How many pundits and Egyptian experts are now telling the U.S. State Department and Obama Administration, “I told you so!”
With the recent arrest of more than 1,000 Islamists, those who have been saying the US was on the wrong side of the argument may be seeing their thoughts and ideas come true. Anyone who has been looking closely at the events going on in Eqypt could easily see the Muslim Brotherhood was its own worst enemy, being driven along by Islamists who care more about power than taking care of the country and people.
Democracy is about a lot more than one election.
Their interim military government is now moving to legally dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood. The radical organization had called for a week of nationwide protests, starting today. Those protests may have drawn in ordinary Egyptians who just wanted their man back in control, but along with them come the radical islamists who use “useful idiots” for their own purposes.
On Saturday, just a week ago, Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem el-Bablawi proposed dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood. That radical idea is still on the table, and is thought to be studied as a way to neuter the organization and to reduce the amount of further bloodshed.
President Mohammed Morsi’s supporters had taken over a Cairo mosque that has been at the center of the protests. The people inside the mosque included renegades who exchanged gunfire with Egyptian police, an Agence France Presse correspondent reported.
According to the correspondent, police stormed the Fath mosque and security forces fired tear gas. In the process, they managed to drag seven or eight men out of the mosque. After that, angry neighborhood residents attacked the police with sticks and iron bars.
One of the more interesting names arrested so far in this latest crackdown is Mohamed al-Zawahiri, the brother of al-Qaida head Ayman al-Zawahri. Agence France Presse reports that a security source told them that al-Zawahiri was arrested in his home district of Giza, adjacent to the capital.
Mohammad Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate had the opportunity to rule Egypt for about a year after free elections were held. He seemed much more interested in holding onto power than in taking care of Egypt and Egyptians, who were in the grip of food, fuel and power shortages. The army removed Morsi from power on July 3, giving him the opportunity to talk to the people. He was defiant, and the military held him in custody, to prevent him from organizing protests or worse action. After that, The Muslim Brotherhood urged its supporters onto the streets to denounce the military takeover and the subsequent crackdown on followers of the nation’s first freely-elected president.
The Muslim Brotherhood, with deeper roots in the provinces, called for a “Day of Rage,” and rage they did, with the sound of automatic gunfire ringing out around the capital on Friday. Army helicopters were seen and heard flying roof tops. At least one office block was on fire, lighting up the night sky long after the violence had subsided.
Once the bloodshed starts, there is always another excuse for further action, as one Muslim Brotherhood member said, “We are here because of our brothers who died.”
It now appears the Brotherhood has been partially disbanded by a military bent on its total destruction.
The U.S. Administration seems to have been slowed down in its support for Morsi and The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a problem it brought upon itself.
