Parallel Lines

Is there a parallel to be drawn between the current coup underway in Turkey and what happened in Egypt three years ago? To me, it appears so. Mohamed Morsi, with the tacit support of President Obummer, was elected President in Egypt in a supposedly free election. So was Recep Erdogan reelected in Turkey ... also with a nod from the current U.S. administration. Morsi rapidly began to consolidate his undemocratic control in Cairo by seeding secular Egyptian institutions with his Muslim Brotherhood cronies and fomenting radical unrest. Erdogan has clearly departed from General Mustafa Ataturk's secular vision for Turkish government and has more gradually reimposed autocratic Muslim strictures on the media and those who elected him. He has also been playing footsie with ISIS by allowing it to smuggle Syrian oil and refuges through his country ... and foreign fighters to join ISIS. Morsi clearly found the levers of power intoxicating and lined his and the Muslim Brotherhood's pockets. Erdogan recently built himself a super extravagant  $615 million royal palace ... see: Yahoo New Story ... and his son has been accused of benefiting from ISIS oil smuggling.

Morsi's excesses and attempts to crush Egypt's democracy finally inspired huge street riots and its military to stop this country's slide into a caliphate. General Abdel el-Sisi ousted Morsi who is now on trial with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood for murder and crimes against the state. Now, Turkey is going through a similarly coup to try to wrest Erdogan firmer grip on power. Whether this coup succeeds is still very much an open question. If it doesn't prevail, the Middle East will certainly experience a great deal more innocent bloodshed.

True to form, the Obummer administration is supporting Erdogan in this putsch attempt whereas I can't help but wonder if Russia's Putin might not be pulling some other strings in this puppet show ... and he doesn't like to lose.

We should know the results of this Turkey trot fairly soon. Is Erdogan gone? Let us hope so ...

Afterward: Bloody failure ... see: Daily Mail Story. Did Erdogan set this up to cleanse things?

More: And now others are speculating the same thing ... see: Daily Mail Story.

A Modern Crusade

The brutal attack on the staff of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, yesterday in Paris has raised higher the spectre of a real religious war between Islam and the rest of the world. It seems that the appeasers (like you know who) are still stuck with their heads in the sand maintaining that Muslims are a peaceful lot and that it is just extremists of some unspecified religious persuasion who are grabbing headlines around the world with all these unspeakable butcheries.

George W. Bush was tut-tutted when he opined that the horrors of 9/11 necessitated an extended “crusade” against such Islamic extremism. This word evoked the thought of how those medieval evils were eventually neutered by Christendom’s crusades and Islamic infighting. However, fate has a way of keeping mankind’s next Pax Romana at bay … in that so much of the world’s oil has been found to lie under the sands of Araby and petroleum has become the life blood of our modern society.

As a result of these sea changes, very many in the Muslim world began feeling their oats and decided that they now had the capital wherewithal to convert the rest of us to their backward thinking. And so, oil-funded Islamic proselytizing became the norm which then evoked more and more extremist thinking and actions in a religion unfortunately founded not on love but on butchery. The history of Islam, much like the history of early Christianity, is replete with mayhem and murder. The difference is that Christianity and most of the other world’s religions have evolved out of such insanity. Islam has not … as we continue to experience on almost a daily basis.

Fortunately, there are some Muslims who have recognized this flaw of faith. The current president of Egypt, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, has called for Islam to abandon its extremism and growing militancy because it is corrosive and ultimately futile … see: Fox News Story. (How many U.S. media outlets have carried this item? Has the Obama administration reacted favorably to this ray of hope?) And in the 1920’s Kemal Ataturk in Turkey also recognized this Islamic failing and tried to modernize his country into a secular state. However much of the progress he made is now being rolled back by Turkey’s current fundamentalist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

I suppose that the conclusion of this short overview is that things are very likely to get worse as ancient Muslim beliefs continue to scrape against modern societies. And, yes, if things maintain their current path, the non-Muslim world (including Russia, India and China) probably is in for a very long and bloody crusade to modernize these zealots of Mohammed’s teachings. That is, unless the likes of Sissi or a neo-Ataturk can bring about a Muslim religious reformation. This, I believe, should clearly be the basis of any foreign-policy push back from the United States’ government against Islamic terrorism.

But all I have witnessed here at home is exactly the opposite.

Afterward: For a slightly more frank view ... see: The Diplomad's Thoughts.

After Afterward: George Will thinks that Sissi should get the next Nobel Peace Prize for this stance. I agree. However, President Obamais, once again, is coming down on the side of the Muslim extremists ... see: Daily Caller Story.