Egypt as unstable as water (& Open Thread)
By John Batchelor on March 6, 2011 at 4:00 PM in Current Affairs
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Egypt remains the center of the collapse of status quo ante.
Repeat what I learned the first days, after a roundtable meal of VIPS and intelligence analysts in London on January 27: there is nothing that can be said negative of the NSC and Obama administration that has not already been said in Arabic.
Best information as of this last week is that the Egyptian military remains deeply spooked, that the Ikhawan is highly confident, that the so-called protesters are disorganized, spontaneous, willful, powerless except to make noise, and readily available for manipulation.
Fresh rumour is that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is looking to stage parliamentary elections as early as June. This alarms everyone with common sense, since there are only two significant organized parties, the NDP and the heretofore banned Brothers. Also mention that the senior military believes the junior officer cadre is shot-through with Ikhwan influence. The result looks to be a puritan caliphate in time. Price of gasoline is how we will keep score.
Pat Lang, Sic Semper Tyrannis, reminds of T.E. Lawrence about how the Arabs move in waves, and that this wave will continue for sometime, long after POTUS and his successor have left the shore:
“They were as unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail. Since the dawn of life, in successive waves they had been dashing themselves against the coasts of flesh. Each wave was broken, but, like the sea, wore away ever so little of the granite on which it failed, and some day, ages yet, might roll unchecked over the place where the material world had been, and God would move upon the face of those waters. One such wave (and not the least) I raised and rolled before the breath of an idea, till it reached its crest, and toppled over and fell at Damascus. The wash of that wave, thrown back by the resistance of vested things, will provide the matter of the following wave, when in fullness of time the sea shall be raised once more.”
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