I don’t know what is going to happen in Egypt today, but I suspect that the military is going to dislodge the democratically-elected government because it has lost too much support. It’s hard to say whether that is a good or a bad thing. The potentially good part of it is that the conflict is in large part about constitutional issues, and they need to get the constitution right if they are going to be a functioning democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood-led government tried to have things their way, but they only had the support of a bare-majority of the people. That’s enough to win an election, but not enough to gain a consensus about a constitution.
The potentially bad part is that there is no guarantee that the democratic process will survive a military coup. And the Muslim Brotherhood feels like their legitimate electoral victory is being stolen from them and a lot of their leaders are calling for martyrdom (suicide) operations. No one wants to see a protracted civil war in Egypt.
What’s unambiguously a good thing is that the Muslim Brotherhood has lost legitimacy. As an anti-Mubarak organization, it had legitimacy. But once allowed to wield power, the people of Egypt thought that they were too religiously conservative and rejected them. This is a process we would like to see throughout the Muslim world, where Islamism has gained support as the main opposition to tyrannical governments that are often supported by the U.S. government.
We can benefit in several ways. First, we benefit when the governments we are supporting are democratic in nature. We benefit when the people are focused on their own political battles rather than on our role in denying them political options. We benefit when the more radical religious groups lose legitimacy and support.
But the situation in Egypt is too fluid and chaotic to make firm predictions about how it will affect our interests.
It used to be stated that US interests were best protected by authentic democratic and functioning governments.
If that is still true, our interests will be best protected by a regime that does not take a factional winner-take-all view of its victory. Morsi’s democratic election masked the fact that the Moslem Brotherhood jury-rigged the Constitutional convention to ensure as close to absolute power as it could get under the circumstances. The Egyptian people gave Morsi a year in order to see whether he would be absolutist or incorporate other interests; he turned out to be absolutist. To the point that given 48 hours to negotiate with the opposition, he refused. It is at that point that he completely lost legitimacy to rule all of the Egyptian people, just as the US GOP has lost legitimacy ever to rule all the American people until they take a different political path.
The military stepped in to avoid the possibility of a Syrian-style civil war. What will be required is someone from the Moslem Brotherhood more flexible in negotiations than Morsi. The Moslem Brotherhood overreached their democratic mandate; it is up to them as to whether this now turns into civil war.
It seems that the Egyptian military for now has no stomach to act politically in the way that they did from Nasser to Mubarak.
But quite frankly, what’s good for the United States should not be the primary value for Egyptians.
The army was a little freaked out by Morsi and the Brothers essentially giving support to any Egyptians who wanted to up and wage Jihad against the Alawites in Syria. Josh at TPM says he’s being told that was the point the military really saw as their breaking point in their struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood.
here’s the link
http://editors.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/07/key_story.php?ref=fpblg
Which makes perfect sense. Why would you want to create a bunch of jihadist veterans who will come home and cause problems?
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It must be clear by now, Morsi is tied to the moneystrings of Saudi Arabia (Salafists/Wahhabists) and Qatar (Muslim Brotherhood). He wants to give full support by sending his people for martyrdom.
Yeah, the Syrian revolt was always about a peaceful uprising. What a bs … my diary.
evidently it was also about lack of commitment to Egypt at this critical time
>>It used to be stated that US interests were best protected by authentic democratic and functioning governments.
did it? when? OK it’s sometimes stated by us dirty hippies, but it’s sure never been government policy. How many times in the 20th century did the US government help to throw out democratic governments and install a pliable strongman?
Always when the US threw out governments it stated that US interests were best protected by authentic democratic and functioning goverments–like that of Diem and Reza Pahlavi, for example.
My recollection is that the constitution that was adopted was badly flawed, and that because of this the election that got Morsi elected was, to put it mildly, of questionable legitimacy. I guess you could say that the current government was democratically elected, but that’s like saying the state legislatures in the Jim Crow South were democratically elected.
Regarding your last sentence, I am curious what you think “our interests” are in Egypt.
In my opinion, the optimal situation is a democratically-elected government that is representative of the Egyptian people but that isn’t Islamist in either nature or in its constitutional structure, that protects religious minorities, and is modern in its outlook. Kind of an anti-Saudi Arabia.
I have long said that Egypt is the most promising place in the Arab world for this kind of government to take root and prosper. The reason is simple. They just don’t have the same ethnic and sectarian divisions as other Arab nations. They have the Coptic Christians, but Turkey has its Kurds. On the whole, Egypt can fight about policy rather than about which group has power.
The U.S. would benefit from not being accused of culpability for oppression. And we would have no reason to feel that such a government was naturally opposed to our interests in the region, with the obvious perennial exception of Israel’s settler policy.
Egypt may be “the most promising place in the Arab world for this kind of government to take root and prosper,” but I’d say the reason is our close ties to the military (the real power) and not necessarily Egyptian culture.
http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-exec.aspx (d/l the full report and take a look at Egypt’s poll numbers. Not very encouraging.)
The Egyptian military’s hold on much of the country’s economy will eventually become an issue. I forget what this article says but I think I’ve read that the military controls something like 40% of the GDP.
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero011813
My bet would be on Tunisia. Articles I’ve read their culture and the way their handling their constitutional process make me optimistic. Tunisia still has extremist/fundementalist issues, but the majoritarianism tendencies seem to be more restrained which I think is key.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/opposition-walks-out-tunisia-constitution-talks
Tunisia or Iran IMO.
Thanks for all this, nllspc.
Question for you or anyone else who might know: I understand the military controls the oil industry; I suspect that might be a decent chunk of the GDP. What are the other parts of the economy under military control?
I replied to my original post and corrected the 2nd link. It goes into depth about the holdings of the Egyptian military.
This article quotes a former minister in exile as saying the military controls less than 10% of GDP btw. Stacher mentions shipping, construction, real estate, weapons manufacturing, petroleum equipment, petroleum, computers, and renewable energy. I’ve tweeted back and forth with Stacher before and he says much of the military’s holdings are still a mystery.
Dang it. Second article I linked was the wrong one. Here’s the correct one.
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer262/egypts-generals-transnational-capital
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My diary 50 min. ago – Military Coup Underway in Egypt.
First breaking news story by Russia Today and LIVE coverage now on CNNi.
Morsi is not part of the decisionmaking proces in Egypt anymore. All communication lines woth Morsi have been cut. Muslim Brotherhood leadership is placed under house arrest. Since this morning, the state run newspaper Al Ahram has been taken over by the military. This morning’s headline read: RESIGN or REMOVAL, clear choices. Morsi refused resignation as he holds on to power in a “democratic proces”. MB has threatenend with bloodshed. Military tanks are rolling into MB held districts of Cairo.
Morsi’s election was legit. Though things get more complicated regarding the lower and upper houses of parliament. Then everything went to shit with constituent assembly and the crafting of the constitution.
Couple good recaps:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_egypts_michele_bachmann_became_president_and_plunged_the_cou
ntry_into_c/#13728625649771&action=collapse_widget&id=4620269
http://tahrirsquared.com/node/5108
Objective analysis:
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/27/will_june_30_be_midnight_for_morsis_cinderella_sto
ry
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The Islamic faith has this division for nearly 1400 years. The ill-fated decision for the Iraq War had the full support of Sharon/Israel. Saudi Arabia had strongly advised not to wage a war fearing the outcome as we see today, a boost for Iran’s influence. Israel is well versed to invest in short-term conflicts and has the intelligence and timing to join a piggy-back coup in neighboring states. Israel has a long-term goal but lacks vision for life beyond violence and a conflict. Peace is not a word in Israel’s vocabulary.
Then crown-prince and now King Abdullah does have a long term vision for the Middle-East, I’m afraid US and Western values/influence will not be part of Al-Sham. Not surprisingly, most Arab states cannot unite as even Qatar and Saudi Arabia illustrate today.
I do consider Egypt’s 2nd Revolution helpful to determine a more secular, perhaps enlightened form of democracy the people of Egypt deserve. President Morsi was a failure and will soon be forgotten for doing the bidding of the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogan in Turkey has the democratic majority and the arrogance to steer towards an autocratic state, just short of crowning himself sultan of the new empire.
Interesting times, hoping the seed of democracy falls in fertile soil.
Added comment:
I will forward some arguments of mine why the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists and Wahhabists are part of a major Sunni revival started in the 1990′s and is build on terror acts across the Middle-East. The billions of funding from Qatar and Saudi Arabia are used to obfuscate the true religious goal of Al-Sham. Morsi failed as an Egyptian leader because he did not encompass the opposition. In a new democracy one cannot rule absolutely when at the polls he got the smallest margin in a majority. Morsi followed the lead of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he should have taken advice from Nelson Mandela. In a revolution, you get only one chance.
The Arab leaders are building their policy not just on their immense wealth, but are using the shortcomings and short-sightedness of their major foes Israel and the US to their benefit. Keep on signing those major civilian and military contracts …
Egypt’s military corporate establishment “delivers” 25-40% of the nation’s GDP
See my earlier diary – US Will Be Ousted by Saudi King Abdullah in Middle-East.
This is the result of a religious wack party attempting to impose its vision of religious rule upon a country which is not 100% in agreement.
Turkey is in the middle of the same deal. The Turkish situation is one in which we are already seeing some push-back of the essentially secular Turks fighting back against religious lunacy. The modern Turkish state was established to eliminate the religious control of the late stages of the Ottoman Empire. Attaturk and the ORIGINAL “young turks” fought back against the Ottomans, eliminated the fez as a required article of apparel, established secular governance, and brought Turkey from the 1600s to the 20th century. Now they want to go back.
Of course, we in the US wouldn’t have any experience of that. 😉
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Is there a continent where leaders still trust the US administration? Not only are the US Congress and its members disfunctional, it appears the White House suffers a bout of paralysis also.
BREAKING NEWS: France24 – Morales’s plane en route after stopover Austria amid Snowden scandal.
Related: France24 – France seeks suspension of US-EU trade talks over NSA leaks.
See Marie2’s diary – Bully On the Block – Update3.
Egypt, Syria and parts of the world are on fire, can we locate Barack Obama .. on a golf course like Ike, perhaps on a ranch in Midland Texas, well you are close – President and First Lady honor George and Laura Bush in Tanzania.
My diary – Clapper Caught In Blatant Lie, Where’s Obama?
I don’t precisely know to whom the word “we” refers in that paragraph, but whoever “we” might be, if they really want to see a process like that “…throughout the Muslim world, where Islamism has gained support as the main opposition to tyrannical governments that are often supported by the U.S. government,” then all they have to do is stop supporting tyrannical governments in the area.
POOF!!!
Problem solved.
Except of course that the particular “we” that is in power here does not want to see that process. How do I know this? It’s not exactly rocket science, Booman. As you said, “…all they have to do is stop supporting tyrannical governments in the area.” And they haven’t.
If someone says that they really want a drink of cool water and then refuse to drink it when it is available or even go look for it than I guess they don’t really want it.
Do they, Booman.
Duh.
What “they”…not “we,” Booman, they (The U.S. corporate-owned PermaGov and all of its many subsidiaries)…really want is to continue the economic imperialism upon which the U.S. built its worldwide hegemony immediatlely after WW II.
Them days are gone forever, Bubba, and the dinosaurs who control this government…I call them “dinosaurs” even though some of them wish to appear to be what we laughingly call “progressives”…are longing to return to them good ol’ days. You know…when American exceptionalism was fairly easily supported by equally good, old-fashioned overt and covert wars and the “bombs burtsing in air/rockets’ red glare” only appeared over other continents.
9/11 ended that pipe dream forever.
Bet on it.
But here we are, trying to run a kinder, gentler (Read “more technologically produced/more proxy fighters/less American troops on the ground”) war throughout the Islamic world.
Until the inevitable happens, of course.
We will eventually choke on our own karma if we do not back off and do so quickly.
Bet on that as well.
Watch.
Any day now.
Aaaaaany day now…
Watch.
Later (If of course there is such a thing)…
AG
“We will eventually choke on our own karma if we do not back off and do so quickly.”
Specifically what the fuck does that mean WRT Egypt?
AG, you need pepto-bismol of the diary. You have diary diarhhea. A lot comes out, but what is the meaning of it?
From the State Department:
For karma to exist, we must do a sin or commit a bad act. Since the start of the revolution in Dec 2010, we have had a hands-off policy (I am not in the State Dept, so cannot say if we have drones over the Aswan Dam). We have clean hands with Egypt. We have had clean hands with all of the states there. Obama has done pretty well in the Mideast.
Syria? Who knows? Huge can of rancid offal there. Both sides are terrible. However, the regime is being assisted by the militias from Iran, and so that is not good.
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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.
Figure it out for yourself.
I’ll give you a hint, though.
Support for tyrannical governments is bad for one’s enemies list. It makes it grow. Rapidly.
We are waging military, diplomatic and political war in the Islamic world. “Support for tyrannical governments”…whether they be overtly or covertly supported…is diplomatic and political warfare. The Egyptian military is and has been for decades armed and otherwise “supported” by the U.S. It still is. If Morsi goes down it will be perceived all over the Islamic world as yet another U.S.-supported coup, and one way or another, that is exactly what it will be. If we stop meddling w/other countries’ internal affairs our enemies list will either stop growing or at the very least become more a list of real enemies, not people that we have made our enemies by fucking with their politics.
That’s a large hint, but on past evidence it’s the kind that you need if you are going to get anywhere.
Groucho Mark understood. When someone was really lame on his quiz show “You Bet Your Life” he’d ask inane questions like “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?”
Do you know?
AG
Mrs. Grant
A very perceptive analysis, if somewhat strange:
The reference is to the “temperature checks” during the facilitation of Occupy Wall Street general assemblies.
(fondly remembers saying here a couple days ago that no matter who the “president” is in egypt, it’s the military who has the power. and someone “corrected” me. good times, good times.)
That is true of every country in the world. But it is also true that the people have the power over a conscripted military in that soldiers are not likely to obey orders to shoot their relatives and neighbors. (See East Germany, 1989)
East Germany 1989 is one example, but in general soldiers are indeed very likely to obey such orders. American troops have certainly never refused to shoot their fellow citizens.
Kent State, OH, 1970