Saturday, July 06, 2013

Morsi Less


The events in the last few days in Egypt could have (and I expect will have) a profound effect on the events of the next few years. The fact that the Obama administration was a clear backer of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood can do nothing to buff their image among the Middle East modernists.  In fact the rioters in Cairo and throughout Egypt recognized this with placards denouncing Obama and our Egyptian Ambassador.

David Brooks has an oped in Friday's NY Times which is pretty much dead on in his assessment of what the events in Egypt presage for the Muslim Brotherhood (see: NY Times Opinion).  Here is an eerie quote from same:
Islamists might be determined enough to run effective opposition movements and committed enough to provide street-level social services.  But they lack the mental equipment to govern.  Once in office, they are always going to centralize power and undermine the democracy that elevated them.
I can only ask ... is Brooksie also trying to tell us something also about the state of affairs in the U.S of A.?  And, for myself, I believe that this resurgent secularism as recently exhibited in Egypt might find willing imitators in Turkey and possibly even Iran.  I hope we can find the courage and the voice to do something this time around.  And, for those in this country who clearly have been embracing the Islamists, you might have some serious backpedaling to do before the 2016 elections (I think you know whom I mean.)

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