I write to set before you a Machiavellian hypothesis, which I hope is original here. Just suppose what is happening in Egypt, the arrests and bloodshed, is exactly what we want to have happen there. Suppose further that our private agreement with the Egyptian military is that for public relations reasons we have to deplore the violence while recognizing its necessity.
That set of suppositions certainly explains our current posture: asking both sides to play nice while not cutting off military aid to Egypt. I'd like to think it was the result of careful calculation, not us being helplessly frozen in the headlights like a deer.
Clearly the Muslim Brotherhood is no friend of the U.S. Having the Egyptian military cut them up for ostensibly local reasons while we keep our hands clean looks like win-win from where I sit. Or am I giving our State Department too much credit?
