by Patrick Lang (bio below)
“CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood more than doubled its strength in parliament in the early stages of legislative elections, showing its weight with two thirds of places still to be contested, the group said on Wednesday.
The voting for parliament’s 444 elected seats is not expected to end the ruling National Democratic Party’s (NDP) control of the chamber, but the Brotherhood wins underlined the status of political Islam as the strongest opposition force.” (Yahoo News)
Two thirds of the vote has not been cast or counted and the Society of the Muslim Brothers (MB) has doubled its representation.
The US opposes the MB, correctly recognizing it as the “ancestor” of much of the terrorist activity in the Sunni World, including Egypt, which is overwhelmingly Sunni. Nevertheless, it is true that US pressure on the Egyptian government is progressively tearing down the internal barriers there to ever increasing political participation of such groups.
The Bush Administration believes in the transformative power of elections. It believes that there must be open and fair elections for democracy to work its magic of creating modern and “just” societies. In Egypt the masses have a different idea of what would be a “just” society. We’re beginning to see it in these election results.
He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann (interview), CNN and Wolf Blitzer’s Situation Room (interview), PBS’s Newshour, NPR’s “All Things Considered,” (interview), and more .
Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.”
Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV
Recommended Books || More BooTrib <a href="Posts
Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)
“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2
