Rebellion in the Land of the Pharaohs

[Valin]

WSJ:

A man who places himself at the helm for three decades inevitably becomes the target of all the realm's discontents.
FOUAD AJAMI
1/29/11

(Note: Video Here Very Good Analysis.)

'When Ramses II was over eighty he celebrated his rejuvenation at the feast of Set, repeating it yearly until he was ninety and more, and displaying his power of rejuvenation to the Gods above in the Obelisks he regularly erected as a memorial, which the aged Pharaoh decorated with electrum at the top so that their brightness should pour over lands of Egypt when the sun was mirrored in them."

This is from a classic account of this ancient and ordered land, "The Nile in Egypt," by Emil Ludwig (1937). Hosni Mubarak, the military officer who became Pharaoh in his own right, is well over 80. His is the third-longest reign since Ramses, who ruled for 67 years. The second-longest had belonged to a remarkable soldier of fortune, Muhammad Ali, an Albanian by birth and the creator of modern Egypt, who conquered the country in the opening years of the 19th century and ruled for five decades. His dynasty was to govern Egypt until the middle years of the 20th century.

(Snip)

Revolts of this kind are always a gamble on the unknown. At bottom, they are an attempt at self-purification, a society wishes to be done with the stain of submission to a dictator's transgressions. Amid the tumult, what is so clear today is the hatred felt for the ruler and his immediate family. Reigns like Mr. Mubarak's devour the green and the dry, as a favored Arab expression has it. The sycophants come to the fore and steal what they can. Those with heart and character and pride are hauled off to prison, or banished to the outer margins of public life.

Mr. Mubarak has been merciless with his critics. For this isolated, aging man of the barracks, dissent is always treason. There remains, of course, the Muslim Brotherhood. It was in Egypt where the Muslim Brotherhood was born in the late 1920s. The Brotherhood has been the alibi and the bogeyman with which Hosni Mubarak frightened the middle class at home and the donors abroad in Washington and Europe, who prop his regime out of fear that Egypt would come apart and the zealots would triumph.

(Snip)

[Al_Simmons]

I don't believe that in a nation as large and as secular as Egypt the Moslem Brotherhood would be able to pull off a coup. However, they could certainly exploit the chaos of the aftermath of Mubarak's fall to increase their power and make more trouble in the region for Egypt and its neighbors.

 

At this point a 'general's coup' against Mubarak may be the best of a lot of bad options.

[Valin]

I don't believe that in a nation as large and as secular as Egypt the Moslem Brotherhood would be able to pull off a coup. However, they could certainly exploit the chaos of the aftermath of Mubarak's fall to increase their power and make more trouble in the region for Egypt and its neighbors.

 

At this point a 'general's coup' against Mubarak may be the best of a lot of bad options.

 

 

No real disagreement.