Bill Kristol: Military May Be Preferable to Muslim Brotherhood Rule in Egypt

On This Week With George Stephanopoulos Sunday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol suggested the U.S. may find it prefers Egypt’s military rule to that of the Muslim Brotherhood.

For this reason, Kristol stated he is not sure the Obama White House should cut off aid just yet.

Responding to George Stephanopoulos’s point that Israel wants to keep U.S. aid flowing to Egypt, Kristol said he remained ambivalent:

I think they prefer the military to rule to the Muslim Brotherhood ruling–I think an awful lot of people in the region prefer that. An awful lot of the Arab governments prefer it. And it’s not clear to me that we shouldn’t prefer it. 

Most of my friends in the foreign policy world are for cutting off aid, [but] I’m much more uncertain at this point.  This is a trigger [we] can only pull once–[we] can only cut off the aid once… and what better thing is going to happen in Egypt or in the region if tomorrow morning [President Obama] got on TV and said “we’re cutting off the aid”?

Kristol added that he believes there is a lot the U.S. can do “with our relationship with the Egyptian military that will be harder to do once we cut off the aid.”

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