No one in Washington is celebrating the policy achievements of US President Barack Obama's administration in the Middle East, if indeed there are any to be claimed. It would not be surprising for US officials to admit, as did President Truman's legendary US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, to “a feeling of dissatisfaction with everything we did in the Middle East." Syria is all but a lost cause whomever triumphs, and US policy there risks a descent into incoherence. Washington studiously ignores the daily toll in Iraq. And the Arab-Israeli “peace process” remains stuck in reverse. But it is Egypt — long the jewel in the crown of US-Middle East policy — where the latest disaster now threatens.
Washington rejected rule by former autocratic President Hosni Mubarak, and since the events of July 1, the president duly elected to take his place.
