Arabian Nights

The Arab Spring: A Fiction of Thousand and One Nights!

 

When we were young and impressionable,  someone, somewhere may have whispered the words , “Ali Baba” or “Aladdin”.   Little did we realize that these were characters in the masterful Arabic/Persian fantasy tales,  called, “One Thousand and One Nights”.

  Why do I bring up this fact at a time when Egyptian revolutionary activities has displaced not one leader,  Mubarack, but Morsi, the recently elected President?

  The cold hard facts are that the Arab Spring generated a lot of hope, wishful thinking but in reality it generated very little in the way of change.

  Unfortunate, but true!
 

Let’s see what really happened in Libya?
  Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was displaced and then replaced with nobody.   What came in the wake of Western military intervention and the ‘so-called anti-Gaddafi forces’ was CHAOS!

  No leader or constitutional government has replaced Gaddafi.    Instead,  the lethal weapons that went missing found their way inexorably into the two year civil war in Syria.

  What has happened in Syria?
  The Sunnis from Homs,  the Salafists and Al Qaeda fighters (all funded by Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar)  have made a stronger Bashar Assad government and contributed to the death of 100,000 innocent people.

So what can we conclude about the Egyptian Arab uprising?
  In effect,  it changed few personalities in the either of the two new regimes.  And the two new regimes depended on only one institution—the Egyptian military.

One could deduce that the Egyptian military  very cleverly instigated,  managed and affected the riots –or Arab Spring—against Hosni Mubarak.

  Why would the Egyptian military attempt a coup against one of their own? 

Sidebar: Mubarak was an Air Force General who had been anointed by Anwar Sadat. 

  The answer is quite simple.

  When the Egyptian military discovered that Hosni Mubarak had refused a legitimate succession plan that would not include his corrupt progeny,  the military orchestrated his removal.

 

But they soon discovered that they had gone from the frying pan to the fire with Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

  In fact,  the Egyptian military initiated the referendum that resulted in the ouster of Morsi.   

Why would they do that??? 

Mohammed Morsi,  although duly elected was completely incompetent.

  In the best sense of the word, “incompetence” ,   Morsi was unable to rule politically,   run an effective economic program and insisted on imposing ‘islam’ on a traditionally secular state.

The military was the conscience of the Egyptian people.   The military heard the collective discontent,  ranging from Salafists to Liberal and Coptic Christians,  and they acted accordingly.

  A military coup is not alien to the Egyptian military.   In fact, it’s part of their institutional heritage of Egypt.   Since  the founding of modern Egypt with the military coup initiated by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser,  the military has always been at hearts Nasserites committed to modernization of Egypt.   Like Nasser,  the military understood all too well that they were the only legitimate institution in Egypt that could continue the program of economic and political reform. 

And so today,  what we have witnessed,  is the forces of modernization in the Middle East in play once again.

 Although it may look as if military suppression would come into play,  it will be most likely that the military will mainly engage the ‘extremist Islamic elements’ that refuse to recognize Egypt as a secular state. 

  Therefore,  when the President of Turkey Erdogan condemns the Egyptian Military Coup,  Erdogan knows that he is treading on very, very dangerous grounds.

  With over 300 of his military officers in prison and his pre-emptive ‘political strike’ against the Turkish Army which was also founded by the modernist Ataturk [Mustafa Kamal of Salonica],  Erdogan is counting the days he may or may not be in power.

  Perhaps a military coup is the best way to deal with politicians who insisted on creating a theocratic state anywhere in the Middle East. 

Turkey,  like Egypt,  has an extremely vital,  cosmopolitan youth that will not tolerate the palaver of any theocracy or ideology that harks back eons to an agricultural time when women were considered chattel. 

 

If the new politicians of whatever political spectrum  cannot and will not address the problems of the 21st  century, they too will be deposed by their respective militaries.

Stalin understood all too well,  that the Pope had no divisions of soldiers and that power came out of the barrel of the gun.

In Struggles We Find Victory!!!