Cut aid to Egypt

(Washington, D.C.): In his State of the Union address, President Bush suggested that Egypt “can now show the way toward democracy in the Middle East.” How, it must then be asked, is this to be accomplished by a state that facilitates terrorism and anti-Americanism and is led by an entrenched dictator? Max Boot offers a practical starting point in a recent column for the Los Angeles Times: “Reduce or eliminate altogether the $2-billion annual U.S. subsidy to Egypt unless there’s real economic and political progress.”

Boot exposes as fallacious the grounds upon which U.S. policy-makers justify this largess. The aid should not be given as a reward for Egypt’s living at peace with Israel, the author notes, as “Arab states coexist with Israel because they have failed to destroy it, not because they’ve been bribed.” Boot then dispels the notion that Egypt’s cooperation in the war on terror is contingent on this payment. Rather, “Mubarak fights the Islamists not as a favor to us but because they pose a mortal threat to his rule.”

Far from encouraging peace and freedom in the Middle East, Mubarak has used this money – which effectively subsidizes the state-run news media – to deflect the anger of Egypt’s impoverished and oppressed citizens toward the United States and Israel. It is time America discontinued aid that underpins an environment in which the President’s vision of democracy in the Middle East cannot be realized.