“OK, for years, people who claim to be my intellectual betters on foreign policy (and pretty much everything else), and particularly about the Middle East, have been telling me that the root cause of the problems in the Middle East is the “occupation” of disputed territories in the West Bank and Gaza, and that we won’t be able to make any progress without solving that issue. It is what motivates Arab anger, and animates their protests. Well, surely if this is the case, with all of the apparent anger and ongoing revolt in Cairo, we should be seeing many reports on the ground of protesters with angry signs against the Zionist entity, right? Or have I just missed them somehow?”
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http://www.kitsapsun.com/photos/2011/jan/30/171722/
Here you go.
“we should be seeing many reports on the ground of protesters with angry signs against the Zionist entity, right? ”
Many is the key word here. Yes, there are Muslim Brotherhood loons about, but the overhwhelming majority of reports are about the fact taht this is a spontaneous uprising and that the overhwhelming majority of protestors know that they do not want the MB taking over. the guys with the loon anti-zionist placards get sidelined.
BTW, this is a classic Pallywood trick – get some guys round a camera shouting and burning flags and stuff and you get great telly that suggests that the entire country is aflame. You never get the pan back shot that shows it is in fact just some guys round the camera shouting and burning flags and stuff.
Show us a picture of a BIG demo with lots of anti-israel flagsand you’ll have proved your point. That’s not what appears to be happening.
The interesting thing about this is that it challenges many deeply held narratives, from the one mentioned above to the opposite spectral end that Muslims are inevitably and irredeemably incorrigible. This may be the start of a new path that ultimately undermines the Islamists in their heartland.
My growing personal concern at the moment is that if the Eyptians are forced to wait until September, the revolutionary movement will fall into disarray, which may be what Mubarak and Obama are hoping for. It’s a long time to wait.
Ian B
My own concern is that this may be about to get very unpredictable; Mubarak (and Obama) may well be hoping the revolutionary movement falls into disarray over the next few months, but impatience could just as easily create a more explosive situation as the oppostion push for Mubarak to go sooner. Add to that the fear of Mubarak’s cronies, that they have been lining their pockets and enjoying the perks of power, are as unpopular as Mubarak himself, and can no longer rely on his ongoing protection and they too might push Mubarak out, to replace him with their puppet.
Given the pressure from both sides that could create a vacuum that could be filled by almost anyone with enough thugs on the streets. The one thing that is guaranteed is that there will not be the orderly hand over of power all western leaders claim to want to see.
I’m just watching the battle in Tahrir Square on Al Jazeera. It’s fucking hearbreaking. That arsehole Obama could have cut the strings on his puppet, and he didn’t. Hope he’s satisfied.
When food prices soar and you add hunger to the mix people are no longer willing to carry on as business as usual. They are no longer willing to allow the ruling elites to get richer while they can no longer afford their bread.
My concern is this:
When the residents of the Gaza strip were allowed to vote, they voted to have Hamas run the “country”.
I don’t think anyone can say, with any degree of assurance, what the Egyptians would do in the same circumstance. I don’t blame them for wanting free elections, but I am apprehensive about the outcome.
I personally have very little doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood’s power in a new administration will be significant.
NPR here in the US had some interviews with ‘protestors’ yesterday, who were near unanimous in their desire for a ‘new leadership’. What was the chief criteria? That the new leadership should be ‘young’ and ‘not corrupt’. What about the policies they should pursue? They should be ‘different’ and ‘fresh’ and ‘new’. Sound familiar? (I’ll wait for Paul Marks to chime in here).
Yeah, NPR’s hardly a fountain of balanced reporting, but many of the protestors in Cairo are young and idealistic, as you’d expect them to be, and this is the kind of thing you end up with – a pitifully weak ideology that inevitably creates an easily exploited political vacuum.
Further evidence:
Pew Survey in the WaPo.
Read, and weep. Egypt will not turn into some cosmopolitan, liberal haven in an increasingly fundamentalist world. The best we might be able to hope for is a secular military dictatorship (armed with US weapon systems, by the way), that are prepared to be bribed into not being too hostile to the West.
Fun times.
Never underestimate the measures that Violent Islamists are willing to use to acquire power. Algeria in the 50s, Iran in the 70s, or Gaza in 2007.
Col Kurz’s quote from Apocalypse Now is really quite appropriate. Look for “diamond bullet”.
The decline of religion in society in western liberal democracies has been the steady erosion, by liberty, of the power of peer pressure to keep the wretched institutions in popular control.
Christianity was a pushover, but Islam is a different and nastier beast and it is not going to stand by and watch the vestiges of its own doom find seed in a fledgling but fertile liberal atmosphere, they will do what they’ve always done and plunge into barbarism to stop it.
That’s why the “liberal democracies” of Iraq and Afghanistan have Shiriah written into the constitution, western soldiers have died and shed blood to see a new nation continue to be able to condemn a man to death because he chose the wrong god.
If, and it’s a big if, these Arab countries do ever adopt some semblance of democracy it will be under the auspices of Islamist doctrine and they will be as far from “liberal” as they are today.
What Bod said (and thanks for the illuminating link).
Ian F4-You speak of peer pressure as if it is applied by a force outside oneself. Most people want boundaries to exist concerning human behavior. After all, human beings formulated and codified religion for a reason.
America needs to tell Mubarak to step down immediately. They can say that setting his thugs on the demonstrators crossed an unacceptable line, whatever. If the US cut the strings, he’ll fall.
State Department’s not going to do it, Ian.
Cite ONE example of this Administration acting decisively or speaking plainly in the sphere of Foreign Policy.
Just One.
Ain’t gonna happen.
The key point is as follows….
Will the Muslim Briotherhood (or some front persons) get into a new government?
If they are in then – soon they will CONTROL it.
That is just the way the universe works – hold out your hand to the such types and you find you have got no arm They do not “share” power – that is not what they are about.
That is why when I hear the BBC (and so on) call for a “broad based government” that “includes all groups” my heart sinks.