The following replies are approved. To see additional replies that are pending approval, click Show Pending. Warning: These may contain graphic material.
4
This is how you turn anyone into a suicide-bombing extremist who won't listen to reason.
4
But this is what the MB wants. The leadership will sacrifice their zealous pawns in order to create more in perpetuity. It isn't necessarily the fault of the infidel. Militant fundamentalists of any stripe, on every continent, only crave one thing: patriarchal control of natural resources in the name of their nonexistent god.
5
As much as we'd like to condemn it, almost all of my Egyptian friends support it, even those who demonstrated for weeks. Egypt as a whole is turning against Islamist and this is to them is the better than becoming a full-fledged supporter of terrorism as a nation. To them this is inevitable, giving the violent nature of the Brotherhood.
I really hate to see bloodshed like this, but I think the West and the US is misreading this very, very badly.
5
Don't worry. There are MANY of us here in the West who are standing firmly with the secularists/military. The Islamists are a cancer.
5
They are a cancer, especially to Egyptians. My friends would tell me how Morssi government used Egyptian national treasury money to support Hamas and the Syrian Rebels, who are mostly Al Qaeda/Islamist fighters, instead of spending the money to rebuild the nation. This is the real reason why they demostrated for weeks to get rid of the Brotherhood - to them, they are gutting Egypt for their Islamist ideals. I don't know how much of this is true, but for the secularists to literally risk their lives to bring the Brotherhood down, I think I tend to believe them.
2
I have a lot of Egyptians on my Fb feed, and they're all posting the same thing: MB violence has gone unreported, they're not peaceful protesters, multiple Coptic churches destroyed, Christians attacked, etc. None of them see this as terrible, given that MB changes to the constitution would have made the country undemocratic. So yes, I do wonder where the truth lies, because I see little to that in the NYT for example.
And I fully agree with you. Don't worry. Ultra liberal blogs like Gawker do not speak for the majority here. In fact it's sometimes shocking how different the opinions here are versus the regular world.
Why haven't we cut off aid? At what point do we become responsible by our government funding the General's. Didn't we learn our lesson in: Iran, Central America and South America? While I'm in no way aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, they were democratically elected. Why hasn't President Obama made a definitive statement on aid. Canceling planned joint military exercises is not likely to get the Egyptian military's attention. That being said, I would vote for our President again.
1
In fairness, we aren't providing that much aid compared to other countries, so us cutting off aid won't do much. It might be better for us strategically to keep enough aid going to their government to keep some influence. I'm not saying it's right to be supporting people who are doing this kind of violence, just that ending the aid might be a meaningless gesture that does more harm than good.
I don't know enough about US-Egypt relations, but I know I've often read that the aid is due, in part, to Egypt not interfering with US military use of the Suez Canal. I can't imagine Egypt could try to block that without war being the result, but perhaps the US is afraid Egypt might call their bluff. Not exactly a conflict anyone wants.
I really do not mean to be obtuse and argumentative, but a one word explanation should suffice: principle. Aid is aid, and the implication in providing aid is that we are at least on the same trajectory on fundamental issues-like not allowing the military to kill civilians...
The canal is certainly a legitimate issue, but supporting a government whose military kills civilians seems inconsistent methinks.
1
In my opinion, the word "coup" and its far-reaching implications can no longer be avoided. The turgid attempt to equate the tragic incident at the consulate at Benghazi with the preventable disaster of 9/11 has been eclipsed by what may follow the collapse of Egyptian civil security and democratic governance both internally and ultimately within the region as disparate groups vie for power. I sense a conflation of covert US involvement similar to what transpired in both Chile (Allende/Pinochet) and Iran (Shah Reza Pahlavi/Ayatollah Khomeini).
I truly hope I'm wrong.
well, be thankful you're wrong. The US has nothing to do with this. In fact the US is against this, as the Morssi govt was making deal between US/Isreal/Hamas. Egypt will give freedom/parts of Sinai to Hamas in exchange for continued US aid and Hamas stop attacking Israel. This deal is one of the reason why the people rise against Brotherhood so shortly after the election. US is utterly against seeing Morssi go.
Respectfully, it would seem that English is not your first language which makes following your line of reasoning difficult.
You say that, "The US has nothing to do with this." You need to be specific regarding the reference, "this".
You then go on to describe US dealmaking with Morsi/Israel and Hamas. This of course is the opposite of not being involved.
The salient fact is that it is public knowledge that the US is heavily involved in supplying Egypt's military and (like it or not) it is the military that is causing these brutal confrontations.
Sorry I can't provide a better response, but I am interested in your opinion and pov.
No, I'm just a really lazy writer when composing gawker responses.
What I am saying is that the US decided to back the Muslim Brotherhood govt and started to make deals with them directly. My secular and activist friends old me that almost all of them were in favor of the ouster of the MB from power and subsequent crackdown (that was the THIS I mentioned before).
The Egyptian military has changed in that they know that the only way to survive is to do what the majority of the people wanted, other wise you'll see millions of people on the street. Egypt is not like other Middle Eastern nations where they are sectarian or tribal/ethnic tensions; their literacy rate is one of the best in the region and almost everyone is a Sunni Muslim. Only real tribes they have is the roaming tribes in the lawless part of the Sinai, but they were very few in numbers. Only real religious minority are the Coptic Christians. The Islamist's usual method of divide and conquer didn't work in Egypt as most of Egyptians saw through their tricks. This is what the mass majority of the Egyptians now believe - that the Military is doing their bidding (thus no mass protests), and that the Islamist govt were making anti-Egypt deals with other Islamist groups AND THE US. The US became pro-Islamist (it really sounds pretty amazing to type this, but it's true), so now a number of them are feeling anger toward the US as well.
This is what my friends tells me; none of this is my own theories. I just tend to trust them because the evidence is on the streets - there's no one out there demonstrating the curfew now. In the good old days, the curfew would only bring even more people out. Anyway, believe what you will. I am siding with my friends for now.
