Analyzing the Middle East

A letter sent to the Financial Times:

Quote of the Day: Egypt in a Nutshell

Among the ever-proliferating analyses you can read now, I think this is a good distillation:

There is a war going on in Egypt. We may not like either side, but one side is clearly worse than the other. We need to make sure the Moslem Brotherhood doesn't emerge victorious in this war.

This seems obvious, but as I've often said, nothing is so obvious that you don't have to spell it out, especially in a world where some people in government can actually say with a straight face that the Brotherhood is "secular" and therefore benign.  (Other people get it and are acting in their own self-interest: the Saudis and company haven't decided to give the Egyptian military $12 billion for no reason: they want the Brotherhood smashed.)  Time to hold our noses and back Egypt's military.  Does that sound horrible?  Maybe. Sometimes reality is.

In related news, an Egyptian court has just ordered Hosni Mubarak let out of prison, so it's on like Donkey Kong.  As my buddy Alessandra quipped, "So ... Basically, the Egyptians got rid of Mubarak and put in Morsi, and then decided the new boss was so horrible they'd rather have their old boss back?"

Flashback: Bernard Lewis in 2011

As Egypt burns, I recall an interview that this eminent scholar and historian gave back in 2011 as Mubarak fell.  I'll just quote what Lewis had to say about radical Islamic groups and the election that would eventually bring Morsi to power:

Interviewer: Yet in Egypt now, for example, the assumption is that we’re proceeding toward elections in September and that seems to be what the West is inclined to encourage. 

Lewis: I would view that with mistrust and apprehension. If there’s a genuinely free election – assuming that such a thing could happen – the religious parties have an immediate advantage. First, they have a network of communication through the preacher and the mosque which no other political tendency can hope to equal. Second, they use familiar language. The language of Western democracy is for the most part newly translated and not intelligible to the great masses. In genuinely fair and free elections, [the Muslim parties] are very likely to win and I think that would be a disaster. A much better course would be a gradual development of democracy, not through general elections, but rather through local self-governing institutions. For that, there is a real tradition in the region. 

... This idea that a general election, Western-style, is a solution to all these problems, seems to me a dangerous fallacy which can only lead to disaster. ... To say that they’re [the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt]  secular would show an astonishing ignorance of the English lexicon. I don’t think [it] is in any sense benign. I think it is a very dangerous, radical Islamic movement. If they obtain power, the consequences would be disastrous for Egypt.

Well, the Hummus Has Hit the Fan, All Right

In Egypt, "Bambi Meets Godzilla" ... with predictable results.  Somehow, the administration has managed to alienate just about everybody involved.

The Purple Woes of Cairo

Things are getting ugly (OK, uglier) in Egypt as the military attacks the Muslim Brotherhood, which is pushing back.  Here's another awful aspect that should not be overlooked: Morsi supporters have set fire to a number of Coptic churches.

This Is What "Leading From Behind" Gets You

I'm a few days behind, but this is still worth a look.  This administration's foreign policy (such as it is) is looking more and more amoeba-like every day - stimulus, response, stimulus, response, purely reactive, lacking higher cognitive functions.

Photo of the Day From Egypt

Via Egyptian blogger Big Pharaoh (his latest is worth a read too)

Message to Americans from the #Egypt presidential palace demo: a tick on the US flag, a cross on Obama. Impressive. pic.twitter.com/tDT61aRhWS
— The Big Pharaoh (@TheBigPharaoh) July 7, 2013

Apparently this is a thing now.

Breaking: OMG, Egypt

Morsi's out; the military's in.  The constitution's suspended.  The live images and video coming out of Cairo are extraordinary.  Twitter is on fire.  OK, now what?  

UPDATE 1: Fareed Zakaria is now yapping on CNN. *mute button*

UPDATE 2: Lots of flurried, frantic "commentary" from various talking heads on the news outlets.  Arguably the goofiest utterance yet: "It was a military coup d'etat, which is undemocratic.  But it was what the people wanted, so it is democratic."