It was not to be — and this failure will have devastating consequences, inside and outside Egypt. Islamist ire has been fed and the perception of Western hypocrisy reinforced at the very moment when ways out of this impasse appeared possible. 
 
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 In fact the violent splits nurtured over decades under Mubarak — Westernized liberals against backward Islamists — proved insurmountable. By last month, just a year after the nation’s first free election brought the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi to power with 51.7 percent of the vote, millions of decent Egyptian liberals were roaring in the streets for the military to oust him. The army obliged in the July 3 coup that will not speak its name. 
 
 Now the Saudi-backed Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s military leader, rails against “the terrorists” who (he insists) constitute the Brotherhood, and has his newly subservient media echo the refrain. More than 1,000 Egyptians are dead. There is talk of banning the Brotherhood; certainly its participation in any future election is impossible to imagine. In its absence no vote will be meaningful. Egyptian democracy was stillborn. 
 
 Far from overcoming the divisions of the society where close to 25 percent of the world’s Arabs live, the developments of the past two-and-a-half years have sharpened them. Egypt’s polarizing spiral, evident in Islamist attacks on Coptic Christian churches and the killing of at least two dozen police officers in Sinai, seems unstoppable. 
 
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 For the United States and Europe , this amounts to a colossal strategic failure. Nothing — and certainly not the outcome in Afghanistan or Iraq — was more important than getting Egypt right. President Obama , who began his presidency with an attempt to build bridges to the Arab and Muslim world through a speech in Cairo , has seen his greatest failure in that very city. Post-Tahrir Egypt stands now as a monument to America’s declining influence in the world, even in a nation receiving $1.5 billion in annual aid. 
 
 All that American money translated into no ability to restrain a largely American-trained military (including General Sisi). It translated into little ability to persuade Morsi to reach out beyond the Brotherhood and refrain from railroading through a divisive constitution. 
 
 The Obama administration has appeared hesitant and wavering, zigzagging from support for Morsi to acceptance of his ouster. The critical moment came before the July 3 coup (“a violent or illegal change in government” according to the Oxford English Dictionary). A military intervention was almost certain to end badly. It was a terrible precedent. But Secretary of State John Kerry offered the view that the army was “restoring democracy.” 
 
 Just as bad, Obama said this: “While Mohamed Morsi was elected president in a democratic election, his government was not inclusive and did not respect the views of all Egyptians.” Those are dangerous words from an American president. They seem to relegate the importance of a free and fair vote. ||||| Article Excerpt 
 
 On the subject of Egypt: Is it the U.S. government's purpose merely to cop an attitude? Or does it also intend to have a policy? 
 
 An attitude "deplores the violence" and postpones a military exercise, as President Obama did from Martha's Vineyard the other day. An attitude sternly informs the Egyptian military, as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) did, that it is "taking Egypt down a dark path, one that the United States cannot and should not travel with them." An attitude calls for the suspension of U.S. aid to Egypt, as everyone from Rand Paul (R., Ky.) to Patrick ...
– What's happening in Egypt represents President Obama's "greatest failure," writes Roger Cohen in the New York Times. Obama's much-ballyhooed speech in Cairo in 2009, intended to begin healing rifts with the Muslim world, "stands now as a monument to America’s declining influence in the world," he writes. The president has been wishy-washy in his response to the military coup that ousted Mohamed Morsi, and it turns out that all our money gave us little sway over either the military or the Muslim Brotherhood while it held power. Nothing "was more important than getting Egypt right," writes Cohen, but we got it exactly wrong. What to do? At the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens writes that it's time to move beyond finger-wagging and actually establish a policy. "If the US wants influence, it needs to hold its nose and take a side," he writes. And that side is clear: The US should support the military leaders, and hope they win this fight as quickly as possible. The generals "may not need shiny new F-16s, but riot gear, tear gas, rubber bullets, and Taser guns could help, especially to prevent the kind of bloodbaths the world witnessed last week." It's not pretty, but it's the best path to restoring normalcy to the Egypt. Click for Stephens' full column. Or for Cohen's full column.