9/22/12, "Egypt’s New Leader Spells Out Terms for U.S.-Arab Ties," NY Times, Kirkpatrick, Erlanger
"On the eve of his first trip to the United States as Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi said the United States needed to fundamentally change its approach to the Arab world, showing greater respect for its values and helping build a Palestinian state, if it hoped to overcome decades of pent-up anger.
A former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s first democratically elected president,
Mr. Morsi sought in a 90-minute interview with The New York Times to
introduce himself to the American public and to revise the terms of
relations between his country and the United States after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, an autocratic but reliable ally.
He said it was up to Washington to repair relations with the Arab world
and to revitalize the alliance with Egypt, long a cornerstone of
regional stability.
If Washington is asking Egypt to honor its treaty with Israel, he said,
Washington should also live up to its own Camp David commitment to
Palestinian self-rule. He said the United States must respect the Arab
world’s history and culture, even when that conflicts with Western
values.
And he dismissed criticism from the White House
that he did not move fast enough to condemn protesters who recently
climbed over the United States Embassy wall and burned the American flag
in anger over a video that mocked the Prophet Muhammad.
“We took our time” in responding to avoid an explosive backlash, he
said, but then dealt “decisively” with the small, violent element among
the demonstrators.
“We can never condone this kind of violence, but we need to deal with
the situation wisely,” he said, noting that the embassy employees were
never in danger.
Mr. Morsi, who will travel to New York on Sunday for a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly,
arrives at a delicate moment. He faces political pressure at home to
prove his independence, but demands from the West for reassurance that
Egypt under Islamist rule will remain a stable partner....
He made no apologies for his roots in the Brotherhood, the insular
religious revival group that was Mr. Mubarak’s main opposition and now
dominates Egyptian politics. “I grew up with the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said. “I learned my
principles in the Muslim Brotherhood. I learned how to love my country
with the Muslim Brotherhood. I learned politics with the Brotherhood. I
was a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.”...
He was troubled by the gangs and street of violence of Los Angeles, he
said, and dismayed by the West’s looser sexual mores, mentioning couples
living together out of wedlock and what he called “naked restaurants,”
like Hooters. “I don’t admire that,” he said. “But that is the society. They are living their way.”" via Drudge
=========================================
About that Muslim piety:
11/9/2009, "Sex & the Islamic Terrorist, Part Deux (or Gazillion), Debbie Schlussel
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"White House! Black Flag is coming!!!
Before and after both September 11's, US elites continue to support Islamic radicals across the middle east.
9/17/12, "The dangerous U.S. double standard on Islamic extremism," Justin Gengler, Mideast.ForeignPolicy.com
"The death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. officials in Libya last Wednesday should serve to draw much-needed attention to an increasingly untenable contradiction in U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Even while it seeks to recover from this latest attack by Islamic radicals, United States' unwitting support for the latter through continued patronage of that very same ideology elsewhere in the region, most clearly in Syria and in Bahrain. There, U.S. policymakers should expect equally frightening results. ...
When demonstrators in Cairo and Sanaa succeeded in gaining entry into their respective U.S. embassies, in each case they replaced the U.S. flag with a black pennant bearing in white the Muslim profession of faith: "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God." The banners, which U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland downplayed disingenuously as a "plain, black flag," should by now be familiar enough to administration officials. It is the same one adopted by other Salafi extremists, including those belonging to al Qaeda and its regional affiliates, from Mali to Yemen. Not coincidentally, it has made an appearance in each of the mass protests witnessed thus far -- in Benghazi, in Tunis, in Khartoum, and even in Doha.
That the Obama administration would fail to acknowledge the flag's overt symbolism is indicative of an uncomfortable yet enduring truth about U.S. policy in the Middle East: that the United States' enemies in one country are its allies of convenience in another. Even as it reels from the first death of a sitting ambassador in more than two decades, the United States continues to supply logistical and other "command-and-control" support to rebels in Syria, while Gulf allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar pour in money and arms. Of little or insufficient concern, apparently, is the nature of those being empowered, or the broader ideological forces underlying their struggle....
The result is a social and political climate that not only features unprecedented polarization, but that presents a grave threat to U.S. interests -- both political and physical -- in the region.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, brought to the fore uncomfortable questions about the sources of violent Islamic extremism, and about the United States' unwitting support for the latter through continued patronage of those who help sow the seeds of this mindset. One hopes that these uncomfortable questions will now be revisited, and to greater substantive effect, when on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 there should occur yet another act of political violence committed by individuals associated with that very same ideology." photo ForeignPolicy.com
================================
US ruling class relationships with Mideast regimes guarantee strife will continue:
10/20/11, "The lost decade," Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Institute
=========================================
About that Muslim piety:
11/9/2009, "Sex & the Islamic Terrorist, Part Deux (or Gazillion), Debbie Schlussel
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"White House! Black Flag is coming!!!
Before and after both September 11's, US elites continue to support Islamic radicals across the middle east.
9/17/12, "The dangerous U.S. double standard on Islamic extremism," Justin Gengler, Mideast.ForeignPolicy.com
"The death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. officials in Libya last Wednesday should serve to draw much-needed attention to an increasingly untenable contradiction in U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Even while it seeks to recover from this latest attack by Islamic radicals, United States' unwitting support for the latter through continued patronage of that very same ideology elsewhere in the region, most clearly in Syria and in Bahrain. There, U.S. policymakers should expect equally frightening results. ...
When demonstrators in Cairo and Sanaa succeeded in gaining entry into their respective U.S. embassies, in each case they replaced the U.S. flag with a black pennant bearing in white the Muslim profession of faith: "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God." The banners, which U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland downplayed disingenuously as a "plain, black flag," should by now be familiar enough to administration officials. It is the same one adopted by other Salafi extremists, including those belonging to al Qaeda and its regional affiliates, from Mali to Yemen. Not coincidentally, it has made an appearance in each of the mass protests witnessed thus far -- in Benghazi, in Tunis, in Khartoum, and even in Doha.
That the Obama administration would fail to acknowledge the flag's overt symbolism is indicative of an uncomfortable yet enduring truth about U.S. policy in the Middle East: that the United States' enemies in one country are its allies of convenience in another. Even as it reels from the first death of a sitting ambassador in more than two decades, the United States continues to supply logistical and other "command-and-control" support to rebels in Syria, while Gulf allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar pour in money and arms. Of little or insufficient concern, apparently, is the nature of those being empowered, or the broader ideological forces underlying their struggle....
The result is a social and political climate that not only features unprecedented polarization, but that presents a grave threat to U.S. interests -- both political and physical -- in the region.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, brought to the fore uncomfortable questions about the sources of violent Islamic extremism, and about the United States' unwitting support for the latter through continued patronage of those who help sow the seeds of this mindset. One hopes that these uncomfortable questions will now be revisited, and to greater substantive effect, when on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 there should occur yet another act of political violence committed by individuals associated with that very same ideology." photo ForeignPolicy.com
================================
US ruling class relationships with Mideast regimes guarantee strife will continue:
10/20/11, "The lost decade," Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Institute
"That would have pointed to the Middle East’s regimes, and to our ruling class’ relationship with them, as the problem’s ultimate source. The rulers of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority had run (and continue to run) educational and media systems that demonize America.
Under all of them, the Muslim Brotherhood or the Wahhabi sect spread that message in religious terms to Muslims in the West as well as at home.
- That message indicts America, among other things, for being weak.
.
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