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GLOBAL VIEW
With Friends Like This
Bush betrays Egypt's democrats, for what?
BY BRET STEPHENS
Sunday, June 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
CAIRO--In Washington last month, President Bush met with Gamal Mubarak, heir apparent to the Egyptian throne, and sent regards to Mr. Mubarak's father, President Hosni Mubarak. The House Appropriations Committee turned back an effort by Wisconsin Democrat David Obey to withhold a fraction of Egypt's $1.7 billion annual aid allocation. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that any cuts would damage a "strategic partnership" that is "a cornerstone of U.S. policy in the Middle East."
Also last month, in Cairo, pro-democracy activists such as 39-year-old Ahmed Salah of the Egyptian Movement for Change and dozens of his colleagues were beaten, arrested and detained--ostensibly for congregating publicly in groups larger than five. The emergency law through which Mr. Mubarak has ruled for 25 years was extended again. The judiciary--the only semi-uncorrupted branch of government--is under political assault. And Ayman Nour, the imprisoned liberal politician who ran second to Mr. Mubarak in last September's rigged presidential election, lost his final appeal against a five-year prison sentence on forgery charges.
Maybe there is no connection between the first and second set of events. Maybe Mr. Mubarak did not need tacit American acquiescence to embark on his latest campaign of repression. Maybe there are plausible reasons for the administration to go soft on the regime for now. But speak to opposition figures here and the sense of American betrayal is palpable....
