Max Boot notes that dissident in Egypt don't get our support any more and that as far as democracy goes, we have let up on Egypt and should not:
Even worse, the administration has blocked any attempt to tie U.S. aid to improvements in Egypt's dismal human rights record. When Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) tried earlier this year to withhold $200 million of Egypt's $1.8-billion aid package, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch went to Capitol Hill to lobby against the measure. "Our strategic partnership with Egypt is in many ways a cornerstone of our foreign policy in the Middle East," Welch asserted. "The United States and Egypt share a common vision of a Middle East that is at peace and free of the scourge of terror."
This sort of claptrap has been emanating from Foggy Bottom Arabists for decades. Bush seemingly repudiated this policy of uncritical support in a 2003 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy in which he called on Egypt to "show the way toward democracy in the Middle East." After making a few genuflections in that direction, Mubarak is now back to his wicked old ways. And yet he suffers no consequences — none! — for defying the wishes of the United States and, more important, of his own people.
I have to assume that the Camp David accords have some secret pledge to provide aid forever--or for a set time that has not arrived yet (if it is 30 years we may soon find out). But given that Egypt has no nukes, access to any area we must have access to, and no oil, can't we pressure them some way? Too many Egyptians are turning up on jihad and the stability of Mubarak will eventually end badly for us if Egyptians think honest Islamists can't possibly be worse than secular crooks.
And given the long rivalry between Egypt and Iraq for leadership in the Arab wolrld, can't we leverage this? Egypt had it until Camp David. Iraq wanted it but blew it by getting bogged down against Iran in the 1980s, and Egypt used its aid to Iraq to claw its way back into the good graces of the Arab world after making peace with Israel.
And really, do we really need to bribe Egypt into not fighting Israel at this point? Israeli military power has been growing relative to Egypt's for fifty years now.
With Iraq getting lots of American help and building what could be the best military in the Arab world, it would seem to me that Egypt should worry more about losing our help and falling behind Iraq again.
