Egypt Stuff

As I check in with the news from Egypt, the first thought I have is the crowing of my Facebook friends (mostly liberal) about the first wave of protests that brought down Mubarak. I thought they were incredibly short-sighted and said so; I'm too polite to say, "I told you so," but I did tell them so.

When I think of dictatorships, my thoughts go to General Franco of Spain. It's an unfortunate fact of life that sometimes people simply can't get along. Dictatorships come about when a country is being pulled in irreconcilable directions and major violence is about to erupt. In Spain, the Left had just enough manpower that it could refuse to work with anyone on the other side brought the functions of government to a halt. It was blackmail--give us control or everything falls apart.

The romantic aspects of the Spanish Civil War waft up to us from Orwell and Hemingway--despite the fact that neither of those authors made the war sound justified or noble. The aura around one who joined the "Republicans" is that of an advocate for freedom putting his body on the line for his principles. The picture is tainted when one realizes that the war was also a test run for the conflict between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. 

The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt reminds me a little of both sides. Just as the communists of Spain called themselves Republicans while having no intention of setting up anything other than a dictatorship of the people, the Brotherhood has been shouting about democracy as if they have respect for the theory. Just like the Nazis using their sliver of democratic sanction to leverage complete control of the state, it appears that the Brotherhood wanted to use their position to oppress any opposition.

The conflict is plenty ugly and I put a lot of blame on the Obama-led West. The worst aspect of our modern political era is that our leaders really believe their bullshit. Across both parties, they seem to believe without question that people across the world crave democracy. So, time and again, the levers of power are abandoned to the mob while we applaud. Later, we shake our heads at the bloodshed and never learn our lesson.

My perception is that the crisis in Egypt came from the general uprising across the Middle East (the "Islamic Vortex") and the simple fact that Mubarak was getting too old to rule. Other elements within his government had grown in power and probably were maneuvering to assume his seat. Mubarak had some hopes that his son would take over. It appears that this was both unpopular with other power-holders and ineffectively secured.

It was here that the West should have stepped in, conferring with the major players. In the old realpolitik days, we would have struck a deal with a reliable autocrat and supported him through the backstage machinations. Rather than find someone within the administration that was credible as a leader and loyal to established policies, our noble leaders said, "We'd really like to see real elections," and chaos has ensued.

It appears that the military, who ousted Mubarak in the first place, never really took their hands off the steering wheel. We can see that in how quickly Morsi disappeared and in the protests of the Brotherhood that they never really got to rule. I think this was probably the best out of a lot of bad options.

Juntas aren't especially great to live in, I imagine, but they're infinitely preferable to Islamic theocracy or a government driven to fulfill an ideology. Military rule is primarily about order and maintaining power, not controlling the lives of each individual citizen. Sure, you publish a pamphlet listing the crimes of the government or quoting Marx, you'll be disappeared in no time. But if you go to work, take care of your family and obey the law, you won't find much interference.

As my Facebook friends cheered the uprising in Cairo, I tried to remind them that there were people with families and livelihoods all over Egypt that would be negatively affected by the change in power. Most people want to go about their business--riots in the town square are not helpful. I'm not pro-dictator but I am anti-civil war.