Why Would We Arm Our Racist, Jihadist Enemies?
It should be a basic moral axiom of American foreign policy that we don't give away advanced weapons to racist, radical, and unstable foreign governments.
In fact, that's not just morality; it's common sense.
Yet that's exactly what we're doing. The Obama administration is in the process of delivering 20 advanced F-16 fighter jets and 200 M1 Abrams tanks to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood-led government. Four jets have been delivered, and the rest of the equipment will be delivered within months. To be clear, Egypt did not purchase these weapons. They're a gift from you, the American taxpayer, to the Muslim Brotherhood.
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That's right, at exactly the same time that 77 percent of American taxpayers face tax increases as a result of the most recent fiscal cliff deal, a radical jihadist government gets more than $200 million worth of American arms – for free.
Just how radical is the Muslim Brotherhood? The motto of the Muslim Brotherhood is plain enough:
Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope
And lest anyone think this motto refers to the peaceful "inner struggle" version of Jihad, we can't forget that the current leader of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, got his start in the Muslim Brotherhood, and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood founded the terrorist organization Hamas (which rains down rockets on Israeli civilians).
The current leader of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, has called Jews "bloodsuckers" and "descendants of apes and pigs." He even declared that Egyptian children should be "nursed on hatred" against Jews. When called on that comment by a delegation of U.S. Senators, he lamely declared that his words were taken out of context and blamed – you guessed it – the allegedly Jewish-controlled media.
This week, news emerged that a top Egyptian aide called the Holocaust a "hoax" and claimed that the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust actually simply moved to the United States.
And if actions speak louder than even these detestable words, since the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt, jihadists have used its soil to attack Israeli civilians from the Sinai, and jihadists have moved from Egypt to Libya and then Algeria to attack and kill Americans. Last September, Egyptian security forces allowed a jihadist mob to attack and storm the American embassy, where the mob tore down the American flag and replaced it with the black flag of jihad.
Making the situation even worse, since coming to power in Egypt, the Brotherhood has violently persecuted Egypt's Christian minority, enacted a Shariah-based constitution that restricts civil liberties, and now is moving the military – the very same military we're supplying with advanced weapons -- into Egyptian cities to suppress revolts from more secular and moderate Egyptians.
The list of wrongs continues: The Muslim Brotherhood last year moved tanks into the Sinai Peninsula in clear violation of the 34 year-old Camp David Accords that ended a decades-long state of war between Egypt and Israel.
At the ACLJ we launched a petition to call on the White House and State Department to halt delivery of advanced weapons until it is clear that Egypt not only behaves like an ally (including abiding by the letter and spirit of its treaty with Israel) but also respects the most basic human rights of its citizens. Until that day comes, we should not send another fighter jet, another tank, another rifle, or indeed another single cent of U.S. taxpayer aid to Egypt's jihadist government.
Within weeks of launching that petition, we'd garnered more than 215,000 signatures, and on January 31, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced an amendment to a short-term budget bill banning the delivery of advanced weapons to Egypt. Unfortunately, however, few senators stood with him, and his amendment failed 79-19.
Millions of Americans are deeply cynical about our government's integrity and even basic competence. In an era of record deficits, when we use taxpayer money to arm our enemies, our cynicism only deepens.
This should not be a partisan issue. As Sen. Paul noted shortly before the vote, this is an issue where 80 percent of Americans are supported by only 20 percent of the Senate.
But all that can change the instant the Senate (and House) understand that Americans do not, in fact, want to spend their hard-earned money (or borrow money from China) to purchase weapons for our enemies. Four fighters have already been delivered, but 16 have not. And 200 tanks still wait delivery.
They should stay on American soil.
