Clueless As Usual - McCain And Lindsay Graham Meet With Muslim Brotherhood In Egypt

The Daily Beast has what it says is an exclusive on Senators McCain and Graham holding forth upon their return from Egypt, where they met with the members of the new Egyptian interim government including Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi and military leader Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi,who ousted Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi from power.

And of course, with whom McCain and Graham refer to as 'senior-level Muslim Brotherhood people'.

According to the pair, the 'high level people' requested they be anonymous,but are demanding that Morsi and the other Brotherhood leaders be released and not tried, and that Morsi and the Islamists be returned to power.

“We told [the Muslim Brother leaders] that in our view, the best way to resolve this issue was to renounce and condemn violence, that they should be willing to negotiate if some of the brotherhood were released from prison,” McCain said. “We were not negotiating, we were just saying what we thought had to be done to get back to the negotiating table.”

“The situation is very difficult here,” he said. “The two sides are polarized, and the Morsi supporters are still demonstrating, and the military and the new government are keeping a lot of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership in jail without communication in unknown places. It’s not a good situation, and we’ve recommended that some of them be released as a goodwill gesture. The only way this will get resolved is if both sides are willing to make some concessions.”

And the threat the two senators are holding over al-Sissi to try and force him to negotiate? Officially calling what happened in Egypt a coup and using it to withhold the $1.5 billion in military aid we give them.

“We told [General al-Sisi] exactly how a lot of members of Congress felt and we want to see negotiations and some release of political prisoners,” he said. “He did not say whether he would or he wouldn’t.”

President Obama tried the same threats and was told to go pound sand. And with the GCE countries including the Saudis stepping in over $13 billion in aid Egypt needs to keep going during the transition, I'm surprised al-Sissi even wasted time listening to these buffoons.

This is the same not-so-dynamic duo whom were perfectly willing to send Morsi and the Islamists F-16s and ignore the Brotherhood's repression and political prisoners they were holding.

Even our State Department and the notoriously clueless John Kerry, our Secretary of State have avoided threatening the Egyptians at this point, trying to hold on to whatever little influence we have with them after President Obama's epic fail in trying to save the Muslim Brotherhood government he helped install in power.

The two senators claim they weren't sent by the president, but they arrived after a two hour special meeting with Obama and - just by coincidence, y'know - at a time when our Deputy Secretary of State William Burns is trying fruitlessly to bust the Islamists out of jail and back into power. They even met with Burns, in an obvious attempt to play good cop/bad cop with al-Sissi that failed miserably.

The Brotherhood in Egypt are attempting to wage guerrilla war in Egypt against the army with riots and sabotage, and as I predicted they're being crushed, in spite of Obama's efforts to salvage them.

Let's parse what's really going on here.The Morsi regime managed to win an election and gain power thanks to President Obama's assistance, but became vastly unpopular once the Egyptians realized what Brotherhood rule actually meant. They were becoming increasingly friendly with our enemies in Iran, were destroying even the mild liberties associated with Egypt's former constitution, and were openly aiding and abetting terrorists in the person of Hamas, the Brotherhood franchise in Gaza.

They are a genocidal and ruthless organization who stand against everything America ought to stand for, and their tactics differ from those of al-Qaeda only when it comes to timing and application. Both groups take their inspiration from al-Banna and Qutb, and both favor an Islamic caliphate. That was something our president and his allies were willing to help them put together in Libya, Egypt, Syria and the Arab-occupied parts of Palestine in the mistaken idea these people can be 'worked with', especially if the Obama Administration continues its work of destroying our current alliance with Israel.

Our two Senators are obviously part of this group, and you might recall McCain's outspoken championing of Hillary's Muslim Brotherhood connected aide Huma Abedin, these senators voting to confirm Chuck Hagel and Samantha Power to sensitive national security posts and McCain's push to arm the al-Qaeda and Brotherhood rebels in Syria, among other things.

The Egyptian military were the spear point of a reaction against that, a part of the real issue in the Middle East these days, the proxy war between the Sunnis led by Saudi Arabia and the Shi'ite bloc led by Iran that has come to a head in Syria.

The Brotherhood and Hamas were also ousted from Qatar, one of their major financial supporters as a new Emir took over, yet another sign that the devil's bargain between the Brotherhood and Arab autocracies like the Saudis may be coming to an end.

As for McCain and Graham, the less said about them the better. They long ago passed the point of farce and are now are an actual problem, one I hope the people of Arizona and South Carolina resolve at the next opportunity to boot them out.