I found this news through twitter and it does not make me comfortable : Senior US marine says multiple Platoons deployed to Egypt
What evacuation of American citizens they are speaking about when they have started to evacuated the citizens since last week !!??
What is the role of these platoons exactly ?? Is there any fear on the U.S embassy !!? I do not understand this provoking news for real.
I hope it has nothing to do with the Suez canal in fact I hope they do not come near to my country and my people.
Technorati Tags: Egypt,Politics,Citizen journalism,America,U.S army,Marines,National security,Mideast,#Jan25,Suez Canal,army
I hope so too, dear, I hope they will not agitate the situation that will require radical militants to step forth and hijack your country.
ReplyDeleteHere's my 1/2 cent.
http://iranfacts.blogspot.com/2011/02/iranians-fighting-to-appropriate-middle.html
Actually the chances are it has everything to do with Suez Canal.
ReplyDeletethe current scenario of the Mubarak 200 days in power does not set well with the American administration,
they know Mubarak and Soliman even more than us and they are sure they have to deal with instability for 200 days and certainly beyond, they can’t take chances on this stupid scenario
While Mubark regiem is fighting the dirty war of attrition and misinformation, the continuous heat puts him vulnerable to any action within his inner circle. The persistent escalation of Egyptian intifada is a tremendous stress on the loyalty of his Egyptian guardians.
ReplyDeleteSeveral hundred marines under foreign command are not intended for non-violent Tahrir, rather assurance of his safe stay, and if necessary then exit. After all, the marines can't come except with his permission, or likely his request. To Mubark, Egyptians are ungrateful to his public service and can't be trusted.
The Suez Canal carries 10% of world trade and 4.5% of world oil production. Shut down the Canal and the world economy takes a tumble. Right now, the world economy can’t handle such an exogenous shock caused by political instability. The global economy would sink back into recession and the fiscal crisis would re-ignite. Governments would default in Europe. States would declare insolvency in the United States. Food prices and energy would sky rocket in the emerging markets. Stock markets will collapse. A wave of political upheaval would sweep the Mideast and then the world.
ReplyDeleteThe Canadian.
Just take it at face value. If that report is accurate, they'll only be there to assist and protect American citizens and her embassy.
ReplyDeleteThis action was not done without the knowledge of the Egyptian army. They met at the pentagon a week before the protests began. That's got to make you wonder.
ReplyDeleteThe Canadian is right. The U.S. will protect commerce at all costs.
I was just watching the brilliant Azmi Bishara on Al Jazeera and he said that the people are right not to accept that anybody represent them until this criminal regime is removed, because those representatives can be dragged into an endless and dangerous cycle of "negotiations" that will result in various "representatives" competing for the regime's acceptance and getting lost in obscure constitutional details, ignoring the fact that the regime itself and the constitution it made are all based on fraud and therefore illegal.
ReplyDeleteI think that Ayman Noor's lawsuit in the Hague against Hosni Mubarak for crimes against humanity is an excellent move. All the crimes of this regime against the Egyptian people and nation need to be exposed, so that we can get rid of the stupid talk about Mubarak being our "father" and worthy of respect. The exposure of the Mubarak's vast stolen fortune also serves to show the nature of this regime and how empty its propaganda is.
At the same time Ahmed Shafiq and Omar Suleiman were making nice on tv, the regime's thugs were kidnapping and beating human rights activists.
The regime is still forbidding filming or news coverage of the hundreds of thousands of Egyptian citizens ACROSS EGYPT, not only in Medan Tahrir, facing beatings and even death to get rid of their oppressors. The people are demanding their rights and their freedom and the government responded by unleashing violent armed criminals against them and closing the banks and cutting off communications and closing roads and shooting and killing people.
Neither Mubarak nor Suleiman have any legal standing -- they have been imposed on the Egyptian people by an illegitimate regime based on fraud and terrorism.
It is the people and only the people who have the right to confer legitimacy on a government; the people have come out into the streets to prove that this government and this regime and especially its head and the scary vice president he appointed, have no legitimacy at all.
The National Democratic Party (NDP) was neither democratic nor National since it had no popular support as such. It was dominated by the ruling autocrates, it limited freedom of expression and exercised all manners of undemocratic activies from censorship to torture. Its members stood by whilst a police state did what it had to do to tame the people of Egypt. Like Tunisia's former ruling party whose activities have been suspended, if the NDP party was undemocratic then its activities too must be suspended. It makes sense therefore that all former members of the NDP who stood by for so many decades really ought not to be part of the next Egyptian government if democracy is to prevail.
ReplyDeleteZeinobia, I think you're seeing threats that aren't there. The presence of this MEU was announced a couple weeks ago, before the protests even got really hot. It would probably take an essay to explain what the US uses Marine Expeditionary Units for during an international crisis, but the short version is that they are traditionally either used as a short-term emergency peace keeping force or they are used to evacuate people in an emergency. And that includes evacuating dictators and their families and friends. So any of these theories from the keeping the Suez Canal open (peacekeeping) to evacuating the embassy or even evacuating Mubarak could be true. It's most likely that they are merely a contingency at this point in time, waiting for events to unfold.
ReplyDeleteOne thing they aren't there to do is interfere with Egyptian protesters.
Building on what programmer craig said, the MEU is small, not enough Marines to help Mubarak or capture the Suez Canal.
ReplyDeleteThe last time there was a revolution in the Middle East was in Iran in 1979. The result (aside from the Islamic Republic being declared) was that the American embassy staff were taken hostage, then the rescue attempt, 'Operation Eagle Claw', failed killing several elite soldiers, followed by the embassy staff's release over a year after the embassy was capture. Don't underestimate how much this still haunts American security planners.
The MEU will be there just in case the Embassy is attacked or American civilians need to be evacuated from Egypt.
On a different note, this is my first comment but I've been reading your blog for a while, since well before the current events. Thank you for the great insight that you provide into life in Egypt. Stay safe and good luck.
My dad is a US Marine. I have not heard this. Why?! Y'all have not asked for us to interfere in this way and even if you had, I don't see any legal reason why we would go. I also do not understand the adding of more Marines at the embassy. The thugs who attacked the demonstrators, as well as the demonstrators themselves, have stayed away from the embassies. (Unless you count an alleged theft of embassy vans from the American.) Why?!
ReplyDelete