Egypt - has anything more convincingly demonstrated the naive, simple minded nature of liberal foreign policy punditry [not to mention Obama's instincts thereof] than Egypt and the Arab Spring in general? First, they welcomed the dumping of Mubarak and cheered the youthful protesters without once it seems wondering what the Egyptian military's motives were here [they enabled Mubarak's exit after all] nor considering that the youthful but quite naive 'democracy' chanters were certain to be pushed aside as the Islamists came to the fore. Then, when that indeed happened, they cheered the Muslim Brotherhood as if they were just good ol' moderates with nothing but good ol' intentions viz democracy etc etc and of course the MB is nothing of the sort, not even close. This was always going to go badly - and it's entirely possible this is playing out exactly as the coup in waiting military thought it would play out, they indeed may be motivating the protesters behind the scenes.
I don't know how it ends - well, it won't end, this will be a process, towards what I don't know, I'm guessing something bad - although if the military reasserts control we could just revert back to what existed under Mubarak with cosmetic 'democratic' changes laid over top [very hard to imagine though it being that simple - the various cats are out of their sundry bags and they're not going back in without a fuss]. But what about in the long run? I've always said that if the Mideast is to evolve out of its medievalism that this will be done amid much upheaval and discord because what will be happening, even possibly without the players fully knowing it, is that Islam will be under challenge as a political entity. Gibberish spoken in the West about how of course Islam is compatible with democracy etc etc will be exposed for the idiocy that it is - closed, intolerant, regressive, oppressive, idealist systems cannot endure or live long with the inconveniences and somewhat chaotic nature of democracy - democracy is about accepting, even embracing change - closed systems don't like change, they don't like dissent - democracy is all about dissent and compromise - Islamists support 'democracy' just so long as it rubber stamps the 'legitimacy' of Islamism, otherwise they have no use for it - so for the Mideast to move forward it was always going to be about pushing Islam off to the side and that, given the highly political nature of Islam and the way it infiltrates Muslim polities, was always destined to be an extremely traumatic experience - and possibly impossible to do without a complete breakdown of order.
So the first stirrings of this process may be what we're seeing in Egypt - and in the long run that may prove a good thing - unfortunately in the short to midterm it's like to be an extremely uncomfortable ride.
