Yes, we know. You’re a strong advocate of democracy, as long as it’s the “right” kind.
Yes that ‘right’ kind of democracy would be those that protects the right of individuals within the political minority to practice or not practice the religion or non-religion of their choice.
You forgot the most important part-- the kind where the military decides what is “right”.
They’re a much better judge than the people. As I said earlier-- democracy, which derives from the Greek word “demos”, meaning military. And if you don’t believe it, it’s in the constitution! Well, it’s not actually in the constitution, but it’s still constitutional.
In the end though, NFBW is probably right. The Islamist opposition was so well organized and such a significant portion of the population, with its own international alliances it would have be nuts to just let them have their way with the beginnings of a new way. “Arab Spring” in Egypt might have brought some social/political advances, we’ll see, but the experiment failed. One side seemed to take far too much liberty with their new power and the other didn’t remotely trust the system in place to change the leadership. Just as well they go back to military controlled sham elections. Give them another 90 years.
Absolutely. Governmental authority is too important to be entrusted to the people. Fortunately, we know better. How could the Egyptian people possible know what type of government they really wanted? And when they finally get it right by wanting the type of government we want them to have, then everything will be cool. No more military coups necessary.
I will post what I consider a very accurate summation of the pitfalls of the Morsi presidency. Cole is equally harsh on the military and the Muslim Brotherhood for failing to hold together the 'transition to Democracy.
My general sense for a long time has been that many experts on that region and its Arabic and Persian cultures have greatly overestimated the real power and influence of the Muslim Brotherhood specifically inside Egypt’s borders. I say that because I have a feeling that the Egyptian military from the ranks to the top brass have had a better sense of what real power the brotherhood actually held.
But anyway since we are talking about whether is was ‘right’ for Egypt’s ruling military to suspend the democratic process, does anyone think that Juan Cole’s summary is a realistic enough narrative to be used use it as a determinant for basis that the military was most likely ‘right’ to decide to do what they did to end the transitional democratically elected government of president Morsi after one year.
**Egypt’s Transition Has Failed: New Age of Military Dictatorship in Wake of Massacre ** by Juan Cole | Aug. 15, 2013
See Link for Professor Cole’s lambast of the Military.
Like I said, Prof Cole has much more adverse opinion of the military than I, so I am more optimistic on Egypt’s completion of a transition to democracy much sooner than what many pessimistic analysts may be willing to predict.
I have always seen it as the best least blood path to democracy if the secularists and liberals and the military become one political entity, stabilize the economic situation and then the military 'goes to barracks with some everlasting system of patronage fitting in to the ultimate governing scheme, but one that lets the civilians and the people run the country and the fundamentalists of Islam are forced to respect the rights of others when they enter the political scene of the future.
actually these are the facts:
Morsi put MB in every high position including rewriting the new constitution.
Most people refused to work under those conditions including Amr Moussa and all the intellectuals, Copts, church, Al Azhar, women, etc etc etc.
General Al Sisi had given Morsi every opportunity to allow everyone who was not the MB back into the decision making process. One hour before the live broadcast where Morsi would agree to allow others into the process and the car arrived to pick him up to take him to the Prez Palace to announce it he refused. Sisi then decided to meet again with Tamarod who had already collected 30+ million petition to oust Morsi.
Sisi then asked Tamarod to call for a protest on 30th June to calculate support for Tamarod petition and to gauge public opinion by numbers in the street.
Millions came out to give Sisi the mandate to remove Morsi, this is what you saw on your TV screens on June 30th.
Sisi then on 1st July gave Morsi one more chance to allow the opposition and Tamarod into the decision making process and writing the constitution. Morsi agreed as always and AGAIN refused hours before when that speech was supposed to go live on TV.
Sisi then met with the heads of the churches, al Azhar, Baradei, Moussa, Tamarod etc etc etc AGAIN and asked for their mandate to remove Morsi before the country lynched him and his MB group.
All these figures who were speaking on behalf of the people agreed that the army would have to remove Morsi. The army then put Morsi and his leadership who had not already fled under house arrest.
The army then according to the constitution issued a roadmap on what was to happen next and the committee of Mousa and Baradei etc then chose an interim government and chose the Head of the Constitutional Court Adly Mansour to be interim president etc etc etc.
It doesn’t matter what you call it. If it is a coup or not. The important thing is that the people called for it in the millions and had the support of the opposition etc.
Morsi would never have left voluntarily. His ideology is extremism and the call for a world caliphate etc and martyrdom is what he is about to achieve his radical ideology. We were not dealing with a rational human being. The man is a raving lunatic.
He only lasted so long because he had the support of the Obama admin and Qatar Emir.
Obama and Thani’s friend in the MENA region is gone now and thank God for that.
Coles article is very good and accurate mostly.
One thing he didn’t mention which is VERY important is the Egyptian army role in the ME not just Egypt.
Egypt’s stability is crucial to the stability of the gulf region. We are the biggest army in the region. Egyptians love their army where in other countries their armies are run by foreigners and have foreigners as soldiers in their ranks etc, ONLY Egyptians make up our army.
The gulf realised that if Egypt falls then their own monarchies fall and that is why you see the Gulf so involved now in supporting our army and country.
Why the Gulf have turned away from the MB supporting USA towards Egypt and Russia who are neutral non war non aggressive nations and more peacekeepers and mediators in a volatile region.
Under Mubarak only the elite circle in his NDP were cared about.
Mubarak left the army to basically run the services for the rest of us like building roads and infrastructure and building bakeries for the bread to be baked by soldiers for the poor. Building factories for making basic foods like pasta and rice and all the food the poorer people rely on, while Mubarak built shopping malls and palaces and real estate for the rich elite.
When there is flooding in Sinai it wasn’t Mubarak’s elite to helped the people it was the army that rebuilt and fed them. It was the army that gave them furniture and food from their own factories. Army made pots and pans and gas stoves etc etc.
Most US aid was put into these factories which gave jobs to the poor and made products for the poor. Mubarak did not care for the most Egyptians. That job was left to the army.
Right now I can drive 10 minutes to an army barracks and see hundreds of poor lined up waiting for the bread to be baked and sold at a very cheap price or for free by the army. Most people have no clue about Egypt or what our army do.
If we take away the army factories and all they do with their engineers building bridges and roads and houses etc then what will happen to the poor?
Thank God for our army.
I am not sure how one American like me acquired the sense of Egyptian’s love and respect for your military but I did. I had not noticed that there is a lack of that sense among English speaking experts and journalists and our political leadership going all the way up to the Obama Administration and our Dept of State. I will spend some time researching that aspect of events in Egypt as time rolls by.
But I am reminded of my honeymoon trip to Egypt which was one year prior to the 9/11/01 attacks. We were taking the trip by bus from Hurghada to Cairo across the desert and prior to crossing the desert our bus hooked up with a convoy of dozens of buses and what I as an American had never seen or experienced. That was the heavily armed paramilitary escort in black uniforms riding in Whiite Toyotas having a large machine gun mounted in the beds of those trucks. Our first thoughts were what the hell is going on. Then halfway to Cairo we stopped at a desert checkpoint where as I stepped off the bus to stretch - I was staring into the barrel of an Egyptian Army tank with the helmeted soldier staring at us with all seriousness of business in his gaze.
Of course I found out why that security was there - to protect tourist from bandits and terrorists which I found they had a very good record of keeping the tourists safe.
But Americans never grow up seeing such heavy armor or troop presence as we went about the business of living our daily lives.
So the summary has nothing to do with the pitfalls of the Morsi presidency, and you never claimed it did. Right?
I am trying to read “in context”.
Regards,
Shodan
What do you mean “we know better”? Egyptians did what I described, if anything in spite of what "we"wanted.
I didn’t say you were citing it to support a claim of anything. You have a serious issue with comprehending the written word.
See, you don’t remotely understand what I was saying. The isse was that the article you cited was not an “excellent opinion” on that question, because it didn’t address that question at all. It couldn’t, as it predated the Constitution. You still don’t get that, since your restatement here still says that the article is an excellent opinion on that question.
I told you your error: you misleadingly cited an irrelevant article. That’s it. Somehow that provoked this broadside of irrelevant nonsense, because you can’t read and understand a post that consists of a single sentence. I mean, seriously, go back and re-read posts 918-926. See how you conjure the idea that I’m saying that you said the Constitution allowed the military to remove Morsi out of thin air, based on nothing I said? That’s a problem.
See, debate with you is entirely pointless. You can’t convey your ideas in a way that makes sense to other people, and you can’t read and understand other people’s ideas, and this little flap is a perfect example. That, even more than the insults, the Gish Gallop, the walls of text, the poor coding, the confrontational and angry attitude, is why nothing comes of debate with you. Pointing out errors still has value, so I’ll do that, but that’s all.
Never said you said that.
I have no idea what you even mean by “constitutional act”, since you don’t mean “an act undertaken persuant to the procedures specified in a constitution.” You may as well have written “the military takeover was more of an ice cream social than a military coup”, then gotten offended when I asked if ice cream was served.
It’s nice have principles, and using words and phrases that other people understand. You could try it sometime.
Emphasis added.
Welcome to the club!
It’s more than a little frustrating when he’s not able to understand the error, though, and somehow decides I was addressing some other point that I didn’t mention at all.
Hence this thread. I’m sure it won’t be the last.
You continue to be narrowly focused upon one sentence and abandoning all context.
I have shown you ‘in context’ that I was answering what Mace had asked of me. You are in error to assume that my use of the word “question” was about anything other than responding to Mace’s question.
I have shown you context, but I can’t make you allow context give you an understanding of what I wrote. You made an error to presume something and now cannot admit that you were wrong.
That’s exactly what I think you were doing (responding to his question), you just did it very poorly (with an article that’s completely inapplicable to that question, misleadingly so), hence my objection.
That, and only that. Please stop imagining that I’m saying anything else.
What did I presume, exactly? That you were saying the Constitution explicitly allowed the military to remove Morsi? Nope. Never said that. Asked about it, sure, due to your use of “constitutional act”, but I never attributed that position to you. That’s your imagination.
It’s impossible to answer Mace’s question with an article written before the Constitution existed, when the question was about what the Constitution did or did not allow. That the is the sum of my point here.
You ignore the statement prior to my reference to Mace’s question after that, where I explain that my response to Mace’s question is in dissagreement with the premise contained in it.
I have switched the premise to match what I originally write three weeks earlier.
What was that premise in context again?
For the love of Pete…I know you disagree with it. It’s immaterial. Again: I’m not saying you’re arguing that the constitution allowed the military to remove the president. I don’t think I could be clearer on that.
I honestly don’t know if you really can’t grasp what I’m saying, if you’re screwing with me, or if this is obfuscation of your error.
Just in case it’s option 1:
You posted an article, and claimed it was an opinion as to whether the Constitution allowed the military to remove the President. It did not, in fact, address that issue at all. It said that the military’s actions during the 2012 election, while shady and interfering with the democratic process, couldn’t be called a coup, because at that time, the military transitional government was the de facto state.
Why does this matter?
Because posting part of that article, bolding a few lines here and there, and saying it addresses whether the 2012 Constitution allowed the military to remove the President is highly misleading. For instance, consider the two lines you bolded:
When the military is the de facto state, that’s true enough. There was no legitimate state power to overthrow after Mubarak resigned. The situation in 2013 was entirely different: there was a Constitution in place, and an elected government. Thus, saying this article addresses the constitutionality of what the military did in 2013, when it addresses only what the military did in 2012, is not only an error, it falsely suggests that the article supports the military’s action in 2013.
Again, because the situation the article is addressing it totally different than the one John Mace’s question was addressing, bolding this sentence is misleading. The actions of the military in 2012 could be called legally valid, as until a civilian government was election, the military was the government. That was not the case for the coup, and thus bolding this line is suggesting that the article views the 2013 coup as legally valid, when it does not.