The Obama administration-backed Egyptian government, backed in turn by the West-hating Muslim Brotherhood, has fallen.
Egypt will install a new and improved government. Who knows how long that will last? But from America’s perspective, that’s not the point.
The point is that the United States sends $1.5 billion annually in military and economic ‘assistance’ to Egypt.
Why do we send this money to Egypt?
The traditional argument for this was: To keep stability in the Middle East, since that’s arguably in American interests.
Excuse me: When has the Middle East ever been stable? I’m old enough to remember the Jimmy Carter years and the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-81. The Middle East wasn’t stable then; not before then, and not since then. It’s now 2013, and it’s only getting worse.
Egypt first erupted two years ago. The Obama administration, predictably, sided with the Muslim Brotherhood when this crisis started because—well, because the Obama administration likes Islam. In words and deeds, there has never been one bit of doubt about this.
A lot of good that $1.5 billion dollars did even the Obama administration’s pro-Muslim Brotherhood position, since the puppet figure elevated by that group didn’t even last a single term in office. By the way, the ousted Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian president Morsi had appealed to the U.N. to help enforce a worldwide ban against criticism of Islam. This is the sort of dictator we’re sending all that money to–and we’re supposed to believe that Edward Snowden is the big traitor? How about starting at the White House?
There’s little reason to believe the next Egyptian democratically-elected dictator will be any better. Moreover, there’s no reason to believe that the United States sending $1.5 billion in tax dollars to Egypt is going to make any difference, aside from aiding more rotten or inept leaders in a faraway land that shouldn’t be relevant to America’s concerns.
Let’s focus here. The root of the problem is oil. There would be no rational basis whatsoever for the United States to care about the Middle East at all, if we were not dependent on foreign oil. This was an issue back in the 1970s, if not before; and it’s still an issue today.
Unfortunately, the very same American government that sends $1.5 billion annually to Egypt, and other Middle Eastern nations, is the very same government that spends billions more on actively restricting the development of oil anywhere near North America. It’s called environmentalism, that urban fundamentalist religion practiced by government officials in powerful institutions like the Environmental Protection Agency.
Imagine if an alien from an advanced civilization in outer space landed on earth tomorrow. One of the first things he’d learn is that the world’s waning superpower, the United States, is constantly stirring up trouble and sending arms/money to the Middle East. These Middle Eastern nations, the alien would soon learn, are populated by intellectually and materially impoverished people who are ambivalent (to say the least) about modern technology, economic development and anything which flies in the face of their primitive religious beliefs.
The alien asks, ‘Why does the superpower do this?’ He would quickly come to understand that oil, required to keep civilization moving (even in much of the Middle East) largely comes from that part of the world.
‘Is there no oil to be extracted elsewhere on the planet?’ the alien asks.
Yes, he’s told by his information officers. ‘They have plenty of oil in their own territories. But sects of people in the superpower, including the superpower’s leader at present, don’t want the land or the wild animals to be disturbed in any way.’
The alien reflects for a moment. ‘But isn’t that self-defeating?’ he’d ask. The answer is self-evident.
And so it goes. The United States government, now inconceivably broke and in debt, will continue to send guilt and bribery money to foreign places like Egypt, all in the name of ‘stability’ or, if you’re like Obama, in ideological support of the Muslim Brotherhood. (I still don’t get it. Obama supports gay marriage and feminism, like most of his supporters. But Obama demands “sensitivity” and supports militant Islamic dictators, people who denigrate woman and put gay people to death. How does this work?)
There’s no quick fix to the oil problem, and there never was. But decades of evading this issue has led us to the present point. Sooner or later, somebody in power will have to admit that oil is the real issue here, and in fact the only issue.
People can still fill their gas tanks and heat/air condition their homes, for now. They can engage in the ridiculously self-refuting act of recycling, and self-importantly drive hybrid cars, because the government tells them this constitutes virtue, and it makes them feel good about themselves.
However, facts remain facts. We still need oil to survive; we will continue to need oil to survive in the future. The rising cost of gas is the early warning signal of major trouble ahead.
‘Hey you guys,’ those oil prices are trying to tell us. ‘You’ve got to do something to increase supply here.’ No, our officials tell us. It’s those greedy, selfish SOBs who run the oil companies. They’re the root of all evil. If only we didn’t have capitalism, all would be well.
That’s right, America. Keep telling yourselves that. It’s simply an elaborate way of saying, ‘If I don’t think about it, the problem will go away.’
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