Editorial Board

The principal pitch of Egyptian strongman Abdel Fatah al-Sissi to his sponsors in the Obama administration is that only he and his military-backed regime can end the threat from Islamic extremists and prevent his country of 90 million people from becoming a failed state. But as the second anniversary of the former general’s bloody coup against a democratically elected government approaches, the facts are undeniable: Egypt is becoming steadily more violent and unstable.

Egyptian leaders have come to see the annual $1.3 billion American military aid package as an entitlement they are due in perpetuity for having signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1979. The United States has done little to disabuse them of that notion. It’s time it does. Failing to make significant cuts to the program later this year, when the Obama administration will confront tough choices regarding Egypt’s future, would be indefensible. Since Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took control in Egypt though a military coup in July 2013, the country has returned to its authoritarian moorings by jailing political opponents, silencing critics and vilifying peaceful Islamists.

President Obama insists that it is in the U.S. interest to maintain a strategic partnership with Egypt’s new authoritarian government, while Secretary of State John F. Kerry keeps claiming that strongman Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi actually heads a democracy. So the reality check provided by Human Rights Watch this week is particularly worthy of attention. According to a meticulous, year-long investigation carried out by the group, the administration’s ally in Cairo is guilty of the “world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history” and deserves prosecution for crimes against humanity.

Three years after U.S. and NATO forces helped liberate Libya from the dictatorship of Moammar Gaddafi, the country is beginning to look a lot like another nation where an abrupt U.S. disengagement following a civil war led to chaos: Afghanistan in the 1990s.