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.
Egypt hasn’t had stable, boring democratic elections long enough for people to trust that waiting until the next one is even possible. Thus, these protests, and pressure to turn the govt over now.
Exactly. The Brothers won’t hesitate to use those tactics if it becomes necessary to their survival. In fact a recent article about the anti-Morsi petition said they explicitly aren’t trying to.
Hell if more people believed in the reality and not just the form of responsive government, Scott Walker might not now be in power.
What’s the difference between Tamarrud and the Scott Walker capitol sit-in protesters? I don’t think anybody would say Morsi or Walker were elected unfairly.
The question is whether democracy goes beyond the ballot box and involves broader questions of representing the will of the people?
Not sure what you’re getting at. Are you saying Wisconsin should overthrow walker? Because I don’t think that’s physically possible, particularly in a state where a large contingent of weak Dems bent over backwards to support Walker in the recall because they didn’t think the recall was “fair”.
Also, if a coup actually happened in this country, I imagine it would be shut down almost immediately by the FBI or even the military.
Egypt is just a totally different context with a vastly different recent history. We have yet to see how that will play out, but the system there isn’t at “settled” and rigid as ours is.
What are you talking about? People in Wisconsin did try to overthrow Walker. There was a referendum and everything.
Well, Walker resisters tried to “overthrow” Fuhrer Walker via a recall procedure based in existing WI law, I think. So the WI “revolution” was explicitly legal. And WI resisters seem to have accepted their (recall) defeat.
Egyptians are instead making up their recall Morsi procedure out of whole cloth. There’s no explicit legal basis for it. So that’s one difference, I’d say.
But yes, both opposition groups did not “accept” the results of their (initial) election….but can’t citizens (even millions of ’em) always “demand” an elected official resign for misdeeds or incompetence?
It is truly a thing of wonder that there are millions of people protesting Islamism in the streets…and somehow against all odds the United States government managed to get on the wrong side of that one. Fucking Israel and Hamas, they’re always getting us in hot water. It never ends.
I don’t know how the coup attempt will work out, maybe it will work out, maybe it will be subverted by a new generation of Jacobins, who knows. But this link that is zipping around today looks awfully darn prescient:
http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2012/12/17/victory/
Sounds like “Qaliubiya” is Egyptian for “Kentucky” or “Mississippi”…
am i mistaken in thinking that whoever the “president” there is, the military is still what really runs the place?
The Egyptian army runs itself, but I believe it has been content to leave the Muslim Brotherhood on the hook for the (non) performance of the economy or any of the state’s institutions (inflation, poverty, crime, etc. have all skyrocketed since the removal of Mubarak). I don’t think anybody describes them as masterminds, but more as people who can profit from chaos and dysfunction.
It’s a country that legitimately has fifth columns.
but egyptian military money comes from the US. hence the military’s influence is not so neatly roped-off as you describe.
I’ve long held this perspective, Booman. The key is ensuring continued democracy. Iran would look like a very different place were the government responsive to the will of the people.
Islamists only get voted in they do not get voted out. That would be blasphemy.
I find it amazing that one find anti-Islamic statements like this on a liberal blog. The vast majority of Muslims are moderate.
I think that needs to be said as often as possible. In the meantime, for the sake of the friend of mine who is moderate to liberal and who is living there, I hope that a Morsi and the Brotherhood are replaced by a much better government sooner rather than later.
I said Islamist not Muslim!!!
Is·lam·ism (s-lämzm, z-, sl-, z-)
1. An Islamic revivalist movement, often characterized by moral conservatism, literalism, and the attempt to implement Islamic values in all spheres of life.
The fast majority of Muslims are not Islamists because they are not radical. All radicals are Islamists.
Thanks for slandering me because you don’t know the meaning of a word.
Seriously, chill. I did not slander you.
Not you Don I meant to reply to Parallax. I overreacted anyway.
Its just that the NSA monitors everything so I worry about my reputation. 🙂
No worries. We’re cool. 🙂
It happens in every part of the world not only in Egypt or in Iran or in Assyria. People have different view when it comes in governing. Unfortunately, if most of people didn’t want their rule they will go in any form of protest, just to make their president ousted in his position. And, this is one of the reality in any government.
Yeah.
I sometimes wonder, though. How’s all of that patience and obedience working out here? Not too well, I’m thinking. Election after election, one front man for the PermaGov after another. Now a surveillance state is thoroughly in place and the U.S. is still the militarily supported economic imperialist giant that it has been since at least the Korean “police action.” The greatest major social change that has happened in my lifetime …the civil rights movement…came because of firebombings and civil strife in general in the inner cities.The peaceful ones? MLK Jr. took a bullet in the head for his peace. People learned from that. Bet on it. The other major social changes? The movement towards female equality and the more recent acceptance of people with non-mainstream sexual preferences…have been economically produced because of inflation and the ongoing failure of the economic imperialist strategy to continue to provide a life for Americans that would let them continue to feel somehow “exceptional.” Entitled to live off the fat of the land while 90% of the rest of humanity scuffled their asses off. The PermaGov needs more and more worker bees, so it grants “equality” to more and more people. The recent immigration stink and its undoubted result? Even more worker bees. Happier worker bees. And so it goes. Just as it has always gone here in my lifetime. Down like a motherfucker.
To rephrase some of the quote above for a U.S. application:
New political parties here?
Don’t hold your breath. The media will stifle their effectiveness. It’s gonna be RatPubs vs. DemRats yet again. How’s that been working out?
When is our Tahrir Square moment coming? When are our karmic chickens going to come home to roost? Compared to Egypt’s guilt, ours is thousands of times greater.
Thousands.
I wonder.
I wonder.
AG
Organizing a new regime is not the same as encouraging a coup. The call is for new elections and a new Constitution that is not so slanted to the Moslem Brotherhood.
The idea that political parties are essential to a government and that what folks should be doing should be exclusively channeled through political parties is what contributes to the fragility and corruption of regimes.
The current situation in Egypt is exactly that that Madison in Federalist #10 discussed as a danger of faction–a single party runs away with its own interests through sheer political power and violates the rights of others. We see that same situation here in the United States’s Congressional paralysis.
The idea that this can be resolved through organizing political parties that further factionalize the government has been proven to be wrong. More parties means more ineffectual government.
What has to happen is getting beyond faction, but not in the mushy Third Way, No Labels, split-the-difference, triangulating bipartisanship that so-called “moderates” in the US advocate.
Faction in US politics serves economic power. Faction in current Egyptian politics serves sectarian religious power. A workable government in the US requires the reining in of economic power dramatically so the remainder of the people have a political voice. A workable government in Egypt requires reining in the power of the Muslim Brotherhood so that those not interested in sectarian rule have a voice.
I’m not sure that Madison’s essay has remedies but it certainly explores the fundamental issue. And shows the agenda that any rebuilt political culture (as opposed to institutions) must have.
I’d argue we have a lot of “serving of religious power” going on around here these days. Just ask the women of Ohio and Wisconsin.
Wait, so who are your fanatics here, Morsi et al, or the people doing the firebombing? And that pun…
Looks like Morsi may possibly have lost the consent of the governed. Or at least a majority of them…
Every democracy gets to decide its own “rules”, constitutional and extra-constitutional. There’s no legal means of “recall” in Egypt apparently, and I don’t know about impeachment, but there’s no sitting parliament, is there?
So Egyptians are creating a new wrinkle in their Morsi-imposed constitution—the right of recall via mass uprising. And it sounds like the Army has taken, um, notice of the dissatisfaction of (a whole hell of a lot of) the people.
Morsi should have been better aware of how his methods were sitting—but he appears to be an atrocious (and clueless) politician and statesman. Not exactly a George Washington figure, haha. If Egypt’s future prez candidates have to take the risk of (extreme) mass uprisings into consideration when governing, it may not be the worst development in the (democratic) world.
It’s their country, and their revolution.