Top Democratic lawmakers are praising a controversial diplomat who served as a key Middle East figure in the Obama administration, after reports that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis asked her to fill a top policy slot at the Pentagon.
Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who spoke to THE WEEKLY STANDARD commended Mattis’s reported decision to tap former ambassador Anne Patterson as his undersecretary of defense for policy. The position, which is subject to Senate approval, involves overseeing the Department of Defense’s vast bureaucracy and the development of national security policy.
The pick has raised eyebrows in the defense community and has been met with some resistance from the White House. Patterson served as ambassador to Egypt from 2011 to 2013. She departed amid controversy over attempts to bolster relations with former president Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, a policy that alienated anti-regime opponents.
Democratic lawmakers on the foreign relations committee told TWS they strongly supported the pick.
“That’s an excellent choice,” said Ben Cardin, ranking member of the committee. “She has a lot of respect here, experienced.”
“Anne Patterson is an extraordinary career public servant who has an enormously deep wealth of knowledge,” said New Jersey senator Bob Menendez. “She will probably be a great asset to him.”
“I think highly of her,” said Virginia senator Tim Kaine. “The fact that General Mattis is choosing somebody from sort-of the diplomatic world, that’s smart.”
Asked about criticism surrounding her ambassadorship in Egypt, lawmakers defended Patterson as the executor of Obama administration policy at the time.
“I understand that if you go back historically there are events that could cause different judgment, but this was U.S. policy, and she was facilitating it,” Cardin said.
“You have to look at Ambassador Patterson’s record in context—at the tumultuous developments in Egypt at the time, and recognize that her skill shows in how she managed to advance American both security values, interests in Pakistan, in Columbia, and in Egypt,” said Delaware senator Chris Coons.
Patterson’s relationship with Egypt’s short-lived Muslim Brotherhood government alienated Egyptians across the political spectrum, experts told TWS.
‘Whether fairly or unfairly, Anne Patterson is probably the single most reviled American in Egypt,” said Oren Kessler, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “It’s a difficult job being Washington’s envoy to Egypt – anti-Americanism is one of the few things most Egyptians can agree on – but she made a number of unforced errors while there that didn’t do her any favors.”
Patterson had dismissed protests against the regime in 2013 that precipitated the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood government.
“Some say that street action will produce better results than elections,” she said that June. “To be honest, my government and I are deeply skeptical.”
“Those remarks were enough to earn her the wrath of anti-Brotherhood Egyptians, but somehow she has managed to earn the ire of Brotherhood supporters as well, who view her as having pursued Washington’s various alleged conspiracies against the country,” Kessler said.
Egyptian protesters paraded posters with her face masked by a thick red X that summer.
Republican lawmakers were critical of Patterson’s moves to dissuade protests. She also drew fire when, after the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, her embassy issued an apology for the infamous video about the Prophet Muhammad allegedly linked to the attack.
Patterson also served as ambassador to Colombia and Pakistan. After her Egypt ambassadorship, Democrats voted unanimously in 2013 to confirm Patterson as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.
