What Should The U.S. Be Doing In Egypt?
Egypt's crisis has ignited a familiar debate over U.S. foreign policy where the combatants cluster around two basic viewpoints: The U.S. is doing too little, and the U.S. is doing too much.
So which is it? Is America shrewdly orchestrating events behind the scenes, or is it just an impotent bystander in the Egyptian drama? It depends on whom you ask.
In very broad terms, many Egyptians feel the U.S. has a sinister hand in most every development, while many American pundits feel the Obama administration has been unable or unwilling to tap U.S. influence to guide events in Egypt.
"The U.S. ambassador to Egypt wields so much potential influence that Egyptians obsess daily over whom she is meeting, and they concoct wild conspiracies based on trivial events," Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution wrote in The Washington Post. "The assumption in Egypt, as in much of the Arab world, is that nothing happens unless the United States wills it."
Al Jazeera reported Wednesday that the U.S. State Department has funded a number of private groups that were actively involved in opposing Mohammed Morsi, the democratically elected president who was ousted by the Egyptian military on July 3 following massive street protests.
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