I find it curious that Obama is effectively calling on the Egyptian military to guarantee the protesters’ democratic aspirations. Ironically, he and other Western leaders seem to believe that the best way to transition from Mubarak’s dictatorship to democracy is by installing a de facto military dictatorship.
(“Crisis in Egypt: the End Game,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 4, 2011)
On Monday Egypt’s military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gave the country’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, 48 hours to reconcile his irreconcilable differences with opposition forces. Never mind that Morsi had even less chance of doing this than Mubarak had of striking an eleventh-hour compromise with these same forces before the military deposed him.
This is why I find it so mind-boggling that, after reacting initially with justified defiance and righteous indignation, Morsi ended up looking just as feckless and fatally compromised as Mubarak did: offering a desperate plan at the eleventh hour for a government of national unity — with himself remaining as president.
Alas, just as it was with Mubarak, this was too little, too late. And, like Mubarak, it’s probably only a matter of time before Morsi ends up on trial for all kinds of alleged crimes against the state.
The Egyptian military has announced the removal of Mohamed Morsi as president, presenting a roadmap for reconciliation in the country.
In a televised statement on Wednesday, Egyptian military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced that the plan calls for the temporary suspension of the constitution and the institution of a technocrat government.
Tahrir Square, where thousands of people had gathered during the day, erupted in celebrations as soon as the news was announced.
(Associated Press, July 3, 2013)
With speed and precision that would make any military dictatorship green with envy, the army placed Morsi under house arrest, rounded up all high-ranking members of his ruling Muslim Brotherhood, and confiscated all of their communications and media facilities.
But those celebrating today are delusional if they think Morsi’s Islamist supporters are going to let them have their way. For this coup seems bound to incite an insurgency. And Egyptians need only look at the living Hell life in Iraq has been for the past decade to know what that would portend.
In the meantime, I don’t blame President Obama for keeping his distance. And he should stay out of it as long as the military contains the violence and does nothing to compromise America’s multi-billion investment in maintaining peace between Egypt and Israel.
After all, this is the only reason successive U.S. presidents propped up the dictator Mubarak for 30 years. In other words, the United States is far more interested in peace along Egypt’s boarders than in democracy within them. And it will support a military dictator as readily as a democratically elected president to further that prevailing interest.
Exhibit A in this respect is America’s abiding, if not intimate, support of the plainly undemocratic rule of the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia. That image of President George W. Bush looking like a lovesick teenager as he kissed then strolled along holding hands with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah speaks volumes….
Frankly, Obama should let the Egyptians sort out their own internal political mess … by any means necessary; just as he is now letting the Iraqis, Syrians, Turks, Brazilians, Kenyans (and soon will be letting the Afghans) do. For imagine what a foolhardy and unsustainable precedent it would set if Obama made the United States responsible for resolving such political strife wherever it erupts.
Incidentally, I hope I can be forgiven for taking a little credit for coining the phrase “never-ending revolution” in “Egyptian Revolution Part II,” The iPINIONS Journal, July 14, 2011. Because the forces behind the overthrow of Morsi are insisting that, despite looking like a coup and acting like a coup, what the army did yesterday was just in furtherance of their original revolution (i.e., “revolution 2.0”).
Egyptian liberal opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei said on Wednesday that the Arab Spring revolution of 2011 had been relaunched by the announcement of an army-sponsored roadmap which removed Islamist President Mohamed [Morsi].
(Reuters, July 3, 2013)
Except that, alluding to another metaphor, a coup by any other name still stinks as much. But ElBaradei is engaging in political sophistry to avoid calling this military intervention a “coup” for the same reason Obama is: if it is deemed a coup, the United States would be legally obligated to withdraw the billions that funds/feeds the Egyptian army….
Far more important, though, is what happens if/when the next democratically elected president fails to meet unrealistic expectations for political reform and economic development?
Or, in the first instance, what happens if, despite efforts to purge them, members of the Muslim Brotherhood emerge victorious from the next round of presidential and parliamentary elections…? After all, secular protesters have proven that, while they are great at stoking military coups, they suck at running political campaigns. Revolution 3.0…?
That said, Westerners should look in the mirror before looking down their noses at the political mess now unfolding in Egypt. Indeed, it is instructive that President Obama highlighted America’s “improbable experiment in democracy” today in his annual July 4th address.
For this should remind folks that it took the United States, the undisputed beacon of Western democracy, over 150 years to even begin to live up to its democratic ideals. What’s more, those years included a bloody civil war and racial strife that makes the sectarian strife plaguing fledgling democracies in places like Afghanistan and Iraq seem like neighborly spats.
By contrast, Egypt’s has been grappling with its improbable experiment in democracy for only one year. And it can clearly do a lot worse than mount a bloodless coup (or two) along the way.
So give Egypt a friggin’ break !
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* This commentary was published originally yesterday, Thursday, at 9:06 pm