After it came to light that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president called Jews “bloodsuckers” and the “descendants of apes and pigs,” one would think our allegedly civil-rights-oriented and anti-racist administration would start thinking twice about supporting a man and a government that are trying to whip their population into a frenzy of hatred against our closest regional ally. Indeed, the White House called the statements “deeply offensive,” and the State Department declared they “should be repudiated firmly.”
Repudiated firmly . . . but by someone else apparently. As Fox News reported this morning, four brand-new F-16s — part of a planned total delivery of 20 — are on their way to Egypt today, courtesy of the American taxpayer. That’s the calculus of Obama’s foreign policy: display rank bigotry and hatred against an ally — get free F-16s.
The genesis of this fiscal and strategic atrocity is a 2010 deal with the Mubarak administration, where Mubarak ordered 20 F-16s and 200 M1 Abrams main battle tanks as part of a then-standard military aid package. The Mubarak administration, for all its domestic flaws, was a U.S. ally that had kept the peace with Israel for decades. That regime is gone, replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood and its shariah-focused constitution, but — mysteriously — we remain committed to fulfilling the 2010 weapons order.
I know that I’m just a caveman lawyer, and the ways of liberal diplomacy frighten and confuse me, but one thing I do know — in an era of record deficits — you don’t give free fighter jets to the Muslim Brotherhood.