A Speech In Cairo

It occurs to me that not only can one drive a car from Tehran to Paris, one can also drive from Egypt to Moscow.

One would think the Russians of all people would remember that.

Phantom, the Russians shoot first, ask questions later, if at all!

UNEXPECTEDLY!

If Russia wants to take responsibility for the ME, they can go right ahead. America shouldn't be sending any aid to anybody let alone a dictatorship like Egypt's.

LAS in a way I agree with you. Leave the ME and its oil to Eurasia. North America should be energy self-sufficient. What we don't need will be easy to sell to China and India. Besides George Soros, Al Gore, Maurice Strong, David Suzuki the entire Rockefeller family might stroke out - was I wrong to say besides?

OTOH, we live in dangerous times and overreliance on a nuclear deterrent is unwise. Russia's gain in influence will surely, as it has in the past, spell bad news for the US. It would be nice though if we disentangled ourselves from ME affairs, but then again there's our ally Israel. So, pretty complicated situation and Obama isn't thinking strategically, if he actually has that ability beyond utopian goals - that mark his greatness of course. ;>)

Egypt, like everything else Obama has touched has turned to rot. Putin is respected and Obama's credibility for supporting the Muslim brotherhood is zero. Kerry is a light weight (lightest)and so the die is cast for a major power shift. Syria was the last line in the sand and Iran now owns the sandbox. There's just no way this will end well and it's moving much too fast for the community activist in chief and his incompetent inner circle of advisers. Putin is playing chess and Obama still hasn't mastered checkers. The game is already over and Obama doesn't even know it. Putin won.

So let's see if I got this right.......... The Yanks give billions of dollars in aid to Egypt and then the Egyptians spend billions of dollars to buy Russian fighters...... Why don't the Americans just put their tongue of a metal pipe in February in Speedy Creek Sask????????

CT>

The Russians are no more infidels than the western world and I would say the Russian Orthodox church retains a lot of influence that the leadership has to consider.

http://3219a2.medialib.glogster.com/media/90/90462d923c36eec7eddd339c6747016bbdb2da38c9dd79f7d284f004053cb2e2/religion-chart.jpg

I agree with your analogy, but after being betrayed by Obama in favor of the Muslim brotherhood I doubt that the US training for officers would matter and certainly no loyalty that would filter through to the ranks.

The Maj> Cute, but they seem to be doing that with every decision Obama makes. Keystone being the dumbest one.

Las> Moral support ? Good one Las, you outdid yourself.

Obamas bungling is digging a deeper hole every day. With the Gestapo style NSA, child molesting TSA, drug running CIA, and Fast and Furious selling guns to the Mexican cartels how would you expect the State Department to have any success in the ME.

Yanks figure foreign policy is having a lot of "likes" in a Twitter account. After watching the Syrian debacle, Assad being the only middle east leader protecting Christians, and Obummer's CIA funding and training Al Quaida, I really hope Russia takes over Egypt and the rest of the Levant.

cgh;
I might be delusional but tend to side on events where the bottom line rules versus ideology.

Iran: It is possible that Iran is playing the USA but I have to assume that mutually beneficial gains would speak otherwise. Iran ahs been actively subverting both Syria and Iraq with mixed results. Such efforts are not cost free. Again I stress it is not Iran that is formenting international Sunni jihad but Saudi Arabia. Developing a working relationship with the USA allows Iran to get about the business of rebuilding their country. If the past election riots indicated anything to the government there it was that their people were not happy with their economic plight.

USA: Sure the USA could be in Iran for a political feel good exercise but there are reasons for a détente and even a possible alliance. It is the Saudis who flew the planes into the Towers on 9/11 not the Iranians. It is the Saudis who continue to finance international jihad. That effort extends into the mosques in the USA. The Boston bombers were not Shiites. America's efforts in the ME has cost them huge $'s and tied up military forces which could have challenged Russian adventures elsewhere. This commitment has made other allies such as Poland question the value of an American ally. Iran and the USA have mutual interests in the independent 'stan' countries that border both Iran and Russia.

Egypt: Egypt cannot feed itself without some form of assistance. It has few natural assets other than the Nile and the Suez and a population. The population has been a military hammer that future conflict might have utilized. The reality of modern warfare has almost eliminated that advantage. What value does Egypt offer to a potential ally? Wasted money.

Saudi Arabia: As the focal point of radical Islam it has had petro $'s to finance much international discord. Iran has always viewed it has their biggest threat. The Saudi's leveraged their oil into alliances that paid for their defense while continuing to fund international jihad. This power is all under attack today as more oil is coming on stream around the world. The USA is now the largest producer of crude in the world. Not only is this making them financially stronger but it is freeing up the ability of their foreign policy to break away from the Saudi dominance in the ME.

I have to conclude that some kind of co-operation will evolve with the Iranians because it makes political and economic sense. IMHO the military threat of Egypt has been neutralized by weapons advancement and by their likely collapse into irrelevance.