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| Africa North |
| Egypt: Steady As She Goes |
| 2011-02-12 |
| ...The political class and military officers have concluded that Mubarak is a liability, but perhaps more significantly they have concluded that the advice coming from Washington is insanity that must be resisted. They need look no further than yesterday's declaration by the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, that the Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular" and has "eschewed violence." With the likes of Clapper making decisions in Washington, the responsible people in Cairo know that they are on their own. ...The Egyptian Army is a neo-Kemalist institution, well aware that its Turkish counterpart--once powerful and even constitutionally unassailable--has been neutered by democratically elected hard-line Islamists, to the thundering applause of an enfeebled and degenerate West. It will not allow the same thing in Cairo. There will be peace on the Nile, or else there will be blood, but there will be no "democracy" of the kind that serves the ends of those who want to use it as a tool of instituting Sharia. ..."Democracy" is not feasible outside of the framework of ideas that sustain it. These ideas, in the case of the West, are rooted back into the history of the polis of Greece, the Scriptures, the heresy of the Enlightenment, the notion of liberty, of individual responsibility resulting from the existence of individual free will, of collective creativity embodied in the rendering of classical symphonies and the launching of space missions. The money quote When we see the first Egyptian space shuttle return safely to base, we'll know that the Army may well risk a genuinely free election. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #5 "of Nature" |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2011-02-12 22:44 |
| #4 Hosni could've crushed them in their sleep, but they have always been more useful as a boogeyman. Russians have been stamping out "Islamism" among their Muslim subjects for 150 years. The moment Russian empire (Sov. U.) went bust, these Muslims immediately went back to their Islamist habits---it a matter on Nature, not Nurture. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2011-02-12 22:43 |
| #3 Hosni could've crushed them in their sleep, but they have always been more useful as a boogeyman. Now, don't let them get out of hand That's never made much sense to me. That's like saying Turkey could have crushed the Islamists that are now re-appearing there. The difficulty that Muslim governments have in dealing with Islamists has to do with the fact that Islamists always outbreed their less prolific moderate counterparts, and Islamism continues to be an ideology that the coercive/persuasive powers of the state cannot fully displace, at least in Muslim countries. While Westernized elites in Muslim countries are doing things not too different from ordinary Westerners, the lower classes are breeding like rabbits. This is how Turkey turned from a religion-denying secular state to one where head scarves are becoming a common sight. Demographics is destiny. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2011-02-12 22:15 |
| #2 the MB was always halfway-stamped-down, so that they could be used for appeal for aid from Uncle. “Après moi le déluge” is a expedient threat to stay in power. Hosni could've crushed them in their sleep, but they have always been more useful as a boogeyman. Now, don't let them get out of hand |
| Posted by: Frank G 2011-02-12 17:07 |
| #1 What a crock. if the Egyptian Army were going to do something about the MB, they would have done so during the Mubarak regime so they could blame it on him after they threw him out. But they threw him out before doing anything more than take pictures. They know which way the wind is blowing and what is happening to the Turkish military. Look for a Dinnerjacket victory tour to Cairo, Beirut and Istanbul in the summer of 12. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-02-12 16:30 |