Democracy in Egypt

David Kenner laments that Egypt is a sinkhole for America's tax dollars:

Stop the presses: the Egyptian government is riddled with corruption, and hostile to democratic reform! After three decades of distributing aid in Egypt, these facts shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone -- and shouldn't be an excuse for why USAID has been flushing taxpayers' money down the drain.

Fortunately, in 2005 Congress provided USAID with the authority to issue direct grants to Egyptian NGOs, bypassing the approval of the Egyptian government. As the audit shows, USAID "achieved its greatest success" with these direct grant programs. Direct grant recipients completed 80 percent of their planned activities during the 2008 financial year, in programs that ranged from anticorruption initiatives to programs emphasizing political processes and civic participation. The Egyptian government often still found ways to stymie these programs: in one case, the government delayed distribution of the civic education material produced by one recipient, making it difficult for the material to reach schoolchildren.

However, these obstacles pale in comparison to the difficulties of working directly with the Egyptian government. It is naive to expect a regime that is preparing to elevate Gamal Mubarak to the presidency will be willing to make aggressive reforms. And it is hypocritical for the United States to preach the virtues of democracy while still devoting most of its funds to efforts which have proven ineffective. U.S. policymakers know perfectly well how to design more effective programs in Egypt. They should do it.

I think this underscores just how untenable our approach is. On the one hand, the president travels to Egypt to make his big speech on U.S.-Muslim relations and treats the monarch president as a key ally of the U.S. On the other, we're funneling money into Egypt with the fairly explicit purpose of undermining Mubarak's rule. I know we like to leaven our realpolitik with a healthy slathering of other people's money, but it just seems rather obviously counter-productive. Either Mubarak doesn't pass on rule to his son and democracy takes hold (paving the way for the Muslim Brotherhood) or Mubarak Jr. takes power and we continue to waste money and look hypocritical.

(AP Photos)