Once more, we are looking foolish in our Middle East actions, with President Obama unwilling or unable to acknowledge that what has happened in Egypt is a coup! A coup unquestionably occurred in that very important nation.

Fascinatingly as well, her major Arab neighbors of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates suddenly jumped in to offer more than $11 billion in aid to whatever new government arises, assuming it keeps power.  This interesting financial and political action occurred despite any similar intervention in Syria over the past many bloody months.

So what is it that's keeping our president from the obvious? Seems that what's at stake is our continued billion dollars in aid to Egypt….even though we cannot tell who will be using that  dough and for what purposes! 

This response from the White House seems to echo the trap we allowed ourselves into when we sent hundreds of millions of dollars and equipment to the Libyan rebels to help them take out Muammar Qadaffi whom our previous president and the United Nations had embraced….the same Libyan folks who did terrible damage later to our embassy in Benghazi and took out our ambassador and some other folks there.

One might think the elements of a ‘coup' would be obvious by now. Yet the President's talking heads continue the recitation the White House is "studying the situation."

To some, the aid to Egypt has been seen as a kind of payoff to restrain any renewal of conflict with Israel.  It should be noted on this point, however, that both Egypt AND Israel have benefitted quite nicely because of a natural gas deal that brings the vital energy source to the Jewish state at a good price to Egypt.

Some months ago, I wrote about the dangers of our irrelevance not only in the Middle East but around the world.  At the time, much of the concern had to do with our waging seemingly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan based on questionable evidence and costing trillions to the American taxpayers.

Today that we want to assert some international leadership, and all we can do is "study" the obvious instead of taking decisive action….action that might still continue the aid but openly and assertively imposing some strict rules.

Instead, the US, according to media reports coming out of the situation, is now "loathed" by both sides, while hardly democratic Arab states take the initiative.

All this is taking place as a former NSA subcontractor took it upon himself to be extremely decisive in blowing the cover on sensitive and classified information and fleeing to other countries to continue his assertive activities.  One might think that instead of merely "studying" whether an nation's army takeover of its government is actually a coup, our leadership would have taken a clear stand that no more aid will be forthcoming until and unless the Egyptians can get their acts together and under control.  Otherwise, how do we know which drain our $1.6 billions in aid will go down?

Yes, Mr. President, what has occurred in Egypt is a coup!  Make a decision so we look more relevant or at least begin to look that way.  For some reason, the question to this writer is "What would the late action oriented Harry Truman have done?" given his warning about the need to get out of the kitchen if one cannot handle the heat. And the temperature in Egypt is hot indeed.