Scots Taffer on 2/2/2011 at 00:10

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(http://twitpic.com/3v4mti/full) Egypt situation as told by Indiana Jones

Shug on 2/2/2011 at 04:55

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Sincerely,

@furrygirl

:chakat:

Volitions Advocate on 2/2/2011 at 15:20

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Everybody keeps talking about how this is going to end up like Iran in '79. The Muslim Brotherhood just joined in the protests after all the students and middle class people started it. The ball got rolling without them so they had to join in. If everybody wants democracy its up to the voters anyway, and despite what the media around the world feeds us about Islam, I'm quite certain there are a great deal more non-radical muslims than there are hard-liners. If there is to be some sort of democracy there, voters will determine.

I heard the muslim brotherhood has a memebership of around 140,000 where Egypt has over 80 million people. If they manage to oust Mubarak before he "calls" and election then they have a long road ahead of them to decide what kind of goverment they want. Parliament or Republic? Direct Democracy or not? (think direct democracy is a bad idea personally) And these are things they'll have to address before anybody goes into power, because if it isn't figured out and somebody declares themselves the replacement gov't, the protests and riots wont stop. If they can get rid of the Hos who was firmly planted for 30 years, they can stop an extremist gov't that is just barely forming.

I also think a cautious approach for the Obama administration is a smart one. The US gov't did not back the Shah all in the name of democracy and look what happened, I realize that sentiment basically reverses everything else I just posted, but its something to throw at the conspiracy theorists.

Koki on 11/2/2011 at 16:39

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Congrats to the people, condolences to Egypt

demagogue on 11/2/2011 at 23:01

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That polling looks relatively optimistic.
Egypt has the least support for radical groups of the Arab countries it looked at.

If you've been following the news, people are optimistic. The protesters themselves aren't a religious demographic and they were pushing for democratic reforms. The army is in control for now and they certainly don't want theocracy; and don't have any incentive to put in another military dictator after one just got deposed.

We'll have to see how things develop. But the religious population is only 20-30%, and even at the height of protests they weren't pushing for a theocracy. I heard religious people and groups like the Muslim Brotherhood don't want to become like Iran. And wanting religion part of government != theocracy.

Every country and situation is different and has to be considered on its own terms. So it's no good to have a knee-jerk assumption things will descend into despotism just because it's in that neighborhood. The protests didn't descend into violence and just had a peaceful regime change in spite of people's assumptions.

We'll have a much a better feel for where things are going in the next few weeks... The two models I hear are Iraq and Turkey. Different groups may splinter like Iraq, but Egypt isn't as demographically fractured as Iraq, and unlike Iraq there isn't America butting in the way to prop the new regime, just Egypt's own military... OR the army may play a unifying role to stabilize the politics as in Turkey, which has a relatively stable democracy. There's a lot still to be done, but they haven't been dealt the worst hand to work with.