{Cross-posted at the Times of Israel.}
The snippets below were originally written and published by Reuters and the Jerusalem Post staff:
Youths hurl firebombs and rocks while storming building; 16 dead, nearly 800 hurt since anti-Morsi protests began; president refuses to bow to pressure for his resignation.
Four Egyptian ministers resigned from the government on Monday, a cabinet official said, a day after protesters poured onto streets to demand President Mohamed Morsi resign.Egypt is a holy mess. It's a wreck.
"Four ministers presented their resignations today," said the official, who asked not to be named. He gave no reason but the state news agency had earlier said the ministers were considering resigning in sympathy with the protesters...
By all accounts they have enough financial resources to last them until a quarter past next Tuesday. What bothers me most, however, is that the United States could have thrown its weight behind the secular reformers, thus potentially avoiding this catastrophe, but did not. Instead the Obama administration backed the anti-American, misogynistic, brutally homophobic, and genocidally anti-Semitic Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that is unapologetically associated with the Nazis and, yet, still supported by the American administration.
How it is that the Obama administration decided to back the very worst actors on the world scene today remains a mystery.
How it is that the mainstream media closed their eyes to the story is perhaps less of a mystery. We all wanted Obama to succeed. Certainly I did and quite obviously they did. But he hasn't and for so much of the media to just turn away their eyes is disgraceful and a disservice to the American people, not to mention the world community. It also explains why so many American Jews would support an American president that supports political Islam. They didn't quite get it, because the American media refused to discuss it, because we all wanted Obama to succeed even as his foreign policy had all the sophistication of thirteen year old boys playing RISK.
By far the bloodiest incident of Sunday's mammoth and mostly peaceful protests against the Brotherhood and President Mohamed Morsi, it began after dark and continued for hours, with guards inside firing on youths hurling fire bombs and rocks.The "mostly peaceful" hurling of fire bombs!
Another thing that we need to consider is just why it is that the western progressive-left, in general, hailed the so-called "Arab Spring" as a good thing - as the great upwelling of Arab democracy - when actually it was the rise of political Islam. I suppose it was understandable why they were so foolish at the time - because they were hopeful and optimistic - but what I cannot quite understand is why they absolutely refuse to admit it to, now?
Is it simply a matter of saving face?
For months I sat in the Commonwealth Club's Middle East Forum and listened to people sing the praises of these Facebook youths - or whatever - who were engaged in a righteous, democratic battle for freedom and liberty, but that was all a lie and, yet, the western left still will not admit that they were backing a political movement that is fascistic in nature.
And now we are seeing a secular backlash against that fascist movement. Obama supported the Brotherhood and the Brotherhood is an anti-American fascist organization and now huge numbers of Egyptians are rising up to say "NO."
The last time that Secretary of State Clinton was in Cairo they threw shoes at her motorcade.
Has that fact gotten through the skulls of the American left?
I doubt it.
Elias Canetti spoke eloquently about the nature of mass movements in "Crowds and Power". What sits behind them is a murky but crucial social history squarely planted in the nation from which they stem. If the model for Germany is metaphorically, a 'forest', trees all standing quietly together, then the ideology of some of these Mideastern states is a noisy agora; a semi organized mob which can quickly turn violent or alternatively break apart. Evident the Turkish protests which came and went without any conclusion or lasting effect. Compared to the Tunisian riots which resulted in toppling the government, the Egyptian riots which toppled their government, the GCC states where rioting petered out too quickly and Syria where it exploded into open warfare.
ReplyDeleteLest we forget that the Egyptians themselves waived their purple fingers in the air electing the Muslim Brotherhood knowing full well what they wanted. But without a democratic tradition, Egyptians are under the impression that any time they don't like what's happening they can revert to type, ignore what they did last month, boil into the streets and riot some more. While the Army, to its credit never turned their guns on the populace. So the populace considers rioting entirely legitimate. Why wait for the next elections which may never come when you can burn down a few buildings. Moreover the Army still will not step in because they don't want to be blamed for massacres and lose western support and importantly, they don't want to inherit the Muslim Brotherhood's problems.
Egyptian middle class people have watched TV for a few years and seen Greeks riot for days and weeks and they got a bailout. They saw Cyprus go through some short lived chaos and get a handout. They saw the Turks riot and it turned out to be big nothing. And they remember that they threw out the last dictator then installed this dictator. They just need to find the right fascist who will bail them out. Or someone else will; they think.
Egypt is coming apart at every nail. Not merely the social aspect of riots but economically, structurally. The government is nearly absolutely broke with no cash and no credit. Fuel supplies are down to a few weeks. Food is running out and not just the subsidized food which is increasing out of price to the very people its intended. Absolutely, running out. When the diesel, gas, oil and gasoline give out, so goes the electricity, phone, water, sewer, TV. This will send the army into a mad scramble to secure their own fuel supplies.
Egypt is poised to disintegrate very spectacularly in a very short amount of time. Compared to Syria which will likely come apart and turn into semi anarchic demi-states each trying to acquire foreign legitimacy and cash, Egypt will more or less simply evaporate as a nation with nothing to fill the vacuum.