Egyptians resist Morsi; US-supported military to step in on Morsi's side

"The Democrat Party is much bigger than 300 people, just because we arrested the President, all Senate members, most of the senior leadership, and hell, left the House of Reps people to rot in Congress (it's already bad enough), doesn't mean we're attacking the Democrats! There's like millions of those!"



What I bolded is exactly the problem.

You'll find you have more in common with extremists once you've realized you've stopped condemning crimes, and started looking for people to condemn. Once you lump people into groups, and start assigning any alledged crimes en masse to them, you already have more in common with an extremist than anybody who is rationally looking through the topic.

 

Oh, let's see whom you are defending and comparing to President Obama here.

You seem to be unaware that you are talking about the head of an organization who, among other statements and actions, just very recently made the statements below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Badie

Yeah, that's a guy you really want to side with. A poor victim that needs to be defended by Canadian intern Northside Fart from the basement of his mother's home.

 

The blatantly hilarious thing about your bias is that you think I am taking sides. I don't side with Morsi or the military, and if you had read more carefully, you wouldn't even have to resort to these far-fetched arguments to avoid your obvious refusal to look beyond your biased perspective.

However, I do side with people who think that no matter how repugnant I find somebody's views, it's probably not a good thing for a corrupt military to arrest the senior members of said party for seemingly little reason, shut down their media channels, and install a figurehead---in its' continuing quest to maintain its' undeserved priviledges, and hide itself from abuses it has been proven to commit.

 

Do you think incitement to murder is a reason for an arrest, yes or no?

 

Do you think torture and murder are reasons for arrests?

Are you ready to condemn the military for these actions?

I have provided hard evidence in a report of summarized sworn testimony on individual instances. Come up with condemnation, then find me more evidence that all 300 members were inciting to murder, rather than actually murdering (which is apparantly in the exclusive domain of the military and the police). Then maybe I'll give an obviously corrupt military that vanished Brotherhood members and tortured them for decades the benefit of the doubt.

 

Your strawman argument about the military supposedly murdering people doesn't hold water. I never said that I think everyone in the Egyptian military are saints. There might be corruption, there might be transgressions, there might be abuse of power. But one thing is not there: An ideology of hate against people because they believe something different. And that is the big difference to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists.

 

dude, I'm actually shaking in laughter that you mentioned anything about strawmen. Literally, your sole argument has been trying to get me to support the Muslim Brotherhood or something, which is actually the weirdest s**t if you'd read my arguments---and even weirder considering you follow my posts on here.

In any case, change that might to a there is, and we have ourselves the conclusion of the argument I had---which, if your memory serves, was---

 

That depends. If the President (Morsi) violates the law and creates a power grab for himself, what are the options in a country such as Egypt? He wasn't booted for having detestable views - he was booted for his actions.

This is definitely a concern - understandable in the short-term if those channels were instigating violence (a concern yesterday given Morsi's statement), but otherwise a very major problem. As of yet, there's no evidence they were doing anything wrong as far as I know.

This is a terrible idea; from my understanding, the crimes are from the Mubarak reign - apparently, a lot of these guys escaped jail a few years ago during the revolution and were wanted fugitives, but Morsi wasn't arresting them for political reasons. But for the sake of unity, now is not a good time to be arresting anyone - if it's legit, that could be done upon the establishment of a new government. Hopefully this is where the US pressure of showing concern and talking about reconsidering aid gets the military to stand back a bit.

This isn't necessarily true. The Egyptian stock market rallied dramatically the day after the military gave Morsi a deadline to leave - even though that basically was announcing that there would be a coup coming. I think there was a large sense of agreement that Morsi, specifically, was bad for the economy and that change would be good. However, this would not be a legitimate reason for overthrow.

 

No, the military as a whole has taken action to restore order, based on the will of the Egyptian people.

Just because Abu Ghraib happened doesn't mean that the US military as a whole is utterly despicable, although wannabe leftists like you like to try and paint it that way. Similarly, the Egyptian military is a stabilizing factor in Egypt. Are they saints? No. But they are not guided by an ideology of hate and intolerance.

The Egyptian people are better off with the military guiding a transition to a non-Islamist society than they would be with the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists in power. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood gang were on a path to make Egypt like Pakistan. You conveniently ignore their own statements about that being their goal. "Purification", etc.

Hitler was elected more or less freely initially as well. That doesn't mean that a coup against him in 1934 would not have saved the world a lot of grief.

It is better that the Islamo-fascists were stopped sooner rather than later.

 

On the list of options, military overthrow, even without the outlined abuses, isn't too high on my list. Political resolution may still have been possible. Even just waiting out the clock---continued protests and forced concessions---and if the Brotherhood ever dared to surpress the people with systematic violence a la Mubarak+military+police, then have whoever commited crimes arrested and make it clear why this is so. I don't see how a military take-over was worth the benefit, especially at the time it was placed---Morsi looked to be making some concessions. Now it looks like the military was acting in bad faith, and from what people know of the military, it is easy to think that they are, were, and will be acting in bad faith. That's the problem.

I don't think the stock market is a good measure of well, any economy. Suffice it to say that those who run the markets in Egypt probably don't like Morsi, but I don't see how that will lead to significant economic benefits in Egypt unless there are structural reforms. And that starts and ends with stopping the state within the state of military fiefdoms within Egypt.

 

It boggles my mind that you paint the Muslim Brotherhood as this big evil organization and allege incitement to violence, then when another organization has committed crimes for decades, entrenched its' own powers for its' own gains, and actually committed violence, you scramble to defend them.

I guess ideology is all that matters. The Egyptian army would kill and torture their own citizens to maintain their standing, and have been doing it for decades, but they're not guided by "hate and intolerance". Rather, they're guided by greed and corruption---but I guess that's much more understandable from a Western perspective, so hey, it's cool.

Again, you'll realize you have more in common with extremists when you stop condemning all crimes, and start condemining just a particular class of people.

 

I never defended the military. I am saying that them restoring order and peace is better for Egypt than Islamist extremists changing Egypt to Pakistan. Again, your strawman argument and lie that I supposedly defend the military for whatever transgressions it has committed in the past does not hold water, no matter how many times you repeat your lie.

 

Agreed - and that's what the US, the people of Egypt, and even the military asked for. They all gave Morsi a deadline to fix this, and he came out with a "f*** you, I will fight to my death!" statement with no plans to address any of the problems.

Except the police are under the power of the President, so who's going to do the arresting? That was the whole problem - Morsi consolidated power and took away the checks and balances in the system.

What concessions was Morsi making? He announced he would make some tiny changes after the deadline had passed and things were already underway, from my understanding. In his national address less than 12 hours before the deadline, he said and implied nothing of the sort.

Well of course this is true - the hope is that the coup opens the door to structural reforms that clearly were not happening under Morsi. The Constitution they created was flawed and had to be ripped up. We did the same in the US after realizing our first government was not viable - we were able to avoid the violence they have, but we also had far more experience with democracy and the rule of law at that point.

It seems again that people want to judge revolutions by small snippets of time or through a lens of expected perfection. That's not how they were - they are ugly, they stutter and fail a lot, people do die, lots of people do unethical things, etc. There has never been a revolution that didn't involve all of that - if you had twitter and 24/7 media back during ours, you surely would have seen plenty of unethical actions by our own military and our own leadership. We just had the luxury of keeping all that quiet. If, instead of looking at the military coup as a standalone action after the formation of a Democracy, you look at it as part of a continuing process in an evolution to Democracy, I think it makes far more sense. A stable Egypt is likely still a decade or a generation away - this entire Arab Spring is simply about empowering people; they still have to learn the process of properly using that power.

 

It's just ironic you would bring up the strawman argument, and take my condemnation of both sides---towards somehow me defending Egypt's transition to Jihadhell, or for some reason, you chose Pakistan, but I don't even want to get there, because again, you are pulling the definition of a strawman.

I'm glad you don't defend the military, and agree with me that the military has been brutal. Joining me in my condemenation on both sides is a vast improvement on your previous bias on acknowledging one side's brutality, and ignoring the other's. Kudos.

 

Morsi had made concessions before---half-steps. I agree on the whole that he has been terrible---but of course he would say f**k you to the military after they gave him a "48-hour ultimatium". He could only assume the worst was coming and it is for the Brotherhood. This is the same military that vanished members and tortured some for years. It's why interventions on its' part look to be in bad faith, and now with the overreach after, can only be claimed to be in terrible, terrible faith.

I agree with everything you say after---which is why the political process should have gone on longer. Yes, of course an emerging democracy will be messy. Of course, some people will try to grab as much power as possible. But they were duly elected by the people, and they can only be defeated by the people. I utterly believe in the promise of the Arab Spring, but that promise is diluted every time the military steps in.

The only thing I can say is that even through all this, all agents seem to be acting on better faith on democracy than Mubarak, at least. That is saying very very little, but it's a seed of hope.

 

I also find it doubtful that anyone would dare propose anything that would harm the military (the structural reforms really needed to jump-start the economy), especially given what has just happened. Would anybody have the balls?

 

And we still wonder why the entire Middle East despises us.

 

In the short term, no. But the military just likes to have their little fiefdom - and they are, to some extent, at the mercy of the US (they've already begged us not to stop our aid). The last thing they want to do is jeopardize their standing, and they know that to do that, they have to keep taking the side of the people. So I don't think they are likely to make a huge power grab of any sort - they don't want to govern the country, because that puts them in a position to be hated.

So given that, if they can establish a legitimate and stable civilian government, then maybe over years or decades, they lose bits and pieces of power as the civilian government slowly becomes more and more stable and legitimate.

 

Also, I don't think we can necessarily say everything can be solved through the political process. We tried it here, but ultimately had to have a civil war and kill 500,000 citizens to solve our own problems.

A lot of it depends on the original Constitution they wrote and how viable it really was. If it just established the ability for there to be a new dictator, then a coup or revolution of some sort was a likely an inevitable step, whether now or 50 years from now, if they ever were going to reach stable democracy.