Obama Cancels Meeting with Egypt's Morsi

The Daily Caller is reporting that President Obama “quietly” cancelled a meeting scheduled for this week with Egypt’s Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi.

Prior to the brutal murder on sovereign US territory of the Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and a wave of anti-American riots hit Muslim countries around the world, Obama was marketing himself as the foreign policy president. The cancellation was mentioned in a September 23 New York Times article.

Despite critical 2011 support from Obama for the revolt that removed Hosni Mubarak, Morsi is now demanding restrictions on U.S. free speech that is critical of Islam, demanding more U.S. support for the anti-Israeli Islamist governments in Gaza and the West Bank, and more financial aid to help the cash-strapped Egyptian government buy food and fuel for its population of 82 million people.

Following the September 11 attacks, the White House reversed course on their planned meeting with Morsi:

Three days after the Sept. 11 Islamist attacks in Cairo and Libya, Carney denied any meeting plans.

“The President has no bilateral meetings scheduled at this time while he’s in New York,” he said.

That denial came three days Morsi allowed an Islamist mob to break into the U.S. embassy grounds in Cairo, burn the U.S. flag and raise an Islamist flag on Sept. 11. “We took our time” responding to the Sept. 11 attack in Cairo, Morsi told The New York Times.

Morsi’s prime minister Hisham Qandil said that he is anticipating a change in US law after a You Tube video critical of Islam was circulated around Egypt: 

The United States should “take the necessary measures to ensure insulting billions of people – one and a half billion people – and their beliefs does not happen, and people pay for what they do, and at the same time make sure that the reflections of the true Egyptian and Muslims is well [represented] in Western media,” Qandil said, according to the the English-language site of Egypt’s main newspaper, Al Ahram.

And Qandil’s statement also hinted at more violence if the Islamists’ demands were not met.

“I think we need to work out something around this because we cannot wait and see this happen again,” he said.