Bloodbath in Egypt

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Forgive my ignorance, but that famous poem was by Auden, or Yeats?

Yeats

Who needs a democratic Egypt anyway?

Seems like someone is posting lots of articles from the loony fringe of the right wing nowadays.
I like how Sultan Knish was claiming the Saudis were backing the brotherhood and it was important to confront them and their Saudi financiers as they are the real enemy by backing the military dictatorship to help Israel.
I wonder how he squares that with Saudi backing the dictatorship and the dictatorship claiming the brotherhood is a jewish plot.
Those loony blogs are so funny

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Forgive my ignorance, but that famous poem was by Auden, or Yeats? And the title I never knew anyway, so what is it?

The poem title is 'The Second Coming'.

[Bubblehead1980]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Who needs a democratic Egypt anyway?

te]In the big marble halls of Washington, in the slow ambling pace of summer cocktail parties where veterans of the political establishment still shake their heads at the fall of the Graham dynasty and the sale of the Post to a parvenu dot comer, the second favorite topic of conversation is how to make Egypt fall into line.

All the cocktail party guests, the senators, their aides, the editors and editorial writers, the heads of foreign affairs think-tanks and generals angling for a lobbying gig with a firm that just might want to move some big ugly steel down Egypt way once all the shouting dies down, haven’t had much luck.

Or as the New York Times, the paper that has displaced the Washington Post as the foreign affairs leak hole of the administration, put it, “all of the efforts of the United States government, all the cajoling, the veiled threats, the high-level envoys from Washington and the 17 personal phone calls by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, failed.”

And all the community organizer’s horses and his men couldn’t put the Muslim Brotherhood back together again.

Not even 17 personal phone calls from a man who couldn’t get through his confirmation sessions without becoming a national laughingstock accomplished anything.

Washington isn’t giving up, but its foreign aid card has just been neutralized by the Saudis who have offered to make up any aid that it cuts. And unlike Israel, Egypt isn’t vulnerable to threat of being isolated. Not with a sizable number of the Gulf oil countries at its back and the Russians and Chinese eager to jump in with defense contracts.

Instead of asking how to make the Egyptians do what Washington wants, it might be time for the cocktail party goers to ask what they really want from Egypt and what they really need from Egypt.

The two aren’t actually the same.

We may want Egypt to be democratic, because it fits our notions of how countries should work, but that isn’t something that we actually need.

The editorial writers and foreign policy experts who never got beyond the expat bars of Cairo will try to blame Egypt’s lack of democracy for our terrorism problem, but Egypt’s original unwillingness to bow to the Brotherhood nearly redirected Al Qaeda away from its war against America as the Egyptian faction sought to fight an internal war of the kind that Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria are now fighting.

We need a democratic Egypt about as much as we need sensitivity training from Mayor Filner. A democratic Egypt is unstable, vulnerable and unfriendly. And those are just its good sides.

Our first hint that democracy wouldn’t turn Egyptians into Americans should have been the polls showing that the majority of Egyptians favored the death penalty for adultery and blasphemy. There was no way such an electorate was going to produce some Egyptian counterpart of America.

Of the four major players in Egypt, three are fundamentally undemocratic, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian military and the Egyptian elites of officialdom, often mischaracterized as Mubarak loyalists, and one lightly sprinkled with democracy, the liberals and the left. And that sprinkling is very light indeed.

With an electorate whose idea of democracy is indistinguishable from Islamic law and a political elite that is undemocratic even when it participates in democratic elections, what reason was there for believing that overlaying democracy on them would lead to democratic values, rather than just democratic functions?

Now two undemocratic players and one lightly democratic player ganged up on a ruling undemocratic player. We can call the whole thing a coup or a candy store; it doesn’t matter much.

The process that removed Morsi was similar to the one that removed Mubarak. The same senators abandoning their cocktail parties to demand an end to foreign aid for Egypt because of the C word, were celebrating the same C word that took down Mubarak.

The difference, they will argue, is that Morsi was democratically elected. But so was Mubarak. But, they will say, Mubarak’s election was not truly democratic because it was marred by all sorts of electoral irregularities. And they will say that Mubarak acted like a tyrant. But the same was true of Morsi’s election. And Morsi did act like a tyrant.

The coup position is reduced to arguing that the overthrow of one elected leader by popular protests and the military was a very good thing while the overthrow of another by the same means was a bad thing because one election was somewhat cleaner than the other on a scale from Chicago to Detroit.

Never mind that the first leader was an ally of the United States and that the other was its enemy.

Is the gram’s worth of difference in democracy that we’re fighting for really worth undermining our national security?

I’ve met lawyers who have told me that they would have defended Hitler pro bono because of the principle of the thing. I’ve never entirely understood why the principle of this thing trumps genocide. The application of the pro bono Hitler lawyer clause to the Muslim Brotherhood’s democracy seems even more dubious. And I have a healthy suspicion of people who too eagerly volunteer to be Hitler’s lawyer or the Muslim Brotherhood’s press agent for the principle of the thing.

Are we really obligated to vigorously defend the Muslim Brotherhood’s right to take over a country because the election that allowed it to come to power wasn’t as dirty as the last election? Does the principle that democracy should be implemented here, there and everywhere, even if it leads to a terrorist group taking over the most powerful country in the region, really trump our national security?

Why have we volunteered to be the Muslim Brotherhood’s pro bono democracy lawyer?

The Arab Spring has thoroughly discredited the idea that spreading democracy enhances regional stability and protects our national security. We would have more luck promoting vital national interests by spreading viral goat yelling video memes than by bludgeoning other countries into having elections.

We don’t need a democratic Egypt. What we need is an Egypt that is not too excessively sympathetic to our enemies.

We’ll never be very good friends. A deep and meaningful friendship with a population that believes in chopping the hands off thieves and stoning everyone else was never in the cards. But most alliances aren’t built on enduring love or even mutual affection.

They’re built on something better. Cynical pragmatism.

We had a wonderfully pragmatic and lovingly cynical relationship with Egypt. If Chuck Hagel stops making 17 personal phone calls every hour telling the Egyptian government how not to shoot Muslim Brotherhood terrorists, maybe one day we’ll have a cynically pragmatic relationship with Egypt again.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenf...c-egypt/print/[/QUOTE]


Well said, many valid points. This is much more simple than it is made.Should the US be on the side of Islamic extremists(Morsi an dthe brotherhood) who lied to get into office and were rejected by the people thus removed by the military doing the will of the people, or are we on the side of the people. Those making trouble are not the majority of the country from what I have read.

Just put this in the US as a hypothetical.The people are so unsatisfied with a president who lied to obtain office(big stretch i know lol) and so they rise up and have him thrown out.Then his loyal band of ignorant followers fire up a large number but not a majority of the population and things become violent. Really, who is right here? Those who tossed the bum and his cohorts out of course. The American people could actually take a lesson from the people of Egypt here.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

Just put this in the US as a hypothetical.The people are so unsatisfied with a president who lied to obtain office(big stretch i know lol) and so they rise up and have him thrown out.Then his loyal band of ignorant followers fire up a large number but not a majority of the population and things become violent. Really, who is right here? Those who tossed the bum and his cohorts out of course. The American people could actually take a lesson from the people of Egypt here.

Even if the president was democratically elected, if he was chosen by the people?

[mapuc]

I know you may be real mad at me, but I have to write it

It seems that suddenly we all are expert on Egypt and Islam

I'm absolutly not an expert on none of them. That's why I haven't been posting in this very interesting thread.

Markus

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by mapuc

I know you may be real mad at me, but I have to write it

It seems that suddenly we all are expert on Egypt and Islam

I'm absolutly not an expert on none of them. That's why I haven't been posting in this very interesting thread.

Markus

I'm certainly not mad at you, you make a good point. At the end of the day, the real Egyptian experts will be those who decide the course of their countries history, and they are in Egypt itself. Not in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow or Beijing.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Oberon

I'm certainly not mad at you, you make a good point. At the end of the day, the real Egyptian experts will be those who decide the course of their countries history, and they are in Egypt itself. Not in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow or Beijing.

Most likely

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Even if the president was democratically elected, if he was chosen by the people?

What worth is your freedom of choice, if you have been fed manipulated info on which to make your decision?

The worth of elections is so very much overestimated in the West, in order to make the voting cattle satisfied with having nothing more to say then a cross on a ballot every four years. But even beyond that, elections are not centre and major focus of democracy. They are just a technical tool. Even if one would hold a more positive view of democracy than I do, one should be aware of this.

And it gets abused massively by both the voters a d the candidates.

Precious and significant is what is rare. Your vote in a meeting of ten voters - that is one thing. Your vote in an election having 30 million votes - puts the importance of your precious wonderful great vote into relation. On that scale, it is not the individual vote that has a meaning, but crowd dynamic havetaken over. And these are in explicit rejection of the individual.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

What worth is your freedom of choice, if you have been fed manipulated info on which to make your decision?

The worth of elections is so very much overestimated in the West, in order to make the voting cattle satisfied with having nothing more to say then a cross on a ballot every four years. But even beyond that, elections are not centre and major focus of democracy. They are just a technical tool. Even if one would hold a more positive view of democracy than I do, one should be aware of this.

And it gets abused massively by both the voters a d the candidates.

Precious and significant is what is rare. Your vote in a meeting of ten voters - that is one thing. Your vote in an election having 30 million votes - puts the importance of your precious wonderful great vote into relation. On that scale, it is not the individual vote that has a meaning, but crowd dynamic havetaken over. And these are in explicit rejection of the individual.

This is perhaps true, but in the particular case of the individual in question I suspect that it is more of a case of disappointment at the particular party which triumphed much more than it is a case of dissatisfaction with the system which elected the individual.

[Oberon]

And it begins:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23918642

[Skybird]

It was also reported some weeks ago that the military has regained much cointrol on the Sinai that Morsoi had allowed mto sliü to terrorists and fundamentalists. Egypt also cooperates with Israel which is aiding them there with intel and along the border.

Not to imagine how vulnerable the channel would be now if Morsi still were in office! Then this foiled attack now maybe would have been successful already days ago, when the Syria show started.

And it begins:

Begins Oberon?
It is long ongoing.
Plus as your article states.
It is unknown whether the attack was linked to the continuing protests by Muslim Brotherhood supporters against the 3 July ousting of President Mohammed Morsi by the army.

It was also reported some weeks ago that the military has regained much cointrol on the Sinai that Morsoi had allowed mto sliü to terrorists and fundamentalists. Egypt also cooperates with Israel which is aiding them there with intel and along the border.

Not to imagine how vulnerable the channel would be now if Morsi still were in office!

Sorry to introduce reality to your little bubble Skybird, but the agreement with Israel for Egypt to increase its troop levels in the Sinai was drawn up under Morsi.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

Begins Oberon?
It is long ongoing.
Plus as your article states.
It is unknown whether the attack was linked to the continuing protests by Muslim Brotherhood supporters against the 3 July ousting of President Mohammed Morsi by the army.

True, but this is the first attack since Morsi was knocked down that has taken place against shipping in the Suez is it not? Obviously it is quite debatable whether this is related to the MB, let's face it there's a lot of unrest in the area, and the MB is but one group.

[Skybird]

Oberon,

it have been several different "groups" being active on the Sinai since Mubarak was driven out, additionally to the predatory beduins, nevertheless one cannot say the MB "is just one group". It is pretty much the spiritus rector of very many, of most radical groups, and better financed and supported that any other. Al Quaeda was build by leading members of the MB, and compared to the MB, the structure and organisation of AQ as well as its financial funding possibilities always remained to be that of a amateur copycat group.

The MB is the group there is amongst the radical groups in the Islamic world, and since always far more influential and popular in the Arab world than AQ has ever been. That's why I always rated it as the far more dangerous enemy than AQ. It has better ties, more influence and more robust support throughout the Muslim world, amongst ordinary people as well as the elites.

The founder was a hot admirer of Hitler and the German Nazis, btw, but I take it for granted that you know that already.