{"id":1343,"date":"2013-07-06T18:52:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-06T08:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/?p=1343"},"modified":"2013-07-08T21:28:28","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T11:28:28","slug":"robert-fisk-when-is-a-military-coup-not-a-military-coup-when-it-happens-in-egypt-apparently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/?p=1343","title":{"rendered":"Robert Fisk – When is a military coup not a military coup? When it happens in Egypt, apparently"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For the first time in the history of the world, a coup is not a coup. The army take over, depose and imprison the democratically elected president, suspend the constitution, arrest the usual suspects, close down television stations and mass their armour in the streets of the capital.\u00a0 But the word \u2018coup\u2019 does not \u2013 and cannot \u2013 cross the lips of the Blessed\u00a0Barack Obama<\/a>. Nor does the hopeless UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon dare to utter such an offensive word. It\u2019s not as if Obama doesn\u2019t know what\u2019s going on. Snipers in Cairo killed 15 Egyptians this week from a rooftop of the very university in which Obama made his \u2018reach-out\u2019 speech to the Muslim world in 2009.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Is this reticence because millions of Egyptians demanded just such a coup \u2013 they didn\u2019t call it that, of course \u2013 and thus became the first massed people in the world to demand a coup prior to the actual coup taking place? Is it because Obama fears that to acknowledge it\u2019s a coup would force the US to impose sanctions on the most important Arab nation at peace with Israel? Or because the men who staged the coup might forever lose their 1.5 billion subvention from the US \u2013 rather than suffer a mere delay — if they were told they\u2019d actually carried out a coup.<\/p>\n

Now for the kind of historical memory that Obama would enjoy. In that dodgy 2009 speech in Cairo \u2013 in which he managed to refer to Palestinian \u201cdislocation\u201d rather than \u201cdispossession\u201d \u2013 Obama made the following remarkable comment, which puts the events in Egypt today into a rather interesting perspective. There were some leaders, he said, \u201cwho advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others\u2026you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama did not say this in the aftermath of the coup-that-wasn\u2019t. He uttered these very words in Egypt itself just over four years ago. And it\u00a0 pretty much sums up\u00a0what Mohamed Morsi did wrong<\/a>. He treated his Muslim Brotherhood mates as masters rather than servants of the people, showed no interest in protecting Egypt\u2019s Christian minority, and then enraged the Egyptian army by attending a Brotherhood meeting at which Egyptians were asked to join the holy war in Syria to kill Shiites and overthrow Bashar al-Assad\u2019s regime.<\/p>\n

And there is one salient fact about the events of the last 48 hours in Egypt. No one is happier \u2013 no one more satisfied nor more conscious of the correctness of his own national struggle against \u2018Islamists\u2019 and \u2018terrorists\u2019 —\u00a0than Assad<\/a>. The West has been wetting itself to destroy Assad \u2013 but does absolutely nothing when the Egyptian army destroys its democratically-elected president for lining up with Assad\u2019s armed Islamist opponents. The army called Morsi\u2019s supporters \u201cterrorists and fools\u201d. Isn\u2019t that just what Bashar calls his enemies?\u00a0 No wonder Assad told us yesterday that no one should use religion to gain power. Hollow laughter here — offstage, of course.<\/p>\n

But this doesn\u2019t let Obama off the hook. Those Western leaders who are gently telling us that Egypt is still on the path to \u201cdemocracy\u201d, that this is an \u201cinterim\u201d period \u2013 like the \u2018interim\u2019 Egyptian government concocted by the military \u2013 and that millions of Egyptians support the coup that isn\u2019t a coup, have to remember that Morsi was indeed elected in a real, Western-approved election.\u00a0 Sure, he won only 51 per cent — or 52 per cent — of the vote.<\/p>\n

But did George W. Bush really win his first presidential election?\u00a0Morsi certainly won<\/a>\u00a0a greater share of the popular vote than David Cameron. We can say that Morsi lost his mandate when he no longer honoured his majority vote by serving the majority of Egyptians. But does that mean that European armies must take over their countries whenever European prime ministers fall below 50 per cent in their public opinion polls? And by the way, are the Muslim Brotherhood to be allowed to participate in the next Egyptian presidential elections? Or will they be banned? And if they participate, what will happen if their candidate wins again?<\/p>\n

Israel, however, must be pleased. It knows a coup when it sees one \u2013 and it\u2019s now back playing its familiar role as the only \u2018democracy\u2019 in the Middle East, and with the kind of neighbours it understands: military rulers. And if Egypt\u2019s wealthy military king-makers are getting a nifty $1.5 billion dollars a year from Washington \u2013 albeit postponed — they are certainly not going to tamper with their country\u2019s peace treaty with Israel, however unpopular it remains with the people for whom it supposedly staged the coup-that-wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 Stand by then for the first US delegation to visit the country which has suffered the coup-that-wasn\u2019t. And you\u2019ll know whether they believe there was a coup or not by the chaps they visit on their arrival in Cairo: the army, of course.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time in the history of the world, a coup is not a coup. The army take over, depose and imprison the democratically elected president, suspend the constitution, arrest the usual suspects, close down television stations and mass … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[40],"tags":[217,215,60,214,218],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":4325,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ttSq-lF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1343"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1366,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1343\/revisions\/1366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.khanfactor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}