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Putin Gets It and We Dont
Middle East politics amounts to managing the decline of a failed culture. Nothing expresses Arab failure more vividly than Egypt, a banana republic without the bananas, now living on a $14 billion or so annual subsidy from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States. With 70% of its population living in agricultural areas, it imports half its food, and would starve if not for the Saudi check. Egypt is beyond the point of no return economically, and American foreign policy is beyond the point of no return intellectually. Americans of both partiesObama and Kerry on one side, and Sens. McCain and Graham along with the Weekly Standard on the otherbelieved that by waving the magic wand of democracy over this cataclysmically failed state, all would be well. I characterized this consensus as Dumb and Dumber earlier this year. The outcome, of course, is that Russias Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov turned up in Cairo this week to hear his Egyptian counterpart declare that Americas erstwhile Arab ally wants to restore Russian-Egyptian relations to their level during the Soviet erawhen Egypt was an enemy. ...Vladimir Putin gets it, and we dont. He backs the Assad regime in Syria against Saudi-supported rebels. He is cracking down ruthlessly on Muslim terrorists in the Russian Caucasus, using Stalin-era forms of collective punishment. Nonetheless Riyadh is footing a $4 billion bill for Egypt to buy Russian arms. Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2013-11-17 |
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