Two years ago, Egypt’s army decided it was time to get rid of Hosni Mubarak, so out he went. Yesterday, the same army decided it was now Mohammed Morsi’s turn to go, so out he went. That’s the reality behind the popular protests at Tahrir Square that fill the world’s TV screens.
The Egyptians have lived what William Butler Yeats once summed up so well in verse: “Hurrah for the Revolution and cannon come again / The beggars have changed places but the lash goes on.”
We shed no tears for Morsi or his Muslim Brotherhood government. Under his rule, the Egyptian economy, never strong, went to pot; political opponents were suppressed; journalists and judges were arrested; the US embassy was attacked; and the Copts, Egypt’s Christian minority, found themselves routinely assaulted.
Another way of saying this is that Morsi was putting into place all the pieces of a repressive Islamist state — with none of it eliciting much indignation from the Obama administration.
The great irony here is that the man who replaced Mubarak as Egypt’s ruler ended up offering Uncle Sam the same bad bargain as the old dictator: You don’t like what I’m doing? Fine. The alternative is even worse.
The result of that bargain has been a continuing tragedy for the Egyptian people, a setback for the Middle East and a reminder that the true measures of democracy go far beyond a democratic vote for the top dog. In fact, in Egypt these measures are notable for their absence: a respect for process over outcome; the safeguarding of minorities; and the honoring of property rights that are not only essential for a healthy economy but also act as a wedge against the power of government. Not to mention strong civic institutions.
Egypt ought also remind us that leading from behind carries its own price. President Bush’s freedom agenda certainly came with costs, which the American people were reminded of every day by his opponents in Congress and the press. But ask yourself this: Do the events across the region — in Egypt, in Syria, in Iran, in Iraq — suggest President Obama’s change in course has led to a Middle East that is more stable or more friendly to America?
Morsi is out. But the war over the future of the world’s oldest Arab nation continues. And it is waged between forces that hold intrinsically incompatible ideas of what that future should look like.