Autocratic leaders in the Arab world have routinely justified their strongarm tactics by predicting that democracy would lead to bad outcomes. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein talked about the Shiite dogs. In Syria, Assad calls the opposition “terrorists” and says they are linked with al-Qaeda. In Egypt, Mubarak feared the Muslim Brotherhood. In the short term, their predictions had merit. The Sunnis in Iraq no longer enjoy their privileged position. The opposition in Syria really does have links to al-Qaeda. And the Muslim Brotherhood did win the elections in Egypt. But I always thought that given a chance to govern, religious fundamentalists would do a bad job and lose support. The key, then, was to make sure one dictatorship wasn’t replaced with another one. Maybe the first government would be bad, but better, more responsive governments would follow.
It’s too early to know how things will turn out, and each country is different. But, in Egypt, one year of rule by the Muslim Brotherhood seems to have been enough to convince the urban-dwellers that their president needs to go. Much like here, in Egypt, the religious fanatics are numerous but they tend to live in more rural areas. Just because people in New York City loathed George W. Bush didn’t mean that he didn’t have broad public support, and the same is true of Cairo and President Morsi. Still, things are not going well.
I’d rather see the opposition organizing new political parties rather than trying to encourage a coup. The democratic part of politics involves accepting the results of elections. If people don’t like the Muslim Brotherhood’s policies, they should refrain from firebombing their offices and work on voting them out of office. But I am not surprised that people aren’t satisfied with the job they are doing of governing. America felt the same way after eight years of Bush.
