CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, January 31, 2011

Egypt: It’s the Suez Canal, stupid!

Whatever the outcome of the crisis in Egypt, readers need to know the mainstream media are leading us astray. Those behind the riots are not pro-democracy forces. They are the militant wing of the Muslim Brotherhood which is connected with Hamas, another terrorist front organization. The Muslim Brotherhood is a Wahhabi-Sunni-dominated fundamentalist Islamic group that is determined to make Egypt as radically anti-American as Iran.

We are being led astray because TV reporters find English-speaking Egyptians to interview, not the typical Arab on the streets of Cairo or Alexandria or out in the desert. The English-speakers seen on TV are from the better-educated and more liberal class of Egyptians. Without doubt, they favor a more democratic government; however, some of them are, unknowingly, acting as the “useful idiots” of Hamas, al-Qaeda and Iran.

The public face of the Muslim Brotherhood claims to reject radical Islam. But that is not true. Two of its early adherents were Sayyid Qutb (pronounced que-tub) and Ayman al-Zawahiri (currently, Osama bin Laden’s chief-of-staff).

In 1948-1950, Sayyid Qutb studied in the United States. In part, Qutb became radicalized against Judeo-Christian Western Civilization based on his observations of the women he saw at then Colorado State College for Education in Greeley, Colorado. Qutb wrote: “…the American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs – and she knows all this and does not hide it.”

Returning to Egypt, Qutb became a proponent of Wahhabism, the branch of Islam on which al-Qaeda, and some other violent Islamic organizations are based. Qutb opposed the secularism of then Egyptian President Gamel Nasser to the point Nasser had him jailed several times and finally executed.

If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over the government of Egypt, 30 years of U.S. foreign policy go out the window. Moreover, our vital interests across the Middle East will suffer a blow akin to allowing the Iranians to have the nuclear weapons that would make Iran the ruling power over the Middle East and the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

For three decades, the tri-partite peace between Egypt, Israel and the United States has been the key to protecting the maritime interests of the United States from the Straits of Gibraltar in the western Mediterranean to the vital Suez Canal and down through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and on around to the entrance to the Persian Gulf. If the Muslim Brotherhood gains control over the Suez Canal, the currently oil-dependent U.S. industrial complex could collapse.

Who has been working behind the scenes to put the Muslim Brotherhood in control of Egypt and the Suez Canal? You decide; however, in June, 2009, the Egyptian daily newspaper Almasry Alyoum reported: “U.S. President Barack Obama met with Egypt’s Islamist opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, earlier this year.” According to the January 28, 2011, issue of the UK’s The Daily Telegraph, "...the U.S. has been secretly backing the leading figures behind the uprising who have been planning ’regime change’ for the past three years.” WikiLeak documents show our embassy in Cairo has been secretly assisting “pro-democracy” activists in Egypt. Last week, David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s closest adviser, confirmed to ABC News that Mr. Obama has been confronting President Mubarak on human-rights issues for over two years.

What needs to happen in Egypt is for the already dying President Mubarak to turn over his office to some charismatic military officer who can quell the riots by adopting some truly democratic reforms, and who will reaffirm the historic partnership between Egypt, Israel, and the U.S. in opposing radical Islam. And, most importantly, keep the Suez Canal open to ships of all nations.

William Hamilton, long-time featured columnist for USA Today and former paperboy for the Anadarko Daily News, is a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Naval College and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the U.S. Army War College. He was also educated at the University of Oklahoma, the George Washington University, the University of Nebraska, and Harvard University.

©2011. William Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com