Remember Barack Obama's much-praised 2009 Cairo speech? All that talk about "a new beginning" in US relations with the Muslim world jars now we know his idea of improved relations is to authorise drone strikes in Muslim lands, and ensure that Guantánamo prisoners on hunger strike are force-fed only at sundown during Ramadan, out of respect for the holy month. And it jars when you consider that America's attitude to Cairo today is best described as self-interested spread betting.

Following the army's removal of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's democratically elected president, the Obama administration is loth to call it a coup. (If there were any doubt, the transitional president, Adly Mansour, has now freely admitted to having been installed by coup, stating that the army is the source of his authority.) Instead, the US is spinning its relationship with Egypt as "It's complicated". Among the vague claims coming out of the White House this week was the helpful pronouncement by the spokesman Jay Carney that "this is an incredibly complex and difficult situation."

This is all carefully worded, Cairo-speech style, to suggest the hesitation is about needing time to scan for signs of eroded democracy.

America's primary concern, as always, is how best to preserve its interests in the region. Calling a coup a coup would legally bind the US to withdraw $1.5bn in aid to the army – and it's the army, whose chief attended America's top military academy, that keeps the US and its regional ally Israel happy. In fact, following the "non coup" in Egypt, Israel urged the US not to cut this aid. In return for this aid, the deal is that Egypt doesn't mess with its "cold peace" treaty with Israel, quells the restive Sinai, controls its side of the besieged Gaza Strip and secures US priority passage through the Suez canal.

This time the army is on the side of the protesters on the street who wanted Morsi to go. But if the US position were premised on the popular will, it would not have supported the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak prior to the revolution that ousted him in 2011 – and it would have threatened to pull the aid during Egypt's post-revolution period of military rule, when the army was putting more than 10,000 citizens through military courts, removing their clothes and stamping on them in the streets, and forcing women to undergo "virginity tests".

Likewise, if the US had wanted to throw its weight behind Egypt's post-revolutionary push for "bread, freedom, dignity", the Obama administration might have condemned Morsi's abuses of power, rather than branding protesters immature. Just weeks ago the US ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, was still not getting why protesters were planning those mass demonstrations.

When Morsi rushed through an unpopular, divisive and illiberal constitution; when he gave himself unprecedented powers as president; when he sent the army and his supporters out to attack those protesting about this constitution and arrest prominent critics and when he stood by as Christians and Shias were killed, the US was not voicing concern for human rights in Egypt.

But there's a "hedge your bets" approach here, too: even as the US was dismissing anti-Morsi protesters, it was sending signals to Morsi that it supported his imminent removal – cue the cynical comments from the Egyptian officials involved about "Mother America", the final arbiter in Egyptian affairs, approving an army takeover.

Now Muslim Brotherhood supporters are being killed, arrested or muzzled; the former president is detained; and the army has issued an arrest warrant for the Brotherhood's spiritual leader. The US has cautioned the army about respecting the rights of Morsi supporters – but it won't side more strongly with them because it isn't clear, yet, if they are needed to maintain US concerns: the army and opposition may be able to forge ahead without the Brotherhood; they may not. For the US, it's best to stay vague. This is why, preposterously, America is able to confirm plans to send four shiny F-16 fighter jets to Egyptian military on Thursday, while still talking democracy and inclusion for Egypt's transitional process.

None of this will be of any great surprise to Egyptians who, as in other parts of the Arab and Muslim world, are used to this duplicity and double standards (Palestinians, for instance, know this script by heart). All that fine talk in Cairo in 2009 may have hit all our happy notes, but now in Cairo and across the Middle East, when the US administration reiterates its hopes for strong democracy in the region, it is beyond implausible – it is insulting.

• The standfirst on this article was corrected on 12 July 2013; F-16 jets, not F-14s, were supplied to Egypt.