{"id":16260,"date":"2012-07-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brookings.alley.test\/research\/it-aint-just-a-river-in-egypt\/"},"modified":"2022-09-08T09:22:10","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T09:22:10","slug":"it-aint-just-a-river-in-egypt","status":"publish","type":"opinion","link":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/opinion\/it-aint-just-a-river-in-egypt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of Egypt&#8217;s &#8220;Undemocratic Liberals&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Editor&#8217;s Note: This was originally published by<\/em> Foreign Policy <em>as &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/articles\/2012\/07\/30\/it_ain_t_just_a_river_in_egypt\">It Ain&#8217;t Just a River in Egypt<\/a>.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pulls up to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo this week, he will see a protest outside its walls. Just steps away from Tahrir Square, supporters of Omar Abdel Rahman have been staging a sit-in for nearly a year to protest the imprisonment of the man known as the &#8220;Blind Sheikh,&#8221; who is serving a life sentence in a North Carolina prison for planning terrorist attacks on American soil.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Upon Secretary of State Hillary Clinton&#8217;s visit just weeks before, these protesters were joined on the embassy&#8217;s doorstep by a group often seen as more sympathetic to U.S. values and policies: Egypt&#8217;s liberals. This time, they had lost some of that sympathy.<\/p>\n<p>The protests, by themselves, weren&#8217;t entirely unexpected &#8212; after all, no one in Egypt these days seems to have much praise for President Barack Obama&#8217;s administration. And liberals, due to their perceived closeness to the West, have often had to overcompensate to shore up their nationalist bona fides. After all, it wasn&#8217;t the Muslim Brotherhood but, rather, liberal standard-bearer Amr Hamzawy who\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/amrhamzawyofficial\/posts\/327519983950398\">refused<\/a> to meet in February with Sen. John McCain due to his &#8220;biased positions in favor of Israel and his support for invading Iraq and attacking Iran.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/articles\/2012\/07\/30\/it_ain_t_just_a_river_in_egypt\">Read the full article at foreignpolicy.com \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":25837,"template":"","class_list":["post-16260","opinion","type-opinion","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion\/16260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/opinion"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/opinion"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mecouncil-afkar.fuegodigitalmedia.qa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}