Lessons of Egypt

Slate has an article by an Egyptian activist pondering where the revolution went wrong.

The main enemy of the people has always been the security state—the police and the military. We will never get anywhere until they are dismantled entirely. There was a moment when that could have been achieved, when a civilian state could have been built. But Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood would have had to choose the challenge of working with the disparate and bickering forces of the left and the liberals over dealing with the organized certainty of the military.

So, basically, uncompromising extremists could not deal with the ambiguities and give-and-take of the liberal, democratic process. And they had control of the police and the military.

Does anyone doubt what will happen to most of us if the baggers ever got control of the police and the military? In a rational world I don’t see how they would do that, but in a rational world Ted Cruz would be running a dry cleaning store in Sugarland.

See also Aaron David Miller, “Obama’s Egypt Policy Makes Perfect Sense” (Foreign Policy) and Ed Kilgore, “Obama on Egypt Explained.”