{"id":32866,"date":"2012-11-25T09:35:48","date_gmt":"2012-11-25T13:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32866"},"modified":"2012-11-25T09:35:48","modified_gmt":"2012-11-25T13:35:48","slug":"continuing-good-news-from-the-arab-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32866","title":{"rendered":"Continuing \u201cGood News\u201d from the \u201cArab Spring\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Decrees invoking authority the current ruler doesn\u2019t lawfully have.\u00a0 Attempts to demonize \u201cold regime\u201d holdovers.\u00a0 Removing old-guard generals from power.\u00a0 Pushback from advocates of democracy that are ignored by the rulers – and marginalization of democracy advocates.\u00a0 Efforts to produce a new constitution so that there\u2019s little or no chance of actual debate concerning its contents.<\/p>\n

Think that sounds like Iran, early 1979, when they were laying the groundwork for setting up the Khomeini Shia theocracy?\u00a0 You\u2019re right.<\/p>\n

And it also sounds one helluva lot of a lot like Egypt in late 2012<\/a><\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n

The Muslim Brotherhood-backed President of Egypt has done all of that.\u00a0 Without authority, he has dismissed the nation\u2019s chief prosecutor and placed many of his decrees \u201coff limits\u201d to judicial review \u2013 by issuing a decree, of course.\u00a0 He\u2019s dismissed or marginalized many in the former Egyptian military leadership.\u00a0 He\u2019s insinuated that no judicial review or input will be appropriate for the planned new Egyptian constitution planned for next year.\u00a0 And he\u2019s doing all he can to marginalize El Baradi and other advocates of actual democracy.<\/p>\n

In short, as far as I can tell he\u2019s following Khomeini\u2019s playbook to a T \u2013 with the exception that he\u2019s putting a Sunni spin on things.\u00a0 And he\u2019s cagy enough to have done some of the most visible of these abuses of power over a long holiday weekend in the US, and immediately after playing \u201cpeacemaker\u201d between Israel and Gaza.<\/p>\n

Tell me again why we supported this movement \u2013 and this budding theocratic dictator \u2013 in the first place?\u00a0 Didn\u2019t we get our nose \u201crubbed in it\u201d thoroughly enough 33 years ago to learn our lesson?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Decrees invoking authority the current ruler doesn\u2019t lawfully have.\u00a0 Attempts to demonize \u201cold regime\u201d holdovers.\u00a0 Removing … Continuing \u201cGood News\u201d from the \u201cArab Spring\u201d<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}