Analysis: Obama unlikely to support Cairo opposition.

Analysis: Obama unlikely to support Cairo opposition.(JPost).Thousands of opposition activists protested across Egypt on Monday, the second anniversary of former president Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, chanting against the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of President Mohamed Morsi.
“Down with the rule of the [Muslim Brotherhood] supreme guide,” they shouted, according to a report in Egyptian paper Al-Ahram. Protesters also disrupted traffic and created disorder at various locations in Cairo, blocking the country’s largest administrative center at Tahrir Square for the second day.
As tensions rise between the Muslim Brotherhood and the opposition, US President Barack Obama’s policy has been to not actively support the opposition.
Instead, Obama believes he is achieving regional stability by strengthening Morsi’s hold on power.
Obama approved a recent delivery of over 20 F-16 fighter jets, and has continued the annual military and economic aid. Furthermore, he has kept relatively quiet over Morsi’s undemocratic maneuvers in consolidating his party’s position.
However, this policy has risks. Almost every day, news reports emerge from Egypt demonstrating that Morsi continues to act against US national interests. Just last week, Morsi gave Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a glorious reception and kisses on the cheek. In addition, anti-Semitic and anti-American statements that Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders have issued over the years are being pushed under the rug.
According to analysts, Obama’s objective is to manipulate Morsi, using US aid, into following US interests, and he justifies this policy by citing the moral imperative of respecting the results of Egyptian elections.
However, Obama appears to be favoring a regime at odds with American interests at the expense of supporting an opposition that has elements more closely aligned with those interests.
Writes Pipes, “Is not anyone in the Department of State aware that Egypt is now run by an Islamist zealot from the bowels of the Muslim Brotherhood whose goals differ profoundly from those of Americans?”
Pipes notes in a recent post on his blog that the US suffers from naïveté, believing that “training and equipping foreign troops imbues them with American political and ethical values, making them allies of the United States.” He mentions problems related to the policies of training forces in Afghanistan, Mali and the Palestinian Authority. In these cases and others, US military support has or likely will backfire.
According to Schenker, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is doing what the Islamists did in Turkey under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It took Erdogan 10 years to take over the army in Turkey, and Morsi has already started a similar process, dismissing the heads of the army and around 70 generals.
The moral of the story for Israel is that it will find it difficult to directly counter Obama’s continued support for Morsi.
Israel’s policy on this front continues to be paralyzed, and is based on the hope that US economic leverage will keep Morsi in line.
The problems will begin if Morsi starts throwing support behind proxy forces that are acting against Israel.Hmmmm.....“I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.” .Read the full story here.