Marcy Kaptur: “the Bush administration's allies in this Congress are making another truly astounding foreign policy blunder, one that…”

“the Bush administration's allies in this Congress are making another truly astounding foreign policy blunder, one that jeopardizes decades of painstaking effort toward peacemaking in the Middle East. Bush allies are proposing to sever our established U.S. military relationship with Egypt at a time when diplomatic ties in the region are more vital than ever. At great sacrifice, Egypt has forged a leadership role in the region and remains committed to peace and progress. Yet rather than stemming terrorism, Bush congressional allies are doing, with their retrograde proposal, just what they did with Iraq: Miscalculating, failing to shape robust diplomatic initiatives, and setting the region up for more terrorism, more bloodletting, and more instability. They want to act tough first rather than smart first. They are hastening more instability as antagonism to the United States grows. Does anybody in the White House recognize that Middle East terrorism is going up, not down? Does anybody notice that polls across the Middle East show a majority of Arabs are now opposed to U.S. policy? Zogby International polls indicate that Arab public attitudes towards the United States are declining. And according to the Pew Research Center, solid majorities in many predominantly Muslim countries surveyed still express unfavorable views of the United States.…”