From Michael Totten At World Affairs: ‘Egypt’s President Imitates Ayatollah Khomeini’

Full post here.

This might be worth noting, as it was very likely that U.S.-Egyptian relations were going to get worse, but current events could be expediting that process:

‘David Frum at the Daily Beast thinks Morsi is “fabricating an international incident to mobilize religious passions as a weapon for his political grouping against more secular blocs in Egyptian society.” It’s hard to say for sure, but that’s probably right.

Morsi might stop framing the United States when he needs to mobilize his authoritarian shock troops if President Obama threatens to cut off his funding (which, at this point, we might want to consider doing regardless). Otherwise, Morsi will have no incentive whatsoever to stop. It would then be just a matter of time before more people get killed and Egyptian-American relations deteriorate anyway.’

Addition:  Totten has more here:  ‘Enough Appeasement Already.‘  I can envision what the Obama administration might be trying to do, after the policies it has laid down:  Appeal to a broader muslim group against extremists and Islamists, try to find a sweet spot of public sentiment in the Muslim world for a better path, and to make the Islamists look like the violent, dangerous, thugs they are and push them to irrelevance.  But you don’t appease.  You protect your own.  You let every field agent know that you’re working as hard, or even harder, for their safety and our interests.  You carry a big stick and you don’t meet incensed, fact derived crowds and planned attacks with weakness.

My two cents.

Another Addition:  NY Times piece on a conversation between Obama and Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.  It’s ‘optimistic.’ There is a lot of pent-up anger, a lot of mobs, and a lot of it being directed all too easily at the American embassy in Egypt out of righteous indignation  according to the piece.  Will the Brotherhood use it as fuel and build what is fundamentally an anti-Mubarak, anti-military, anti-Jewish, anti-Western Muslim bloc…rounding up the furies unleashed into political expedience and necessary ties with other, often more extreme, groups in and outside of Egypt as well as the rest of the Islamist revival?  My guess is yes, it will.  That’s a matter of time.

In the meantime, I should hope there aren’t any more murders of our citizens, nor our diplomats.

Another Addition:  The Independent has more on who may have known what, when.  The Atlantic links to a world map displaying every current protest across the Muslim world, including London.

Related On This Site:  From Al Jazeera English: ‘Morsi Wins Egypt’s Presidential Election’Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest on Egypt: ‘Still More of the Same—and Something New’…are we still on a liberalizing, Westernizing trajectory?, however slow the pace? Adam Garfinkle At The American Interest: ‘What Did The Arab Spring Really Change?’