Troubles in Egypt

It's tough to please everyone, Egypt proves that. First the military with popular support throws out a dictator then they hold elections. Problem is the guy they elected wanted to implement some extremist Islamic laws. Then the military uh...removed him from office HOWEVER also with popular support. Of course not everyone approves of what the military did. I wonder whats going to happen next. It's not like those who want to enforce their extreme version of religion are going to relinquish their power. I fear this is going to get even more violent.

It seems almost all transitions into a democracy are paved in blood. Sure there are exceptions, usually though only when those in power let it so.

 

Not exactly.

The situation in Egypt is confusing to everyone but this is compounded by the lack of inter-cultural understanding. Mohamed Morsi was formerly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which despite it's name has PEACEFUL implementation of Islamic religious tenants among its platforms. But during the general election he changed parties to the "Freedom and Justice Party" which is considered an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, with strong connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, but is a slightly more liberal political movement in as much as it supports a "confessional state" (where Islam would be the state/endorsed religion, but separate from the religious institutions) but that other religions would receive a broad tolerance. During the election that now deposed President Morsi was elected the liberal motivation for the revolution, including women, were almost totally shut out of political the political process. This is due to the fact that the liberal movement not being as well established or organized as the "political right" in the nation. This is even more complicated that because of the divided ballot they held a run-off election between two "political right" parties that about half the nation did NOT vote for in the first election, it was a choice between the former ruling party or a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate. "Choose your poison" fits rather well into how the Egyptian population took this result.

The Egyptian military is rather autonomous because of the massive support they receive from NATO (namely the United States), that they get to conscript people into service to work in factories to sell products around the world, and they have massive amounts of land in their name that they can loan or sell for development purposes. In addition to this the military has an ideology that purports they have a sacred and eternal connection and vow of protection to the Egyptian people... how this works is unclear and should generally be considered hyperbolic. But this military being heavily secular and soviet influenced the former ruling party were NOT their friends, moreover because the former ruling party impeded their business. So when millions of Egyptians filled the streets to protest, this was a nightmare for the military... it was getting in the way of business and they had to watch them... so with no surprise they deposed the former government in a propaganda like display for the people.

So after this contested election that locked out a large portion of the population including women, liberals, unemployed, and young people (who were the major cause of the of the revolution, not like they had anything else to do anyways) was a problem for the military. But the military just wanting the government to get back to business so they could stop babysitting the nation they gave the green light for this BECAUSE Morsi PROMISED that these locked out groups would be brought in and that the new constitution would be drafted fairly.

BUT Morsi pushed these locked out groups even further out, started to arrest dissidents, wrote a constitution than enshrined his political base's power, started to impose harsh censorship laws, harassing liberals speaking out against him, THEN if this was not enough signed a Presidential decree suspending the same unfairly written constitution he wrote and started to imply no further elections would be held. During this time he also cut funding to police, fire fighters, and other needed civil services which caused an increase in crime. The people who did the first protest decided that they had enough and were rallying the people in form of a petition in a promise to rally if the president did not keep his own promise, Morsi got on television and made a several hour long winded speech blaming everyone saying he wasn't going to back down at all... this speech angered EVERYONE. So the protesters decided 'to heck with waiting, we will protest now' and AGAIN the military has to babysit millions of protesters in the streets.

The military decides that they will have none of this and this is becoming like the old ruling party they depose Morsi, just with a Muslim fling going on within their party, then installed the head of their constitutional supreme court as intern-president (so it is not a military dictatorship and argumentively the military is serving the will of both the people, law, and courts). So now the deposed Muslim Brotherhood and their proxy parties are enraged demanding that the reigns of state be handed back over to them while the people are just glad to see them leave. The military's promise at the moment is basically to "lets try that again without the whole spiraling into a dictatorship thing." But really the military's motivation is that Morsi was in the way of their business and was ideologically at odds with them. The people of course are generally in support of the removal except for the 'political right' that was thrown out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5suNtLwbBw This explains it better than I could perhaps.

Republicans in the United States protesting the continued aid to Egypt I think are misguided because not only would it not do anything but make the situation worse for everyone it would mean that Russia would most likely step in providing funding... which would mean that it would become like Syria where Russia won't allow the revolution to happen because they support the government forces. Which candidly I think that Morsi while democratically elected he STOPPED being a democratically elected leader the moment he implied no further elections would be held, suspended the constitution and stopped listening to the courts and the military did not install themselves into the government... so I think the accusation that this is a coup d'etat is misguided because if it were the military wouldn't of appointed a judge as its head.

 

Yeah everything you said is clear I just didn't want to write an essay on it so thanks for the recap. I read that the Saudi's now want to send aid to Egypt regardless of what the west does. I thought they hated the Egyptians but I guess they don't want extremist Muslims next door either. I don't think cutting off aid is a good idea either but a lot of money is being poured into the military forces there. I get why the president doesn't want to support a "military coup", but for the common guy it looks like the military kicked a guy off a chair and now that chair is empty for the people to decide. If things take too long to change though...

This needs to be as short term as possible so people can view this as more of a transition phase to a true democracy that doesn't get hijacked by an extreme group.

That of course requires peace on the streets. After dealing with pacification (otherwise voting booths would get bombed you know), they can hold elections again but this time without the infiltration from the Muslim Brotherhood. This could take time though and could get ugly since we all know how dangerous fanatics are. Also the military will have to play by the rules too otherwise we are back to square one with the first dictator guy. People will sell out democracy for security if this starts to drag out.

Worse case scenario? Muslim Brotherhood gets back in with Egypt's military being abandoned. Egypt would descend into chaos and everything in the region would feel it's effects. I can even say that abandoning them now will revitalize terror groups.

Of course no one is stupid enough to let that happen. No one in the middle east anyway. Thanks for your comments.

 

If you want to look at a somewhat similar spiraling into a dictatorship look no further than to the German National Socialist Workers Party slurred by dissenters, exiles, and diaspora as Nazis. The Nazies won democratic elections taking advantage of peoples fear, anger, prejudice, belief that conventional insitutions were failing them, and with the growing concern of Marxism to the east of them in the Soviet Union. Hitler was a charismatic and fanatical party leader. When he was elected Chancellor of Germany by the 'German Parliament' he continued to expand both the powers of state and the emergency powers of state eventually leading to the Reichstag Fire Decree. "Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice." This was issued to combat growing terrorism within the nation. Eventually step by step the constitution became meaningless, the executive branch was under his control, the parliament was a rubber-stamp body, and a new slew of puppet judges to sit on their courts. Eventually elections simply stopped not that these elections were anything but propaganda for the masses at this point. So you could argue that overthrowing Hitler was overthrowing a democratically elected leader?

Deposed President Morsi and his political cronies were doing almost the same. But where the German military sat idly by the Egyptian military in response to civil protest deposed Morsi and installed the head of their Constitutional Supreme Court as an interim head of state. Suppose that in Germany if the German military eventually said "No, we will not obey those orders, we are subject to the will of the people and the constitution." Would this be a overthrow of government or a departure of the rule of law?

Suppose in the United States there was a political party that had a majority in Congress and had a President that was dangerously cutting civil services, using the executive branch to harass/persecute dissenters, was enacting laws that overtly violated the constitution, and then the President issued an executive order suspending the constitution, civil liberties, and implied no further elections be held. Is this a democracy or a democratic leader? I hope that everyone in this hypothetical situation would agree that NO this is not rule by the will of the people. So what if the United States' military deposed this political party and President installing the head of the Supreme Court as an interim head of the federal government while the federal republic of republics is reformed would this be an overthrow of a democratically elected leader and a military dictatorship?

Is that the protection of democracy and law? Or is that a military dictatorship? I personally call it democracy. In a democracy some orders should be null and void at the first pen stroke. In a democracy those leaders responsible should be held accountable. Is this not what the military did in Egypt? How can you call it an overthrow of government? I think there is a bias in the news reporting that is unfair. While I am greatly concerned about the "Arab Spring" and in particular my hope that Egypt will transition into a full democracy. I also wonder how a military that has such autonomy from the law can ever be truly subject to the law even if it is democratic and if this is an impediment to a full democracy.

But perhaps what I am most skeptical and concerned about is if Egypt can find peace between those Egyptians wanting a confessional state and those wanting a liberal secular state. Turkey is for better or worse proof that a Muslim dominant nation can have a largely secular democracy. Moreover in light of protests by the Turkish people to prevent their nation from being turned into a Muslim confessional state. It simply seems that Islamic cultures are struggling with the basic concepts of democracy, liberalism, and secularism. Egypt also has a largely illiterate population that is very poor. I tend to fight the hardest for the seemingly lost causes but I want to believe they can find a way.

 

Goes to show you need a system of checks and balances. It's one thing to win a election. It's something else entirely though when there is no system in place to keep the winner and his party from setting themselves up for the long haul. What did they expect a guy with ties to terror groups is going to do? Play by the rules and ignore loopholes in a infant government?

Using your Nazi party history, I guess you can say this is what would have happened to Nazi Germany if the military and the people KNEW what schemes the ones in charge were up to. Good thing these people were exposed and removed early otherwise the nation would have been swallowed up by extremist propaganda. The low education wouldn't help here. By the time anyone knew what was happening it would have been to late.

I agree with what the military did, no sane person wants to revert back to the theocratic middle ages. I'm confident the majority of Egyptians feel the same way. It's good the military didn't ignore what Morsi was doing or it would be a mini repeat of the Nazi party. The problem now is dealing with Morsi's supporters, most of whom would probably do anything in their power to bring their president back into office.

On what to call what the military did, this still looks like a military overthrow to me. I'm not a fan of intricate minor legal details, I call it how I see it. Good news is I agree in this situation since they are doing it for the people, sounds cliche but their actions so far don't show any power grabs. I suppose you can look at it as the military holding those in power accountable. I guess it can be also upholding democratic ideals. That's the view they hold for themselves now which is all good and true but still doesn't change my view that the military exercised some extreme powers to remove another from power. Whatever government they had before would have to be redone in order to prevent wannabe dictators from taking over. In my mind they never had a democracy so time for a redo.
Oh well, overthrow or enforcing democracy, it's all the same to me.

Now the question is what going to happen now? I hope the Egyptian military knows how to build a proper democracy. It must be an uneasy feeling sitting so close to that empty chair of power.

Edit:
Oh yeah about Islam...Education is the white knight against extremism. Peoples beliefs always change throughout the ages, usually through education. Extreme Catholics in the middle ages loss power to the thinkers of the Enlightenment age. Did Catholics all of a sudden then disappear from the face of the earth? Of course not, they toned down their views to conform what was considered ethical and right. Does that make them less a Catholic? No, how about a smarter one instead. We learned, adjusted, and are still faithful.

I use Christianity as an example since I believe Islam can follow the same path. Of course there would be unrest but I believe given time and a working democracy there would be progress. Democracy is the key here since it encourages people of all beliefs to coexist. Sadly extremist Islam can get pretty brutal and a democracy won't fare too well if people are paranoid about there security. If there was any religion that needs a savior now, Islam would be the prime candidate. If things keep going the way they do then people would wrongly assume the the worst of Islam is all of Islam. I see signs of this already. They are on there way to irrelevance much like the Greek Gods. Adapt to modern society and coexist with your brothers and sisters like God has willed otherwise we would see the death of a religion. Not through swords, guns, or bullets, but through the stagnation of new religious ideals fit for the modern world.