Thread: I admire the Egyptian people.

The king is dead. Long live the king!

Originally Posted by Thanatos

Cutting the amount of military aid could be dangerous since Moebarak considers the aid pay-off for peace with Israel.

Well, it's not the 80s anymore...
Today there is so absolutly no organized front for anything like a war with israel.
What ever happens in Egypt will not by definition lead to war or bad relations with Israel. That would be suecide and without any pan-arabic nationalist ideology there isn't even a reason to go to war.

Egypt would simply become a harder to handle diplomatic partner / party.
This could even have a moderating effect on the conflict in Palestine...

Here is an interesting article about Israel continously painting the devil of an islamist takeover as soon as Mubarak falls on the wall (in contradiction to a number of facts) while failing to crack down on its own religious fundamentalist hard-right whose rethoric is no less inflammatory. Actually they ( Schas Party) are part of the governement coalition :

What do the Muslim Brotherhood and the ultra-Orthodox religious-right have in common? - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is dominated by secular people who run as independents. They have a young, vibrant well-educated professional class who were finding it impossible to ever move ahead in a system that was clearly rigged against them.

People identifying themselves with that party are on record as toeing the line when it came to using peaceful protest and to practical matters like cleaning up the streets and taking pride in the country more than wanting to superficially destroy things.

A crisis tells you all you need to know sometimes about what somebody is made of, and when you consider how this fairly bright, talented young group of intelligent people conducted themselves, and then consider that the Egyptian army earned the trust of anyone following what they were saying as well as what they were doing. They brokered the whole deal, they listened well to both sides, they communicated effectively throughout that their entire purpose was to protect the public as well as protect the gov't. If we didn't know any better, we could confuse them with UN forces since they seemed fair minded and pragmatic throughout without a hint of playing any kind of games. Those two sides worked together and got things done without firing a shot at each other. That should tell us something about what it is they could become for the US in the ME which is a highly progressive secular country that also happens to have the largest number of arabs in it. And they want to be more like us. It's perfect that they have their suspicions of the US since it is clear by now that propping up these puppets is something that deserves to stay in the past. It's important to note that the protesters made important criticisms about America and they did it on camera directly but not at all filled with hate. They were simply intelligent people making the point that when Obama visited them 2 years ago, on one hand he made them yearn for what it was he was talking about, but then on the other hand the guy is going to fly back to Washington and write a check for the strongman who uses it in corrupt ways and who goes after any and all dissent using violence.

When the cameras got to roll and these people spoke, it was apparent to everyone how it seemed we were looking at a very westernized culture in appearance, but up until now just mostly in appearance. We learn that they're a secular country and the people there must be given credit whether it was planned or not, of the image of police thugs beginning to attack praying Muslims and Christians joining hands to take the blows by forming a barrier around their brothers and sisters. Just the image of it screamed of a people who are not only ready for democracy, but who showed us all up and made us look petty in our politics, like with the recent national conversation about the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. How fucking ridiculously small are we for that compared to what they said about themselves? And they weren't even really free yet!

An American can't really look at themselves now and pretend they stand for better than what that image of the Muslims and Christians together did for them and what it says about what they want to say about themselves and perhaps their politics now after decades of oppression: The creed that one side protects the other. They handed us a moral lesson with this revolution that can't be ignored, which is we're going to really get places when we figure out it's in our interest to actually befriend Muslims since in their hearts they really really really wanna be more like us than what their neighbors are like, and that's pretty fucking inspiring.

Originally Posted by Jason Marcel

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is dominated by secular people who run as independents. They have a young, vibrant well-educated professional class who were finding it impossible to ever move ahead in a system that was clearly rigged against them.

Even though I cut a lot of your post for brevity, it quite accurate. Although, in the past they had once been a fundamentalist Muslim group, they later became much more secular in their views and stance. From what I can tell, they range from about 200,000 to perhaps as much as 1 million people, and will probably be about 20% of the new government, as they should be.