Word: sadat
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...most part, it was a quest with challenging goals. Sadat would look for an angle, find one, take action, then move on to the next confrontation. Finally, with the peace initiative, it seemed he had found his Holy Grail. He fought alone, rarely giving ground and sometimes taking too much. Then, they took his life in the hope no one would be so foolhardy as to emulate...
...Sadat was an ambitious man, one of the first members of the lower class to go to military school, from which he graduated an officer. The army, a tight-knit and for the most part loyal group, became the center of his life, and his means for advancement. But advancement towards what? This is the dilemma that was to plague Sadat...
...most obvious goal for a patriotic Egyptian was to end British occupation. Sadat thus became an underground revolutionary and befriended German agents, whom he viewed primarily as the enemies of England and thus his allies. Later, he would condemn Nazi policies wholeheartedly...and convince most that the meant it. Yet Sadat was adept at insincerity--as evidenced by his adventures in and out of prison during and just after the war. How to judge wherein lies the truth...
With Nasser, a confusing, often ambiguous relationship was the norm. In his autobiography, In Search of Identity, Sadat said: "Some people have wondered how I managed to spend such a long time by Nasser's side...I must have been, they concluded, either too insignificant or too cunning...All there was to it was that Nasser and I had been friends (for a long time)." Sadat had an almost fanatical belief in loyalty and thought the glue of friendship sufficient to keep even those who disagree together. In fact, he affirmed that he continually, if not always publicly, contested Nasser...
Under Nasser, Egyptian policy focused on improving defense and the economy. The Soviet Union, by agreeing to furnish arms and finance important industrial projects, provided the answer to this problem. Yet Sadat, while supporting this alliance, was wary. He realized that by depending solely on the Russians, Egypt put a leash on itself. In 1972, two years after he succeeded Nasser, Sadat ordered the withdrawal of most Soviet personnel in Egypt. He did this, as he later claimed, to "show the whole world that we are always our own masters...