Muslim Brotherhood in Retreat, Part 5

Coptic Christians praying in their bombed out church in Egypt

Islamists Step Up Attacks on Christians - Kareem Fahim

The call for revenge echoed from the loudspeakers of mosques last week in the village of Nazla, southwest of Cairo, after the military invaded two protest camps in Cairo, killing hundreds of supporters of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi. Hundreds of Islamists poured into the street, torching, looting and smashing the village's two churches and a nearby monastery, lashing out so ferociously that marble altars were left in broken heaps on the floor.
   
Over the next few days, a wave of similar attacks on the Coptic Christian minority washed over the country as Islamists set upon homes, churches, shops, schools, and youth clubs as the authorities stood by and watched.
(New York Times)


Christian-Muslim Animosity Becomes Incendiary Subplot
- Jeffrey Fleishman

 The gunmen sped past on motorcycles and in a car, firing automatic weapons and hurling gasoline bombs. Parishioners ran for cover as bullets chipped the stone and rattled the metal doors of St. George's Church in Helwan, south of Cairo.
(Los Angeles Times)


Why Are Americans Backing the Muslim Brotherhood?
- Robert Reilly

What were the Egyptian people expected to make of the visits earlier this month by two U.S. senators to Mohammed Morsi, under house arrest, and to the Deputy Guide of the Brotherhood, Khairat al-Shater, also under arrest? No matter what intentions the senators may have had, the choreography of the visits clearly indicated support by the U.S. for a Muslim Brotherhood restoration.
   
Deploring violence and calling for reconciliation simply makes the U.S. appear naive and totally disconnected from what is actually taking place. Saudi Arabia and the UAE understand what is going on, which is why they are willing to pony up $12 billion in support of the new government. They are relieved that the Brotherhood's imperial project, of which they were intended victims, has been thwarted for the time being.
   
Instead of just deploring violence, the U.S. should be appraising the character of the moral principles animating the two sides in this conflict and supporting the side that more closely comports with our own. And yes, that may require the choice of a lesser evil.     
(Intercollegiate Review)
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The choice in Egypt -Charles Krauthammer

Through a half-century of cold war, repeatedly we faced precisely the same dilemma: choosing the lesser evil between totalitarian (in that case, communist) and authoritarian (usually military) rule.

We generally supported the various militaries in suppressing the communists. That was routinely pilloried as a hypocritical and immoral betrayal of our alleged allegiance to liberty.

But in the end, it proved the prudent, if troubled, path to liberty.

The authoritarian regimes we supported — in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Chile, Brazil, even Spain and Portugal (ruled by fascists until the mid-1970s!) — in time yielded democratic outcomes. Gen. Augusto Pinochet, after 16 years of iron rule, yielded to U.S. pressure and allowed a free election — which he lost, ushering in Chile's current era of flourishing democracy. How many times have communists or Islamists let that happen?

Regarding Egypt, rather than emoting, we should be thinking: what's best for Egypt, for us and for the possibility of some eventual democratic future?

Under the Brotherhood, such a possibility is zero. Under the generals, slim.

Slim trumps zero.
[Jewish World Review]
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