Filibuster CartoonsTitle: Take your pick, Egypt (click to view)
Date: February 14, 2011
So Mr. Mubarak was finally forced out of power, and in his place we have a dynamic, new Egyptian dictator born almost a
full decade after the old guy! 76-year-old Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the country's much-decorated defense minister, seized control of the nation in a bloodless coup on Friday, thus formally concluding 18 days of intense protest and turmoil that had captured the world's attention.
Field Marshal Tantawi is an unlikely hero of this particular moment, considering the anti-Mubarak revolts of previous weeks were largely youth-led, and... well, not exactly in favor of having out-of-touch, uniformed septuagenarians running their country. But in a moment of crisis one often has to choose between bad and worse, and in the eyes of many Egyptians, a military coup was the least-bad dictatorial alternative to President Mubarak's regime.
The Egyptian military, after all, may be the single most democratic institution that exists in contemporary Egypt, at least in the sense that so much of the country's population has some experience serving in it. Like many Arab states, Egypt suffers from a very demographically lopsided populace. Due to a legacy of several unsuccessful wars and a very high birthrate, two-thirds of the country is said to be under the age of 30, and all male members of that two-thirds are required by Egyptian law to serve in the army for a minimum nine-year reserve duty. This is why, despite the widespread breakdown of law and order in the streets of Cairo, the troops had been relatively indifferent to the actions of the protestors, and vice-versa. After all, from the perspective of the dissidents, the army was not some alien, foreign entity, but rather a familiar collection of brothers, fathers, sons, uncles, cousins, and friends. It was the institution of the state closest to the people themselves, and thus the one most trusted to eventually rebel, and throw its support to the right side of history, which of course it eventually did.
Fulfilling their end of the bargain, Marshal Tantawi's new administration has now come out in favor of holding fresh elections and rewriting the nation's constitution — two key protestor demands — in order to usher in a new, democratic era for Egypt.
We should not be
too rosy about things, however. History, after all, is rife with instances of coup leaders coming to power pledging their loyalty to democracy, only to then quickly hoard power entirely power for themselves. This was actually the founding story of the Mubarak regime itself, which also originated in a well-meaning military coup back in 1953, before gradually evolving into a generic pseudo-civilian-run one party autocracy.
In many cases, what particularly turns the military into jealous protectors of their own tyrannical status is a rising sense of distrust for the perceived reckless naiveté of civilian voters. Elections are all well and good, but if the public is just going to plunge the nation into civil war or Islamo-fascist theocracy due to their idiot voting preferences, then, well, it seems downright
treasonous for the army to sit idly by and allow that to happen. Is not their primary concern to defend the integrity, stability, and safety of the country?
This is very much the logic that governs the Republic of Turkey. Though often cited as the only state in the larger Middle East that runs its affairs in a fairly democratic fashion, Turkey's democracy has been extraordinarily stage managed by its omnipresent armed forces, who have repeatedly staged coups following "wrong choices" by the voting public (and other times simply intimidate them into making the right ones). Indeed, if Turkey is perceived to be moving in a more Islamist direction these days, it's in no small part due to a number of recent legislative initiatives that have stripped the armed forces of their historic autonomy.
Considering all of the doomsday, post-Mubarak scenarios we've been reading about in the press lately (Religious dictatorship under the Muslim Brotherhood! War with Israel!) it would be unrealistic to think men like Tantawi are not keeping the Turkish precedent in the back of their minds as they slowly push their nation forward into the great unknown.
CKA Elite 
