America’s Role in Egypt’s Democracy

In an online article entitled Aiding and Abetting Egyptian Repression, Shadi Hamid, the author, discussed how the United States is able to influence the state of democracy in Egypt. According to this article, the U. S. with its foreign aid has long been funding President Hosni Mubarak's regime. Being America's closest ally in the Middle East, Egypt is actually the second-largest recipient of U. S. aid (Hamid, 2007). However, since January of 2007, Mubarak has been making serious assaults against opposing political parties, particulary the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the largest opposition group in Egptian parliament (Hamid, 2007). This crackdown on opposition party members and organizations strongly contradicts the idea of democracy. In this article, Hamid calls for the U. S. Congress to consider reducing its aid to Egypt or making aid conditional. He points out that the Bush administration has been generous to autocrats for too long and it should start taking serious measures in addressing this threat to democracy (Hamid, 2007). This article can be interpreted in numerous of ways depending on which perspective a reader may be coming from. Based on various analysis tools and different paradigms, a reader can develop his or her own opinion about the article that may agree or disagree to what the author is saying. The author presents a very compelling argument. Although he is clearly not in favor of the Bush administration, this article discusses the issue in Egypt objectively. However, by exposing practices of neglect by the Bush administration, this article may indirectly influence its reader's view of the said administration. Personally, I agree with Hamid. If the U. S. claims to be at the vanguard in upholding democracy, then it should not sit idly while its closest ally and second-largest recipient of its aid curtails the democratic rights of its ctitizens. Regardless whether a person is a republican or a democrat, a person who believes in human rights would never allow such practices of repression should to be tolerated.