It is an ages old problem. When is the right time to strike against those who would rob you of your freedom? Do you wait for the other shoe to drop, while the secret police are already breaking down your door, or do you preemptively drive into action, breaking the social and democratic rules you’ve sworn to uphold?
This quandary got another test this week when the Egyptian military, after witnessing the multi-day protest of millions of citizens against the increasingly autocratic rule of President Mohamed Morsi and his Islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood cohorts (sometimes masquerading as the so-called “Freedom and Justice” Party), quickly moved to take over the government.
The simple part, it turned out, was doing that just that. Considering the height of the tensions in Egypt, I’m surprised more people did not die this week, though the coming days may show a spike in the bloodshed.
There’s always that great reservation felt by the citizenry when a martial organization takes control of a country, though. Military takeovers, even if they are done for the purest of reasons, have a sad tradition of turning into endless grinds of brutal martial law and theft of basic human rights. It wouldn’t be overly cynical to expect that such a sad state of affairs will become the norm in an Egypt dominated by, in the grand tradition of such dictatorial military strongmen as Gamal Nasser and Anwar Sadat, another tinpot, jackbooted thug as self-appointed president for life.
If that is what is going to happen, so far the military is going to great lengths to hide it. Almost immediately Egypt’s top brass made moves to put interim leaders into place. Among these is interim President Adly Mansour, the current head of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court. Word was that Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei was going to get the nod for interim Prime Minister, but political concerns within the fragile opposition coalition appear to have at least temporarily sidetracked this move.
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Good article.