Generals and patrons: The American-Egyptian miliarty

The US's cozy relationship with Egypt's military should be reexamined.

Marwan Bishara is the senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.

As the situation escalates into a full-fledged confrontation between the Egyptian military and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, Washington is once again playing catch-up with its own clients.
Happy to see the back of the Islamists, the US administration refrained from referring to the military overthrow of President Morsi as a coup even when influential members of Congress recognised it as such.
The Obama administration wanted the coup to work; it did not want blood on its hands. But if they hoped to appease and influence the military, they were wrong.
The generals adamant on containing, if not breaking the Brotherhood, saw the political challenges facing Egypt as security problems that require the use of force.
They imposed emergency laws that allows more control, but in reality it led to more escalation.
As they prepared to publicly crackdown on Morsi's supporters through force, Washington remained largely silent.
US calls for restraint, dialogue, and a return to the ballot box seemed more rhetorical than practical or effective.
America's eagerness to maintain a close relationship with the military and remain relevant in the country has prevented it from taking a clear stand.
Investing in the Egyptian militaryEgypt is a "major non-NATO ally" with the military to military liaisons at its core. Egypt's military relationship with the West took off after the 1979 Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt, rendering Egypt the second-largest recipient of its bilateral assistance after Israel.

America constantly misreads the situation on the ground in the various countries which it hopes have political influence.

The coup in Chile

The CIA is acknowledging for the first time the extent of its deep involvement in Chile, where it dealt with coup-plotters, false propagandists and assassins.

The agency planned to post a declassified report required by Congress on its Web site today that admits CIA support for the 1970 kidnapping of Chile’s top general for refusing to use the Army to prevent the country’s congress from confirming the election of socialist Salvador Allende as president. The kidnapping failed, but Gen. Rene Schneider was shot and died two days later, the day Allende’s election was confirmed.

The CIA admits prior knowledge of the plot that overthrew Allende three years later but denies direct involvement. The report says the agency had no idea that Allende would refuse safe passage with his palace under bombardment and apparently kill himself. He was found dead of gunshot wounds.

There is no evidence the CIA wanted Schneider killed for refusing to join the coup attempt in 1970, the report said, although the agency later paid $35,000 to the group that botched his capture.

CIA Payment to Secret Police Chief

General Augusto Pinochet would within a year of the coup became the military dictator of Chile under his rule thousands of were killed and imprisoned.  Why did the American's want a coup?  Because the elected President Salvador Allende was a Socialist.


Anastasio Somoza Garcia is the former dictator of Nicaragua who came to power with the help of the United States Marines.  The Somoza family ruled Nicaragua until they were overthrown by the Sandinistas in 1979.

In the 1970s the FSLN began a campaign of kidnappings which led to national recognition of the group in the Nicaraguan media and solidifaction of the group as a force in opposition to the Somoza Regime.^[17] The Somoza Regime, which included the Nicaraguan National Guard, a force highly trained by the U.S. military, used torture, extra-judicial killings, intimidation and censorship of the press in order to combat the FSLN attacks.^[18] This led to international condemnation of the regime and in 1977 the Carter Administration in the U.S. cut off aid to the Somoza regime due to its human rights violations.
On 10 January 1978 the editor of the leftist Managua newspaper La Prensa, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal was murdered by suspected elements of the Somoza regime and riots broke out in the capital city, Managua which targeted Somoza regime.^[19] Following the riots and general strike on January 23-24 called for the end fo the Somoza regime and was, according the the U.S. State Department staff at the U.S. Embassy, successful at shutting around 80% of businesses in not only Managua but also the provincial capitals of Leon, Granada, Chinandega, and Matagalpa.^[20]In the words of William Dewy, an employee of Citi Bank who witnessed the riots in Managua:

Iraq is the most recent example of the U.S. believing they will be greeted like liberators by the people only realize far too late that sectarian discontent caused by a majority Shiites being ruled by a minority Sunnis and grown into a schism so vast that reconciliation between the two different branches of Islam was probably not a feasible  outcome given the amount of abuse Saddam Hussein's government  had inflicted upon the Shia's including the chemical warfare attack in 1988 which by some estimates killed several hundred if not several thousand people.