Morsi's out; the military's in. The constitution's suspended. The live images and video coming out of Cairo are extraordinary. Twitter is on fire. OK, now what?
UPDATE 1: Fareed Zakaria is now yapping on CNN. *mute button*
UPDATE 2: Lots of flurried, frantic "commentary" from various talking heads on the news outlets. Arguably the goofiest utterance yet: "It was a military coup d'etat, which is undemocratic. But it was what the people wanted, so it is democratic."
1 comment:
There’s more to pluralistic liberal government than democracy. Democracy without liberal structural features is just mob rule and a gateway for tyranny, as the Morsi government was trending.
Strictly speaking, democracy isn’t required for liberal government, but popular legitimacy is necessary for liberal government, and democracy is the dominant process for popular legitimacy for governments in the world today.
Bush emphasized liberal “reform”, “institutions”, “freedom”, and “justice” along with democracy in the Middle East with a fundamental understanding that informed the Freedom Agenda and our regional nation-building projects. The Obama administration has not shared that understanding. Obama's acceptance of Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to the Taliban in Afghanistan has not gone unnoticed in the region.
If the Democrats and the Left hadn't worked so hard to undermine Bush's Middle East policy here, over there, and around the world, an organic working model could have been set in place as a healthy origin point with the US in a conducive role.
Instead, the Arab Spring will have to travel a harder road. Egyptian politics from the street up is pathological. The most we've expected from them is stability. We'll find out if they can transcend their history. Rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood is a promising step, but there are more hard steps ahead of them.
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