The snippets below were written by Reuters staff and published by Y-Net.
At least 623 people died and thousands were wounded on Wednesday when police cleared out two protest camps in Cairo set up to denounce the military overthrow on July 3 of Egypt's first freely elected president, Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi.623.
Can you imagine if this was going on in Israel? The western-left would go into orgasmic convulsions of sadistic rage, if this was Israel and not Egypt. Once again, when Muslims kill Muslims no one cares. It only matters, for political purposes, if Jews are involved and then the righteous indignation and gleeful schadenfreude are immediately spit into Israel's face.
But it is Egypt and Egypt is a mess. It's a wreck. The status quo under Mubarak was oppressive, but stable. This, however, is just bloody chaos. And what it represents are the fruits of the "Arab Spring." And to you naifs, who kept telling us how wonderful the "Arab Spring" is and how it represents the rise of Arab democracy and that a new day was dawning throughout the Middle East, I wonder if you are capable of recognizing and acknowledging your mistake?
I sincerely doubt it.
The "Arab Spring," in Egypt and elsewhere, was the rise of political Islam, but not all Arabs want to live in the 7th century. Egypt is tearing itself to pieces over which type of racist dictatorship to live under. Should it be an anti-Semitic, homophobic, and misogynistic dictatorship, of the type that Barack Obama preferred in his support for the Muslim Brotherhood? Or should it be a brutal secular military dictatorship of the type that we have seen for decades and that Hosni Mubarak represented?
The one thing that we have not seen in the "Arab Spring" is any significant political movement toward anything resembling democracy. The Muslim Brotherhood, as a matter of principle, is anti-democratic precisely because al-Sharia is anti-democratic. Meanwhile, I do not believe that the Egyptian military is going to be spending much time canvassing for votes for the next election.
The truth, of course, is that Barack Obama should never have called for the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, who was an ally of the United States, to begin with. What he should have done, as the pressure mounted in Egypt, was insist upon democratic reforms. Instead of taking a moderate route aimed at bringing about gradual progressive change, Obama insisted that Mubarak step down, thus clearing a path for the Muslim Brotherhood and thereby helping to set into motion the series of events that has led that country into its current state of chaos and blood and misery.
Whatever else we may make of this, it certainly represents one of the more significant failures in Obama administration foreign policy.
A statement from the Brotherhood called for a nationwide "march of anger" by millions of supporters on Friday after noon prayers.A "march of anger"?
Yes, because there is not nearly enough rage and anger and bloody hatred throughout the Arab Middle East. We clearly need more rage and anger and bloody hatred in that part of the world. And let me ask you this. Just why is it that Muslims in the United States tend not to go for this kind of thing?
American Muslims aren't screaming from the hillsides. American Muslims aren't calling for blood. Some might say that American Muslims are strong and steady and hard-working and honest and normal because they live in a democracy and their co-religionists in Egypt do not and that if we want to see the normalization of the Arab-Muslim world then we need to encourage democracy throughout the region.
This was the basic idea of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. They both sought to support democracy in the Middle East. What they both underestimated, however, was the desire of the locals to actually create such democracies. The Egyptians do not have democracy because they, for the most part, do not want democracy. If they actually wanted democracy they would inevitably create democracy, but this is not what they have done.
Obama thought that his meddling in Egyptian political life could get that country on the right track, but he was sadly mistaken and entirely arrogant to think so.
By cancelling the military exercise, but not cutting off US aid, Obama was seeking to show his displeasure at the violent crackdown without totally alienating the generals.The Obama administration is not entirely incapable of learning from their numerous mistakes. By cancelling a certain degree of military cooperation, while maintaining the 1.5 billion dollars in annual aid that Egypt receives, Obama is seeking to walk a tight-rope. The administration has thus learned to be a tad more cautious in its dealings with the Middle East.
I take this as a positive sign.
In the mean time, however, Egypt is burning to the ground.
