I am no fan of the Muslim Brotherhood, but I don’t understand why the Egyptian military feels it is necessary to open fire on protesters. The trumped up charges against deposed President Mohamed Morsi are transparently ridiculous and have the effect of rejecting the legitimacy of the revolution that removed President Hosni Mubarak from power.
In fact, a Mubarak restoration is what this looks like. The more cosmopolitan people of Cairo are happy because they never wanted to be ruled by religious conservatives, but the dream of representative government is dying quickly in Egypt. It’s one thing to remove the government because they are failing to create consensus, and quite another to try to crush the government’s supporters.
I remember when the Shah’s forces began killing protesters in large numbers. It didn’t end well. The Obama administration can cut off aid tomorrow if they decide to classify the removal of the Morsi government as a coup. They should use that leverage to try to get the Egyptian military to use some restraint.
Unfortunately, the military knows that they are the firewall between Israel and Wahabbi fanatics. So they’re going to push the envelope as far as they want, because they know they can get away with it.
It’s a bad move. Letting the fanatics rule and fail was a good idea. Slaughtering then undoes the lesson that was learned and gives them energy and new legitimacy.
I never said it was a good idea. But consider the guys pressing forward with it: all their lives they’ve known essentially unchallenged power until the rising demand for democracy drove them from it. Now they have a chance to come back from what they might view as little more than an extended vacation. Some of these guys have practiced brutality for generations, so why stop now?
Except that the evidence strongly suggests that the democratically elected Morsi government (or “the fanatics,” to those who have sadly internalized some rather bigoted western depictions of Islam) did not simply fail, but rather was sabotaged by Mubarak loyalists still working in various government agencies.
Days after the coup, gas shortages ended, electric blackouts ceased, and the police patrols that had been almost completely absent from the streets reappeared, reversing the rise in crime and traffic congestion.
It’s pretty clear that the Morsi government didn’t fail, it was framed.
BooMan, please only refer to white, American Christians (and perhaps Likud) as “fanatics.”
Anything else is bigotry.
Thanks.
It’s not bigotry to refer to Muslim fundamentalist radicals as “fanatics.”
Fortunately, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is neither radical nor notably fundamentalist. There are several Egyptian Salafi groups on the far right seeking a theocratic state, but the MB is not one of them.
It is certainly bigoted to refer to all Muslims in Egypt, or to the center-right government they helped to elect, as “the fanatics.”
Saudi Wahhabists? Add to that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood with Hamas in Gaza and funding by Qatar. On the Lebanese border Israel has to contend with Hezbollah and their Iranian backers.
IMO the pro-military supporters of El-Sisi and the 2nd revolution political organisations by far outnumbered the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi supporters yesterday. The MB protesters went looking for trouble by leaving their demonstration near Rabaah al-Adawiyah Mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City. On their way to Tahrir Square, the security forces separated the masses before the Morsi “protestors” could get to the 6 October bridge.
See my diary – MB Initiates Riots in Cairo In Push for Fresh Martyrs.
I have also linked a comment to Juan Cole’s take on the events in Cairo. The MB acts what they do best, offer their young people for martyrdom and attempt to discredit the military by forcing their hand. Need to cut through layers of propaganda. I was surprised how balanced the LIVE coverage of Al Jazeera TV was on the events. The number of victims is still unknown. All martyrs are returned to the mosque to be honored by the clergy, waiting for burial and another mass demonstration.
The Moslem Brotherhood and the Salafists both acted like the Republican Party acts in the US. When they got elected and rigged the Constitution to preserve their power, the public gave them a year to compromise with the rest of the electorate. When they would not, primarily because of Morsi’s personal stubborness, the public organized protests. Morsi could have negotiated.
The military took the opportunity of a roughly equally divided electorate to sieze power again and apparently al-Sisi likes the idea of being the next Pharoah.
When the Moslem Brotherhood and Salafist activists started burning Coptic churches and assassinating Copts, the military had the opportunity to act.
The Obama administration has provided arms but has not meddled in Egyptian internal affairs with the military. (Who knows what the CIA has been up to with or without the knowledge of the White House.)
I expect the Obama administration will publicly counsel restraint but be pretty hands off. The US needs Egypt much more than Egypt needs the US.
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“Who knows what the CIA has been up to with or without the knowledge of the White House.”
The buck stops with the President, he MUST know what the CIA is up to in our name! The Salafists have been running amok in Libya (Benghazi) and in Tunisia, AFAIK not in Egypt. See article – Salafist al-Nour party wields new influence on post-Morsi coalition.
Muslim Brotherhood’s Benghazi offices attacked by protesters
“He has the obligation to find out…” and “he MUST know…” are two different things.
And then there is the order for results with plausible denial that has been the Presidential stance since Roosevelt, and formalized since Truman.
And then the intelligence community (and not just the CIA) seems to make the decision about what the President needs to know. The Presidential Daily Briefing seems to be structured around their agenda. When their judgements are right (“Bin Laden seeks to attack US”) that might be helpful. When their judgements are wrong or are setting up their own budgets, that can be very damaging (see Bay of Pigs).
Instead of inventing imaginary actions for which there is not a shred of evidence and judging the President on those, perhaps we can look at the actual actions:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/world/middleeast/us-halts-delivery-of-f-16-fighters-to-egypt-in-si
gn-of-disapproval.html?_r=0
President Kennedy didn’t know that the CIA was planning his assassination.
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Nice comment, insider information or from an unnamed official in government?
Just logic. If he knew he was about to get whacked he would have at least skipped the convertible.
Nixon didn’t know about Watergate before it happened. Nixon was too smart to back a dumb move like that. Sometimes the man at the top is deliberately held in the dark and the CIA is a law(less) to itself.
Booman Tribune ~ Slaughter in Egypt
the first few days after the coup there were two spokesmen from the military who were surprisingly good communicators, then Sisi showed up yesterday looking like a Central Casting pastiche of gaddhafi, the shah, barat and elvis!
forward to the past…
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I posted an extended diary about Salafist preacher Safwat Hegazy who received full protection of the Muslim Brothers during Morsi’s reign over Egypt.
You don’t understand why the Egyptian military feels it is necessary to open fire on protesters? For the same reason(s) that the U.S. feels it necessary to use drone strikes on villages and Israelis feel it necessary to use rockets in crowded neighborhoods. It’s terror, Booman. Nothing moire and nothing less. The message?
Simple, really.
How did Mubarak last so long?
Ditto. I was there a few years ago and I saw it. Are the MB any better? Given a choice between military and fundamentalists, I personally would choose to get as far away as possible from both and let them terrorize each other until they are both depleted. But what do I know? I”m not a
rank…errr, ahhhh…ranking member of the U.S. PermaGov.And the Great Game continues. More than a century and counting.
AG
It’s a mess. I think the original goal of the protests (social justice, more economic opportunity) were admirable, but have any of these uprisings actually led to a situation that could be unabashedly considered better than it was a couple years ago? This isn’t to say that Qaddafi, Mubarak, Assad, or any of these guys are great – they aren’t/weren’t – but it seems like there’s a virulent strain of Islamic fundamentalism that could potentially lead to situations being a lot worse – not just from the standpoint of having regimes that are arguably more anti-American, but that having sharia law and fundamentalist Islamic rule will be pretty bad for overall human rights as well.
Just some initial thoughts on a situation that seems like there’s no clean resolution in sight for many years.
It depends on how the military seeks to rule. And whether they can eventually come to a political settlement with the Moslem Brotherhood and Salafists. If the latter persist in the attitude that martyrdom for their entire agenda is better than compromise with the very large minority of Coptic Christians, secularist, left, and liberals, it forces the military into a conveniently uncompromising stand themselves. They know how to do security; they know too well. And we have another cycle.
Some analysts labeled al-Sisi’s call for demonstrations, which caused Tamerud to essentially fold, as an example of Peronism. We will see how apt that turns out to be.
The situation in Libya is clearly better than it was two years ago. The fundamentalists are also a small minority in Libya, having gotten their butts handed to them in the elections, which is very different from Tunisia and Egypt.
Also, the timeline “a couple of years” is far too short-sighted. A couple of years after the American Revolution began, it was still a shooting war. A stable and effective constitutional system wasn’t implemented for another decade after that.
IMO, Tunisia and Turkey are the places to watch while Egypt sorts out where it is going.
Also curious about Morocco, which made sufficient concessions to calm protests.
The Arabian peninsula (interestingly outside of Yemen and Oman) is a powderkeg, in the ways most analysts before 2011 feared Egypt was.
A couple of years is much too short for any of the countries that experienced Arab Spring movements.
Hamza Hemdawi, AP:
AP EXCLUSIVE: Egypt military builds case on Morsi
Long detailed presentation of military’s case with a few disclaimers.
It’s always amazing to me how many people can’t see what a bright, clear line is crossed as soon as people are being physically attacked. It’s always, “OK, yes, we are killing people, but we’re willing to consider stopping the violence. On certain conditions.” The US line should be clear: Whenever there’s violence, the very first thing that must happen is that the violence must stop. What are Nobel Peace Prizes for, anyway?
Yes. Let’s observe that bright clear line ourselves. And then we have the moral platform on which to speak about peace and human rights.
Violence has always been politics by other means. The whole idea of states is to have the state have the monopoly on violence, which it then rarely has to use, because its violent capabilities are so overwhelming.
I’m sure that there is lots of sympathy for the psychiatric wounds suffered by poor Sgt. Pepper-Sprayer, formerly of the UC-Davis police force. The Chancellor is the one who crossed that bright, clear line you are pointing out.
It’s much easier to see that bright, clear line in other “less democractic” countries.
To be fair, even if we have a stake in our own eye it doesn’t prevent us from potentially being able to see the log in Egypt’s eye.
The adage was to remove the stake from your own eye first.
The Obama administration can cut off aid tomorrow if they decide to classify the removal of the Morsi government as a coup. They should use that leverage to try to get the Egyptian military to use some restraint.
That’s exactly what they’re doing: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/world/middleeast/us-halts-delivery-of-f-16-fighters-to-egypt-in-si
gn-of-disapproval.html?_r=0
President Obama, in his first punitive response to the ouster of Mohamed Morsi as president of Egypt, has halted the delivery of four F-16 fighter planes to the Egyptian Air Force.
In true Obama style, he’s pursuing the policy delicately, gradually, and splitting the difference, while running the risk of being too cute by half, and ultimately ineffective.
Booman Tribune ~ Slaughter in Egypt
nailed… especially the ‘splitting the difference’ part.
After eight years of President Bull in a China Shop, a delicate touch has been most welcome, but, yeah, it’s possible to go to far in the other direction, too.
…they’re still trumping them up.
The democratically elected head of state was removed by the military and is being held in a secret prison without charges.
But the US Executive branch has clearly said it will not call this a coup d’etat. Because it doesn’t count as a coup so long as it only disenfranchises mere Muslims, I guess?
Because it doesn’t count as a coup so long as it only disenfranchises mere Muslims, I guess?
Yes, rs, the administration that backed the rebellion in Libya and helped get rid of Mubarak just doesn’t care about democracy and Muslims. That must be it.
Calling it a coup d’etat would require an all-out suspension of aid, instead of allowing a gradual stepping up of pressure, like this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/world/middleeast/us-halts-delivery-of-f-16-fighters-to-egypt-in-si
gn-of-disapproval.html?_r=0
The three-way politics in Egypt, between the military, the liberals, and the fundamentalists, requires some delicacy if we want to avoid an explosion. Harsh, sudden moves and the un-nuanced demonization of any of the three sides would be pouring gasoline on the fire.
It looks to me like we’re not avoiding an explosion at all.
Maybe using live ammunition to massacre pro-democracy demonstrators by the dozen doesn’t look like “an explosion,” if you just maintain a certain mindset? Perhaps one needs a perspective that takes it as a given that the Muslims who elected Morsi in a clean election can and should all be categorized as “fundamentalists.”
pro-democracy? or pro-jihad?
Depends on whether you’re a bigot or not, I suppose.
I guess all those Egyptians Muslims who aren’t part of the religious right are anti-Muslim bigots, too.
You are using your Very Favorite Word to try to hide ignorance.
It’s not working.
Actually, yes, some of the leftists and Mubarak loyalists are anti-Islamic bigots. But only a small fraction of them, of course.
It looks to me like we’re not avoiding an explosion at all.
If this situation manages to get resolved with a death toll in the three digits, it will be a miracle. An all-out civil war in Egypt could mean a million or more dead. It is either callous beyond belief, or mind-bogglingly naive, to think that things can’t get a thousand times worse.
And if you don’t think the Muslim Brotherhood are fundamentalists, you need to do a little reading. I’m getting the sense you don’t actually know what that term means, and consider it to be a slur.
I’m sure I’d call a death toll in the three digits an explosion, compared to the death toll in the single digits that led to the election that Morsi fairly won.
The coup was the gasoline, the anti-Morsi protests were the fire. We’re witnessing the explosion.
I’d agree that the historical Muslim Brotherhood had a strong fanatical element. But to call the present-day Egyptian MB “fanatical” is either bigoted or ignorant.
You might want to do some reading yourself.
Going forward, I’ll be surprised if the MB doesn’t get radicalized, and at least partially abandon their modern, nonviolent strategy and ideology. Groups do tend to get a bit reactionary when you start shooting at their members’ heads with live ammunition.
And of course there are Salafi radicals far to the right of the MB already attacking police stations and such in outlying areas where they have strong local support. You can go right ahead and call those groups fundamentalist, but don’t conflate them with the Muslim Brotherhood.
“…to call the present-day Egyptian MB “fanatical” is either bigoted or ignorant.“
Right on. Bigoted or ignorant – or both. The two DO seem to go together, don’t they?
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… if you don’t call the present day Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt extremist. One can add the Salafist and Wahhabist component to the list of voicing hatred and inciting violence. Fortunately, the majority of the Egyptian people will have none of it. Exit Morsi and political Islam.
“Going forward, I’ll be surprised if the MB doesn’t get radicalized, and at least partially abandon their modern, nonviolent strategy and ideology. Groups do tend to get a bit reactionary when you start shooting at their members’ heads with live ammunition.”
You do believe their propaganda and crap? Watch the video of Salafist preacher Safwat Hegazy. He was the agitator who called the masses to move toward the 6 October bridge that was guarded by Egypt’s security forces. Two hours past midnight in “preparation of morning prayers.” Hegazy needs a million martyrs going forward to Al Quds.
The coup was the gasoline, the anti-Morsi protests were the fire.
OK, just so we’re perfectly clear: there is nothing – nothing whatsoever, in your formulation – that Morsi or anyone on his side did to contribute to the problems.
Not the seizing of power from the judges, not the ramming through of the constitutional assembly, nothing.
To say this like Chile or Iran is frankly crap. There were tens of millions of people on the street protesting against Morsi.
I find the people who want to put this down as just another CIA inspired coup silly in the extreme.
I don’t see why not. Just mentioning them drives Americans crazy, so they must be doing something right…
Whatever we’re for, I’m against it.
Saves work, simplifies life.
That’s a terribly simplistic way of looking at things. You’re smarter than that, so hopefully you’re just trolling for kicks on a Saturday night.
I think your sarcasm detector might need recalibrating.
Think hard — how much of the left half of the internet, at least in this country, is driven by this analysis, or analysis approximately this subtle and nuanced?
Half of it? Most of it?
that many on the left see no difference between Chile and Egypt.
Or Libya and Egypt. Or Iraq and Libya.
The list goes on.
Hey, I learned a few truths about oil, Israel and imperialism 40 years ago, and at this point I’m going to make do with them till I die, regardless of how badly they fit.
The alternative’s too damn much work.
“a Mubarak restoration is what this looks like.“
You do have a point The military IS behaving in a way very reminiscent of the despot Mubarak, isn’t it?
But I would not say yet that the dream of a representative government is dying. Give the Egyptians a chance to work it out before you sound the death knell. And for heaven’s sake, keep out of it.
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You tell me about Egypt’s democracy and the behavior of Salafist preacher Safwat Hegazy. He is not alone, thank you.
Egypt does not have a democracy – not yet. It is still a work in progress. If the U.S. and other “interested” western powers stay out of it, then perhaps Egyptians will come up with a system that will work for them.
Egypt does not have a democracy – not yet. It is still a work in progress.
Just right. They are still in the middle of the revolutionary period. There is not agreed-upon political structure that has legitimacy.
If the U.S. and other “interested” western powers stay out of it…
So you object to Obama’s efforts to get the military to rein its violence:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/24/205149247/delivery-of-f-16s-to-egypt-halted-pentagon-
says
0.5