Anyone else find it weird to watch an Egyptian general announce a military coup on television while people fire off celebratory fireworks in the background?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
27 Comments
Recent Posts
- Day 14: Louisiana Senator Approvingly Compares Trump to Stalin
- Day 13: Elon Musk Flexes His Muscles
- Day 12: While Elon Musk Takes Over, We Podcast With Driftglass and Blue Gal
- Day 11: Harm of Fascist Regime’s Foreign Aid Freeze Comes Into View
- Day 10: The Fascist Regime Blames a Plane Crash on Nonwhite People
And then there was the comment from Assad that Morisi should resign for the good of the people.
Kerry and Hagel have to be reaching for the Scotch about now.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
.
Short answer: NO!
I’ll join the both with a glass of scotch. The Arab Gulf states will remain neutral, perhaps a breakthrough in the Middle-East.
Here’s hoping for the best for the Egyptian people.
US defense secretary Chuck Hagel has spoken with General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi twice in the past week.
Cross-posted from my earkier diary – Military Coup Underway in Egypt.
Only if you missed the part about a jury-rigged Constitution being shoved on a large minority and the overreach of a political party that was beginning to repress large numbers of people.
What is weird is a military functioning as a facilitator and broker among hard-nosed parties. And a military that has been burned enough by the corruption of having been in political power for decades to know not to go down that road so soon again.
nearly everybody has missed that part. 90% of the discussion I see talks about the military throwing out a democratically elected president, with zero mention of the fact that said president rammed through that lousy not-very-democratic constitution. And 99.9% of the discussion I see ignores the fact that the US didn’t go straight from revolution to stable govt either.
Only if you missed the part about a jury-rigged Constitution being shoved on a large minority and the overreach of a political party that was beginning to repress large numbers of people.
Indeed. Morsi revealed himself to be a serious Islamist lunatic very early in the game when as President-elect he “vowed” to free the “Blind Sheikh,” Abdel-Rahman. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/29/mohamed-morsi-sheikh-us. When THAT happened I wrote wrote him off as a clown, but a very dangerous one, and wasn’t that surprised when he made the dictatorial power grabs that moved Egypt in the direction of theocracy, a “form of government” even worse than garden variety dictatorship.
Bravo for the Egyptian people standing up and saying “No Thank You!”
What has been fascinating to watch has been the parallel secular revolts taking place in Egypt and Turkey against the increasingly dictatorial and theocratic behavior of the two countries’ heads of government. As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the Morsi and Ergodan.
No this is preferable to letting the Muslim Brotherhood have their way. Now that I’ve seen his vision for Egypt, I don’t mind the thought of Mursi occupying a cell next to Mubarak.
Foreign aid, as generally practiced by the US, gives jets and tanks to the military of foreign countries. They require continued cooperation with the US to get spare parts, and these things seem to always be breaking down. They train their military and have many friends in the officers’ corps. Remember the School of the Americas? When someone goes against American interests he soon realizes that he’s the spare part that needs replacing. Therefore, Torrijos begat Noriega who begat whoever’s watching over the Panamanian money-laundering and drug-smuggling now.
The above would lead me to believe that the billions that the Egyptian military got every year for the last thirty years has bought what America (the foreign power, not the country of people) wants. Morsi was straying off the reservation.
Precisely.
Thank you.
So many people seem to think that this is just another act in the ongoing Egyptian Revolution drama.
It is of course…it’s the act where the military retakes control of the state. Simple as that.
Morsi and the islamiic Brotherhood? Tough shit for them. Not enough guns. Yet.
As Sarah Palin so prophetically said regarding the Syrian thing a couple of weeks ago, “… let Allah sort it out.”
And so He has, apparently, with a little help from his friends the Egyptian military, I guess. Friends who just happen to be “friends” of the U.S.
Nice.
“Round and ’round and ’round it goes.
Where it stops, nobody knows.
I guess that’s why they’re called “revolutions.”
Best of luck to the Egyptian people.
Been there, saw smelled. and tasted the results of their previous military government.
Nice.
AG
Not really a military coup. Let’s see if the leftists, secularists, liberals and socialists organize this time. You cannot exercise power without politics.
I’m just surprised it took this short amount of time for it to happen. I expected a good 5 years of MB rule before the people had enough. The Egyptian People really make me feel pride.
One final note: the best thing we can hope for right now is instability and constant regime change; constant change and shifts are what revolutionary momentum is made of. Eventually General Sisi needs to be removed as well. He stands hand-in-hand with the US-Saudi-Qatari-Israeli agenda, which is against the Egyptian people.
Sisi was elevated to his position and is simply the vessel that SCAF used to maintain their behind-the-scenes dominance in the country’s affairs. Removing one General won’t fix the problem.
The larger problem is creating stability. Egypt doesn’t need to be doing this all over again next year. The economy is the real problem that has temporarily united a coalition against the MB. The new government will have their hands full with that as well as dealing with bitter Islamists.
Not so much considering they gave a 48-hour notice of the impending coup – that, to me, was the surreal part.
this sounds like every birther wet-dream come true.
the wingnuts are feeling awful jealous right now …
I feel the same way about Congress.
Where is Morsi and the Muslim brotherhood? This is far from over.
WTF?!
http://rt.com/usa/us-troops-deploy-egypt-185/
http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/06/22/us-soldiers-in-sinai-a-precautionary-measure/
I’m not sure what to say about this other than what you said.
There are US Army troops deployed in Egypt? How long has this been normal?
Since at least the Camp David Accords.
yeah, it made more sense after i read ishmael’s links.
Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten that peacekeeping mission had not ended. The fact that it was a local station and popped up in a link today as related made me wonder WTF was going on.
But that makes sense.
I fully admit that foreign policy is NOT my area of expertise (it could be said, I don’t have any area of expertise, but that could just be my sister talking…lO). I made the terrible mistake of flipping between MSNBC and CNN and I saw both networks at some point this afternoon into evening basically saying that everything that is going on in Egypt can be placed at Obama’s feet. I’m assuming they meant US policies, but I believe Andrea Mitchell in particularly made a point of saying it.
I haven’t read any statements yet from the admin, but I what would be the best outcome for the good of the Egyptian people. Will there be more elections?
There are a lot of people, all over the political map, who cannot help but place the US at the center of e everything that happens in the world. The fact is, we don’t control what happens in Egypt. Obama is just trying to stay on the bull and react, but that’s not good enough for the people who think it’s our job to run everything.
Find it ironic that an Islamist party government is toppled for implementing Western-style free-market reforms.