More Obama ineptitude in Egypt

One day:

"I want to thank President Morsi for his personal leadership to de-escalate the situation in Gaza and end the violence," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who met Morsi Thursday, said at a Cairo press conference with Egypt's foreign minister announcing the accord. "This is a critical moment for the region. Egypt's new government is assuming the responsibility and leadership that has long made this country a cornerstone of regional stability and peace," she said.

The next:

Egypt's highest body of judges on Saturday slammed a recent decision by [President Morsi] to grant himself near-absolute power, calling the move an "unprecedented assault" on the judiciary. In a statement carried on Egypt's official MENA news agency, the Supreme Judicial Council condemned this week's declaration by President Mohammed Morsi placing his decrees above judicial review until a new constitution and Parliament is in place, several months if not more in the future.

So, it turns out that the man that the Obama Administration praises one day as a great statesman turns out the next day to be just another petty Islamist tyrant. Talk about egg on the face.

The President's naivete concerning Mr Morsi's intentions is well-conveyed by the breathless coverage given by the New York Times to the new love affair between the two leaders. Gushes the Times:

The cease-fire brokered between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday was the official unveiling of this unlikely new geopolitical partnership, one with bracing potential if not a fair measure of risk for both men. After a rocky start to their relationship, Mr. Obama has decided to invest heavily in the leader whose election caused concern because of his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, seeing in him an intermediary who might help make progress in the Middle East beyond the current crisis in Gaza. ... Mr. Obama told aides he was impressed with the Egyptian leader’s pragmatic confidence. He sensed an engineer’s precision with surprisingly little ideology. Most important, Mr. Obama told aides that he considered Mr. Morsi a straight shooter who delivered on what he promised and did not promise what he could not deliver. “The thing that appealed to the president was how practical the conversations were — here’s the state of play, here are the issues we’re concerned about,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “This was somebody focused on solving problems.”

An engineer focused on solving problems? Rather an Islamist radical who supports the terrorist organization Hamas and seizes dictatorial power over Egypt. Bracing potential, indeed!

So, we have come full circle. We started with the dictator Hosni Mubarak and have ended up with the dictator Mohammed Morsi. The difference, however, is that Mubarak was friendly to the West and conciliatory towards Israel, while Morsi is a supporter of Hamas. How this state of affairs represents an improvement for US interests remains to be explained by Mr Obama. What it looks like instead is that the Administration hasn't a clue about what is going on in Egypt. Perhaps we should expect Susan Rice to make the rounds of the Sunday morning talk shows tomorrow to explain that the new turmoil in Egypt is a spontaneous reaction to an offensive video.