Democracy For Dummies

Let’s all get into our way back machine and revisit the Arab Spring.  Only the most naïve among us believed the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would end well for the United States.  What was that?  President Obama praised the Arab Spring.  You don’t say. Anyway, the Arab Spring in Egypt was being driven by the Muslim Brotherhood.  I realize that with all the terrorist organizations supplanting governments in the middle east it is hard to tell one anti American organization from the other.

The Muslim Brotherhood describes the ”principles of the Muslim Brotherhood” as including firstly the introduction of the Islamic Shari`ah as “the basis controlling the affairs of state and society;” and secondly work to unify “Islamic countries and states, mainly among the Arab states, and liberating them from foreign imperialism“. You can safely count them among the death to all Jews crowd.

The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board has been hitting the ink wells hard writing opinion pieces opposing the current coup by the more secular military leadership.  It is democracy in action.  Sharia Law is what the people want.

An additional opinion piece from Egyptian journalist, working for the Center for Investigative Journalism at UC Berkeley,  Emad McKay was recently ran in the L.A. Times.  Here is an excerpt of it in italics:

Egyptian President Muhamed Morsi came to office as the result of a legitimate vote of his people. His replacement by an acting president chosen by the armed forces — even if it is followed fairly swiftly by new presidential and parliamentary elections — is a defeat for democracy and constitutional government. Morsi’s critics accused the president of betraying the Arab Spring, but so, in their way, did Egypt’s generals, even if they acted out of patriotism and a desire to restore order.

Among them is the increasingly militant Egyptian Coptic Church, which controls the country’s 5 million Christians, who in turn control major economic interests. Morsi and Islamist legislators have clashed with Christian clerics over security and financial scrutiny of religious institutions. So it was perhaps no wonder that the Coptic Pope Tawadros II urged his supporters to the streets to ask for Morsi’s ouster.

That goodness we have Mr. McKay.  I didn’t realize the Egypt’s Christians controlled everything.  It was an honest mistake given they are a minority religion often subject to murder in the land being ran by Islamic radicals.  At least he didn’t blame the Jews.  I guess that is an improvement.

The AP is reporting:

An Interior Ministry spokesman says the deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat el-Shater, considered the most powerful man in the organization has been arrested.

Spokesman Hani Abdel-Latif says el-Shater and his brother were arrested late Friday from an apartment in eastern Cairo on allegations of inciting violence against protesters in recent days.

El-Shater, a wealthy businessman, is the deputy of the Brotherhood’s supreme leader, but has long been considered the group’s most powerful decision-maker. He was the group’s original candidate for the presidency but was disqualified for a past prison sentence. Mohammed Morsi ran in his place and became Egypt’s first freely elected president.

Who is El-Shater?  According the Washington Institute he was arrested in 2007 with other Muslim Brotherhood members for allegedly providing combat training and weapons to student protestors. El-Shater was sentenced to seven years for terrorism and money laundering.  He was let out of prison following the ouster of Mubarak.

I’m no fan of dictators.  You can safely put me right there with Jake and Elwood Blues when it comes to hating Illinois Nazis but you can’t sell me on replacing them with the death to Jews and death the America crowd.

We need to quit worrying about remaking the world and start worrying about protecting American interests.  My greatest concern about democracy begins right here at home.  In my country, Christians, Jews, Muslims and others can work together and play together on the company softball team.  That’s the kind of democracy I can support.