Egyptian military kills over 400: Middle East problems get worse

In a part of the world that is already an incredible human mess, highlighted by the deadly 3 year old vicious, murdering, destructive power struggle in Syria, things are looking even worse.

The latest news out of huge Egypt is that the military in power broke up demonstrations by protesting Muslim brotherhood supporters and killed over 400. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/15/us-egypt-protests-idUSBRE97C09A20130815

There is nothing good about the middle east as it relates to the world at large or the health and welfare of people everywhere. It is a hotbed of violent hatred; at its worse it is internal hatred among members of Islam, as can be seen in Syria.

Now the problems could erupt in one of the largest populations within the middle east, in Egypt, with a population estimated at over 75 million.

Its too bad there is a lot of oil over there that is critical to fueling the world's economy. Otherwise those folks are so angry at one another, Shiites vs, Sunni's and fundamentalists versus those who aren't wrapped up in their ancient religious dictates that they could spend a decade killing one another and ultimately put all that anger to rest.

If anything the 3 year war in Syria has been lengthened as various political interests have propped up one side or the other: Iran, Russia and Hezbollah propping up Assad and Qatar and Saudi Arabia and other gulf states primarily propping up the rebels if not Turkey and the West.

Islam, unfortunately, is a boiling cauldron of mankind at its worst and most destructive.

 

Brings new laughter, in retrospect to the OWS movement, doesn't it? I believe their slogan was, "A Tahir Moment on Wall St.". Oh the glories of the revolution. If only we could change the world with good intentions.

We have a few Egyptians who post on this section, it would be fascinating to get their perspective. Here is the timeline as far as I can tell:

• Liberals and pro-Democracy protesters march peacefully in the streets of Tahir, asking for an end to the America puppet and benign dictator Mubarak
• President Obama chimes in before thinking(as he did with Trayvon Martin, and the Beer Summit), demanding that Mubarak go.
• Mubarak, as our puppet, realizes he no longer has our support and goes
• Islamists, as the only organized political group in Egypt, though only 25% of the population, fill the power vacuum, winning the majority of seats in parliament
• Attacks against the Christian minority skyrocket
• The Islamist parliament runs rough shod over the drafting of a new constitution, causing the few non Islamist members to resign
• The Islamist president Morsi declares his president's office to be exempt from judicial review and oversight until the new sharia based islamist constitution is passed
• The 75% of the country that didnt like Mubarak but didnt want an Islamist dictator threw a fit and threw out Morsi, without any help from Obama.
• The US funded military now runs the government and oppresses(murders) protesters of the 25% Islamist minority
• 90% Muslim majority continue to perpetrate violence against the 10% christian minority

Yah, its a cock up of monumental proportions, and if you noticed the amount of American involvement in the whole mess, its hard to see this as anything but an enormous F' up by the Obama administration, and by extension, an embarrassment for the US.

 

What's so unpredictable about this ? Egypt has twice the population it can sustain by it's current resources.

The only reason why Egypt didn't collapsed sooner was due to the fact that tourism pumped billions into the economy, put that next to the foreign aid and the money sent by expats and you'll see Egypt's main income source. After the previous revolution tourism was slashed and now the country is a runaway train.

In today's disastrous economic climate it will take some fantastic efforts and sacrifices just to stop the country from descending into a civil war.

 

LOL. How do you make up this BS? Do you even look at the news and know anything about the politics of the area? US makes some arm groups to remove the government like what they did in Libya and were successful and then they try the same recipe in Syria but Russia true to the old saying fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me decides not to be a fool again and supports Assad which results in a proxy civil war. To blames Islam in this is the same as blaming guns for the war because both guns and Islam are just tools in this geopolitics game.

You have also missed what is happening in US government during the last couple of years and just repeating the old stuff. Radical Islam is not an enemy of the USA anymore, it is an USA´s best friend.

 

It seems the right call here would have been for a diplomatically savvy US President to support Mubarak while at the same time supporting a peaceful transition to Democracy, calling for fair and free elections in which Mubarak could not participate. We would never have seen the free-for-all power grab executed by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Egyptians would probably have wound up with a more secular president that better represented the people. Granted, the new president would probably have turned into another dictator, but probably not under Obama's presidency, so he could have declared a major diplomatic victory.

Instead, Obama pandered to the extreme political left in his own country and did the Egyptian people an extreme disservice. It highlights well the difference in outcomes between Democracy a'La Occupy Wall St. vs Democracy a'La The Tea Party. They both want big changes, but the means and the objectives of OWS would leave our nation looking like Egypt.

 

You still don´t understand that Democracy is not a simple rule of the majority.
In a democracy you cannot simply vote to kill Jews or Muslims because you are the majority. In a democracy you have to respect the personal freedom and the rights of the minority even if they are outvoted. Muslim brotherhood and different form of Islam are not a democracy even if they win an election because their political idea does not respect other people personal freedom. The democratic forces have to fight Muslim brotherhood, the same way that democratic forces have to fight fascism or fundamentalist Christian or Jews. The Egypt army is not a democratic force but their fight against Muslim fundamentalists is beneficial to democratic forces. Unfortunately the powers in the USA have decided that Muslim fundamentalists are their new best friends. While civil wars and crazy Muslim warlords are not beneficial to the national interests of the USA as a country, it is beneficial to the limited number of private interests that hope to profit from the lack of national governments in the Middle East. It is therefore very unfortunate that Obama instead of serving the national interests of the USA and the democracy has decided to represent these private interests and side with fundamentalist Muslims by cutting the support for Egypt army.

 

Someone should alert Shawn that GWorld's account has been hacked and taken over by an Obama hating neo-con. It so happens that I am up to speed on the differences between a Direct Democracy, a Parliamentary Democracy, and a Democratic Republic.

It would seem the original Tahir protesters were mostly traditional liberals (secular, civil rights fans) with the right idea in mind. They wanted an end to their dictatorship. Who can't get behind that?

While its true that Obama's actions directly lead to an Islamist minority being thrust into power, a bit like Carter and Iran in the 70s, assigning motives related to some conspiracy theory is just wacky. I doubt Obama or Carter actually wanted Islamists in power in Iran or Egypt, they were/are both just completely incompetent.

More likely they were both eaten by a sense of self loathing and guilt for the role of the US in installing these leaders, and tried to transition them out as quickly as possible, realizing only after that they helped put an oppressive minority in power. At least Bush had the "You break it, you buy it" mentality with Iraq and made a tremendous effort to transition to a real and secular democracy, though all those gains got thrown out the window when Obama failed to negotiate a status of forces agreement in another stupid act of idiotic idealism. 500 Al Queda warriors broken out of Abu Ghraib, and that fledgling country will come apart at the seems within the next 24 months.

I can admit that Obama's incompetence is so great, it is truly hard to distinguish from intentional malfeasance that aims to destabilize the middle east via islamist fundamentalists, but I'm sticking to my opinion. He is just an idiot. What do you expect from a first term Senator that has never had a real job outside of community organizer?

 

In other words, Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

A concept lost on most conspiracy nutters.

Really these types of things are hardly a shock once religious extremists are on the table -- or even religions as a whole. Part of why I'm not predjudiced -- I hate all religions equally; goes with being a student of history.

 

I'm not here often, but once again the world witnesses extraordinary examples of Muslims slaughtering muslims. In Pakistan the taliban courageously attacked a school with children aged 5-15, killing over 120 children, some administrators, and ultimately the suicide attackers died. Islam has seen a stunning disturbing increase in school attacks.

Meanwhile in Nigeria, another Islamic group of fundamentalist terrorists have kidnapped about 100 women and children in the latest reports: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/18/us-nigeria-violence-idUSKBN0JW1FP20141218

The worst attack on a school, in terms of dead, was by Islamic terrorists in Chechnya.

The most significant Islamic institutions do not criticize these wanton acts and they continue, month after month, year after year, over a decade, unstopped and uncriticized.

Until major Islamic institutions rise up in unity to address these attacks, repudiate these attacks and make an effort to squash these fundamentalist terrorists, they will continue and continue....and the consequences will always be severe

 

@earlpearl: Blame Obama

 

What a stunning response by you.

I put all the blame on you. After that Islamic institutions. Lets face it...you caused the damn problem. Its that hat and beard in your avater. It makes fundamentalist terrorists nuts.

 

There is only one way to stop these Islamist terrorists.

We have to pass single payer health care!

 

You mean Blame Bush right?!