Obama denounces Egypt massacre, cancels joint military exercise

President Barack Obama on Thursday denounced the massacre of protesters by Egypt's military-led interim government and announced he had canceled a major joint military exercise in response.

"While we want to sustain our relationship with Egypt, our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual when civilians are being killed in the streets and rights are being rolled back," Obama said in a brief statement from his Martha's Vineyard vacation spot.

"As a result, this morning, we notified the Egyptian government that we are canceling our biannual joint military exercise, which was scheduled for next month," said the president, warning that the U.S. response may not stop there.

"Going forward, I've asked my national security team to assess the implications of the actions taken by the interim government and further steps that we may take as necessary with respect to the U.S.-Egyptian relationship," Obama said. 

His remarks came a day after Egyptian government forces launched a violent assault on demonstrators, with a death toll running in the hundreds. The White House and Secretary of State John Kerry had denounced the bloody crackdown without announcing concrete steps to try to pressure Egypt's government to fulfill its pledges of restoring democratic rule to the longstanding U.S. ally.

"Let me say that the Egyptian people deserve better than what we've seen over the last several days. And to the Egyptian people, let me say the cycle of violence and escalation needs to stop," Obama said.

U.S. leverage is limited. In addition to scrapping the so-called "Bright Star" military exercises, the government could freeze the roughly $1.5 billion in annual aid it provides to Egypt, but help from other countries like Saudi Arabia is currently far more generous. Washington could withhold individual arms packages. It could seek some sort of diplomatic condemnation, like calling the U.S. ambassador home for consultations.

But Obama stuck by his Administration's decision not to formally label the ouster of deposed President Mohammed Morsi by the military a "coup," a step that under U.S. law would require suspending American aid.

"We appreciate the complexity of the situation. While Mohammed Morsi was elected president in a democratic election, his government was not inclusive and did not respect the views of all Egyptians," Obama said.

"While we do not believe that force is the way to resolve political differences, after the military's intervention several weeks ago, there remained a chance for reconciliation and an opportunity to pursue a democratic path," the president said. Instead, we've seen a more dangerous path taken."

That path has included arbitrary arrests that Washington considers politically motivated, as well as a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood that powered Morsi's election victory, and finally this week's bloodbath.

"The United States strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by Egypt's interim government and security forces," Obama said. "We deplore violence against civilians. We support universal rights essential to human dignity, including the right to peaceful protest. We oppose the pursuit of martial law, which denies those rights to citizens under the principle that security trumps individual freedom or that might makes right. And today the United States extends its condolences to the families or those who were killed and those who were wounded."

Obama pressed the interim government to lift the state of emergency that it imposed on Wednesday – a step amounting to martial law – and called for a process of national political reconciliation to being.

America believes "that all parties need to have a voice in Egypt's future, that the rights of women and religious minorities should be respected and that commitments must be kept to pursue transparent reforms to the constitution and democratic elections of a parliament and a president."

He also had a message for the demonstrators amid reports that some have assailed Christian churches.

"We call on those who are protesting to do so peacefully and condemn the attacks that we've seen by protesters, including on churches," the president said.

And he worked to combat toxic anti-American sentiment in Egypt.

"I know it's tempting inside of Egypt to blame the United States or the West or some other outside actor for what's gone wrong," Obama said.

"We've been blamed by supporters of Morsi. We've been blamed by the other side as if we are supporters of Morsi. That kind of approach will do nothing to help Egyptians achieve the future that they deserve, Obama said.

"We want Egypt to succeed. We want a peaceful, democratic, prosperous Egypt. That's our interest. But to achieve that, the Egyptians are going to have to do the work," he said.

The path out of military rule to democratic governance will "not always go in a straight line," he said. "There will be difficult days."

"We know that democratic transitions are measured not in months or even years but sometimes in generations."

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