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The goal of handing out foreign aid to foster "civil society" always sounds noble and well-intentioned. But you'll forgive someone like me for being skeptical about the results. I saw up close how those dollars were deployed in Central and Eastern Europe some 20 years ago, and wrote about it in my book Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe. Useful contacts and exchanges were sometimes forged. But the result, more often than not, was that aid served to enrich a few favored cliques, in direct contradiction with stated aims of building democracy and engendering pluralism. Those in the West hoping to further cultivate the nascent "Arab Spring" would do well to heed the lessons of the post-Communist era. 

Frequently deficient in cultural and historical sensibilities, it was the Western consultants and aid representatives who often made social fools of themselves.

To get money from the West was to be blessed by it, greatly enhancing one's reputation and lending legitimacy that could be leveraged both inside and outside the country to accrue further rewards, and compounding the power of the individual's group.

Reps. Don Beyer (D-VA) and Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) announced the formation of the Egypt Human Rights Caucus to mark the 10th anniversary of the Egyptian revolution.

“American interests have not been served by a policy of unconditional support for the Egyptian military, while downplaying the military-led government’s human rights abuses, corruption, and mistreatment of American citizens,” said Rep. Malinowski. “The Egypt Human Rights Caucus will reflect and help shape the growing consensus in Congress that we need to rebalance our relationship with this important country."