jews -- and to stifle the independence of the press and judiciary, ruining the economy in the process,” wrote Cruz. “One would expect to find the United States standing firmly with these people …. In what has to be one of the most stunning diplomatic failures in recent memory, the United States is -- in both perception and reality -- entrenched as the partner of a repressive, Islamist regime and the enemy of the secular, pro-democracy opposition.”

Cruz pointed out that Morsi’s election provided Obama an opportunity to express “strong reservations about a member of the Muslim Brotherhood taking control of the country.” He didn’t. Instead, as Cruz said, “Emboldened by U.S. support, Morsy consolidated his power -- removing the traditionally pro-American military leadership, imposing an Islamist constitution, marginalizing the judiciary, and turning a blind eye to brutal attacks against religious minorities, including Coptic Christians and Shiite Muslims.”

Cruz recommended that Congress immediately cut off all aid to Egypt that will go toward supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. “And,” Cruz continued, “we should find the courage to speak out forcefully on behalf of those advocating secular democratic reforms in Egypt.”

Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).