It Was a "Coup"

It finally happened.  After weeks of threats announced on the radio and TV, threats which thankfully had not been backed up  with action, the Egyptian military has   moved in with the force of arms and the fictitious legal cover to sweep the Muslim Brotherhood off the streets.

So what if the Muslim Brotherhood is not exactly the most democratic bunch themselves.  Now the Egyptian army has given them a legitimacy they could hardly have gotten on their own.  No matter how much they mismanaged power under the Morsi regime, their street cred just shot through the roof now that they have their own Tienanmen Square massacre.

Its time to call a spade a spade and name what happened in Egypt by what it is -- it was a coup.  The events happening now show that in standing by while Morsi was overthrown, Obama has done what America does best and backed the wrong side.  But it isn't too late for America to do the right thing.  And that right thing is what McCain said - call this coup a coup and trip the legislated penalties when the military usurps the power of the people.  It's time to cut off military aid to Egypt.

The Arab Spring is over, at least in Egypt.  The military has stepped in to save the Mubarak regime - rule of the military - even if Mubarak in no longer at its head.  Egypt is back to the same old same old... generals ruling and all who oppose the general's interests (be those interests political or financial) are shot dead or on their way to jail.

In the wake of this latest affront to the popular will by the bullet, it's hard not to reach the following conclusion:  When it comes to Democracy, the most pernicious threat to it is not voter fraud, not terrorism by Islamists, maybe not even the corrupting influence of money.  When it gets down to crunch time, when the advantaged few are at risk of losing their grip on power, the biggest weapon they have against the people is the military.  This applies whether the military serves oligarchs in the former Soviet Union, or enforces the rule of the taliban elite.  We should keep this in mind as America has some challenges and choices where the interests of the many will be greatly at odds with the interests of the powerful few.

What is happening in Egypt is just confirmation of how history has operated pretty much forever.  It should be noted well that rulers in countries with a strong military resort to it when their hegemony is under existential threat.  Chile, Indonesia, and now Egypt are the examples of the authoritarian's use of the military to maintain their unfair position at the top of the heap.  It goes without saying that Soviet hegemony was enforced by their military, as is - to this day - the power or China's elite.  Countries that lack a military - though they are few and far between - somehow manage to work things out through the give and take of politics.  Two examples of such countries are Costa Rica and Switzerland.  

So with blood running through the streets of Cairo, what lessons should we learn?  That maybe popular self interest requires the utopian --- the military must be abolished.  For the good of freedom and democracy, the institutions which enforce compulsion by bullets and surveillance and then arrest must be abolished.  This must be done abroad and at home.

Of course there are complexities to such a solution.  The world is full of countries with armies and ambitions who are only too happy to prey on the defenseless.  Also, unstable countries without an army tend quickly to become unstable countries with death squads.  Other problems will quickly occur to the reader.  

But these are problems to be overcome, not to justify the perpetuation of the single institution that has most oppressed mankind since the invention of civilization. 

Its time to put an end to armies.  The question is, how?