Jeeze.
I haven't had much to say about the Latest Egypt Thing because it seemed pretty obvious to me what was going on: Morsi had been quite the displeasure to the Neo-Liberal factors who drive these things.
The People of Egypt elected the Muslim Brotherhood party and Morsi in their first free and fair election how many thousands of years of history? The uppity Morsi and crew got above themselves and thought that winning an election and following a constitution meant they had the right to, erm, govern. How drole.
From what I've seen -- which isn't a lot -- of the current unpleasantness in Cairo and elsewhere in the Two Lands, it's plain that there is a very strong class animus at work among the contending forces. The Brotherhood supporters are clearly of the Lower Orders whereas the Anti-Morsis are of the bourgeois and Upper Classes, meaning that many of them are die-hards and left-overs from the Mubarak reign. Oh.
Then of course, there's the El Baradei faction, the technocrats who will actually be ruling on behalf of international interests.
Whether and how long it will work, denying democratic interests, is anybody's guess. We might look to Honduras for a recent example of the theme.
Sad.
Che,
ReplyDeleteTwo different takes on Egypt, however, both reveal US meddling:
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[...] The foreign minister said he was acting as an emissary of Washington, the advisers said, and he asked if Mr. Morsi would accept the appointment of a new prime minister and cabinet, one that would take over all legislative powers and replace his chosen provincial governors.
The aides said they already knew what Mr. Morsi’s answer would be. He had responded to a similar proposal by pointing at his neck. “This before that,” he had told his aides, repeating a vow to die before accepting what he considered a de facto coup and thus a crippling blow to Egyptian democracy.
His top foreign policy adviser, Essam el-Haddad, then left the room to call the United States ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, to say that Mr. Morsi refused. When he returned, he said he had spoken to Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, and that the military takeover was about to begin, senior aides said.
“Mother just told us that we will stop playing in one hour,” an aide texted an associate, playing on a sarcastic Egyptian expression for the country’s Western patron, “Mother America.” [...]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/world/middleeast/morsi-spurned-deals-to-the-end-seeing-the-military-as-tamed.html?_r=1&
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And:
The Egyptian military threw Morsi out in a coup today.
Why?
Irish Times reports:
Army concern about the way President Mohamed Morsi was governing Egypt reached tipping point when the head of state attended a rally packed with hardline fellow Islamists calling for holy war in Syria, military sources have said....
Mr Morsi himself called for foreign intervention in Syria against Mr Assad, leading to a veiled rebuke from the army, which issued an apparently bland but sharp-edged statement the next day stressing that its only role was guarding Egypt’s borders....
For the army, the Syria rally had crossed “a national security red line” by encouraging Egyptians to fight abroad, risking creating a new generation of jihadists, said Yasser El-Shimy, analyst with the International Crisis Group.
Obama had recently sent American troops to prop up Mursi, and the protesters were furious at the U.S. for backing Islamic radicals.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/07/what-really-caused-the-coup-against-the-egyptian-president.html
The Syrian Jihad bit is something of a curiosity. After all, Washington is now pledging its support to the (supposedly al Qaeda affiliated) Syrian rebels, but let the Egyptian government say they will support the rebels, even intervene militarily -- if that actually happened -- then Washington has to precipitate a coup in Cairo?
ReplyDeleteWhut?
I doubt the thought of Syrian intervention by Egypt was the precipitating cause of the coup in Cairo, the message is clear: "Step out of line, the man come and take you away."
Expect more of this...