When Egyptian police opened fire on protesters in Cairo over the weekend, they ended not only scores of lives but also any chance of a peaceful resolution to Egypt’s burgeoning civil war. They also further exposed the Barack Obama administration’s hypocritical policy of maintaining aid to the regime, despite U.S. law requiring a suspension.
The day before the killings, the administration had declared that it would circumvent the law, which mandates a cutoff of aid to any country whose legitimately elected leader is overthrown in a military coup. The U.S. would not determine whether the Egyptian military’s coup against legitimately elected President Mohamed Mursi was what it was. “Legal obligations” were important, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. It’s just that unspecified “national security interests” were more important.
