CNS News explains how the downfall of Obama’s Muslim Brotherhood allies is being greeted with joy by Egypt’s Christian community.
Excerpt:
Father Rafik Greiche, head of the press office of the Egyptian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, declared that the ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood supporters on July 3 was “a joyous day for Christians.” “The ousting of Morsi and the political new beginning is a joyous day for us Christians in Egypt and for all Egyptians. We hope that we will not be excluded from the political process that lies before us,” he said during a talk last Thursday with the Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
[…]Fr. Greiche made a point to note that what happened in Egypt was not a coup d’état. Rather, he said, “the army carried out the will of the people. They expressed this unequivocally over the last few days through millions of signatures and massive demonstrations in Cairo and throughout the whole country.”
“A number of western media are now presenting it as a coup d’état. But a putsch happens when officers take power and act without the endorsement of the people. But this is exactly what did not happen in Egypt yesterday. Moreover, the army wanted to prevent the bloodshed the Muslim brothers were threatening. This is why they took action.”
[…]A 2012 State Department report noted increased violence towards Egyptian Christians following the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and the election of Muslim Brotherhood-backed Morsi a year ago.
“The government generally failed to prevent, investigate, or prosecute crimes against members of religious minorities, including Coptic Christians, which fostered a climate of impunity. In some cases, authorities reacted slowly or with insufficient resolve when mobs attacked Christians and their property,” according to the State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report.
I think this story beautifully illustrates why Christians should care about politics and foreign policy. The truth is that there are forces in places throughout the world that are hostile to Judeo-Christian values. Good foreign policy that promotes economic freedom and freedom of religion should be the cause of every informed Christian. One of the reasons why the Muslim Brotherhood, a group linked to terrorism, is doing so well is because Egypt’s economy is doing so poorly.
Investors Business Daily thinks that the best way to bring freedom to Egypt is by bring prosperity to Egypt – the same way that freedom was brought to Chile in the past.
Take a look:
Like with Morsi, Chile in 1973 was ruled by a so-called democrat, Salvador Allende, who after barely winning election revealed he didn’t intend to govern democratically. A Marxist, Allende moved fast to ram through radical, Cuban-style “reforms” on an unwilling public.
Allende foreshadowed Morsi, demolishing political institutions, trampling the free press, disrespecting minority rights, ignoring the constitution, disregarding the separation of powers, trashing property rights and ruining the economy. Also, Allende was in thrall to a failed and inhuman foreign ideology — communism — just as Morsi was to Islamofascism. In both cases, the only exit was a military coup.
Had Chilean military commander Augusto Pinochet simply handed the country back to “democracy” without changing the root causes of the turmoil and tyranny, the cycle would have had a replay.
But he didn’t. He used his military government as an incubator for free-market changes, transforming his country into not just Latin America’s best economy, but also Latin America’s most durable democracy. Pinochet — who stepped down dutifully after 17 years upon losing a referendum — understood that economic freedom had to precede political freedom. He employed a brilliant group of mostly University of Chicago-educated young Chilean economists, known as the Chicago Boys, to transform the society by cleaning out thousands of weedlike laws choking Chile’s economy — on labor, mining, currency, fishing, vineyards, startups and pensions.
They made the central bank independent and instituted hard-core fiscal discipline that has left the country debt-free and pushed its credit rating toward triple A.
Thousands of businesses were freed to open and operate without thickets of regulations — resulting in the spate of Chilean products now seen in America’s supermarkets: wine, fruit, fish.
They signed free-trade pacts with 60 countries to expand the reach of their tiny market to a global one — the better to attract foreign investment.
And in what economist Milton Friedman called “the crown jewel” of these reforms, Chile’s 30-year-old Labor Minister Jose Pinera offered Chileans a choice of public or private pensions — making each worker a minicapitalist with a stake in the system — and giving the country a vast pool of capital to develop the country.
Right now, frankly, this is what Egypt needs — a free-market economy that enables it citizens to matter.
America now pushes for political freedom before the economic kind. It did this Iraq and now in Egypt, creating weak or failed democracies. In 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was getting calls from Egyptians during the Arab Spring asking how to replicate Chile’s reforms — and we’ve heard nothing since.
But the Chilean example shows that economic freedom is what makes political freedom possible .
Fox News recalls why the Muslim Brotherhood got into power in the first place.
Excerpt:
Millions protesting in the streets. Another leader deposed. Dozens killed in violent clashes, including at least 51 people slain on Monday. Obama’s Mideast policy is in shambles. Nowhere is that more obvious that Egypt, which just held its second revolution in as many years.
Egypt isn’t just a problem. It’s a full-fledged disaster, hand-delivered to us by President Obama. He sabotaged our ally Hosni Mubarak more than a year ago, then defended that strategy during his reelection campaign.
[…]Back in February 2011, Obama first said “change must take place” and about a week later outright called for Mubarak to go. Given the U.S.’s financial influence on Egypt, that effectively destroyed a key ally.
[…]When asked during the presidential debates in October if he regretted abandoning Mubarak, Obama was clear: “I don’t because I think that America has to stand with democracy.” He then listed several areas that he expected the new government to push including taking “responsibility for protecting religious minorities,” recognizing “the rights of women,” abiding “by their treaty with Israel,” and “developing their own economy.”
With the exception of Israel, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood failed at the rest and now Obama is standing by them. Christians have been attacked, women raped and terrorized, and the Egyptian economy is a disaster. Fuel shortages are common and half the population is living on less than $2 a day.
The Muslim Brotherhood has shown itself to be radical and dangerous. One of the last straws for the Egyptians was apparently when Morsi called for a holy war in Syria in support of the Sunni Muslims against the Shia Muslim leadership.
The Brotherhood even released a bizarre, anti-Semitic statement about Morsi’s replacement, saying, “A Jew in Egypt’s seat of power.”
Now that same military Obama trusted last time around has rejected Morsi’s anti-American, radical Islamist government. The Obama response? He has ordered a review of the funding we send to Egypt. He even supported keeping the Brotherhood in the government.
What Christians should have done in 2008 and 2012 is voted against Obama, because apologizing to Muslim dictators and Communist dictators is not going to spread the prosperity and liberty we need in order to have world peace. Christians need to think hard about the role that foreign policy plays in a Christian worldview. I think this is especially important for Christian women, who in my experience struggle to understand how foreign policy works. We need to think about the way the world works in order to achieve good. Achieving good is not the same thing as being liked or feeling good. We want to achieve good, and that takes knowledge of how the world really works.
WINTERY KNIGHT 