BRET STEPHENS: OZYMANDIAS RETURNS
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323936404578579520272321576.html
Will Mohammed Morsi join the pharaohs, caliphs, pashas and strongmen that came before him?
On Sunday millions of Egyptians poured into the squares and streets of Cairo, Alexandria and other cities to register intense dissatisfaction with their first freely elected government and demand President Mohammed Morsi’s resignation. On Monday the Egyptian military gave Mr. Morsi 48 hours to clean up his act, or else.
Democracy in Egypt has not been fun while it’s lasted.
Where do things go from here? The good news is that the political bloom is off the Islamist rose. The Muslim Brotherhood, so sure-footed when it came to seizing power, proved surprisingly ham-fisted when it came to consolidating it. Islam is the answer, goes the Brotherhood’s famous slogan—but not, as Egyptians are learning with each passing day, to the questions of how to shorten gas lines, or maintain public security, or attract foreign investment, or build foreign-exchange reserves.
There’s also good news in that the army remains a willing and viable check on the Brotherhood’s political power and street muscle. There were reasons to wonder about that after the military squandered much of its support with its long interregnum (and constitutional shenanigans) following Hosni Mubarak‘s downfall, and then again after Mr. Morsi sacked Mubarak-era Defense Minister Mohamed Tantawi and replaced him with Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.
Yet Gen. Sisi proved he was his own man on Monday when he issued the ultimatum to his presumptive boss, warning that “if the people’s demands are not met [by Wednesday], the armed forces will announce a road map for the future and take a set of procedures and . . . oversee its implementation with the participation of all political forces.”
Sounds lovely. But then, as Napoleon told one of his generals, “if you start to take Vienna, take Vienna.” On Monday a spokesman for Gen. Sisi insisted the army was not threatening a coup, but what happens if Mr. Morsi calls his bluff?
In fact, Mr. Morsi must call the general’s bluff if he’s to retain the prerogatives of his office. And Gen. Sisi must make good on his threat—or else go to prison for gross insubordination. Perhaps there’s a face-saving compromise, like calling for a referendum on whether to hold early elections. But that would take months to arrange, and Egyptians are a people who have run out of patience. One side or the other will have to back down, humiliated, or there will be a confrontation.
If it’s the latter, it could be along the lines of Algeria’s savage civil war in the 1990s, also the result of a military coup after an Islamist electoral victory. Egypt today is awash in small arms, mainly from Libya and Sudan. The conscript army is not well-disciplined, as it showed in its brutal assault on Coptic protesters in Cairo in October 2011. Police forces are a power unto themselves. And the Brotherhood, willful and accustomed to operating as a secret organization, can call on the support of millions of Egyptians.
Nobody should want this outcome: The blood orgies of Syria are agony enough for the Middle East. What about the other choices?
There will be a temptation in the West to support Mr. Morsi on grounds that, for all of his political misjudgments, he is a legitimately elected leader trying to stand his ground against street mobs abetted by army generals. So far Mr. Obama has said little more about Egypt than to call for “restraint” on both sides. But he had flattering things to say about Mr. Morsi during last November’s Gaza crisis, and the default position in American diplomacy is always to support whoever is in power.
Then again, to support Mr. Morsi is to repeat the mistake Mr. Obama made in the first two years of his presidency, when U.S. policy amounted to flattering Hosni Mubarak. (Hillary Clinton, genius diplomat, went so far as to call the dictator a family friend in 2009.) At least the Mubarak regime could be described as secular and pro-American, and reasonably committed to peace with Israel. That doesn’t exactly describe Mr. Morsi, who showed he had all of Mr. Mubarak’s contempt for civil liberties with none of his talents for governance.
It’s a sign of how atrophied U.S. influence in Egypt has become under Mr. Obama that his views count for so little—assuming he has views at all. For the rest of us, the lesson from Egypt is that democracy may be a blessing for people capable of self-government, but it’s a curse for those who are not. There is a reason that Egypt has been governed by pharaohs, caliphs, pashas and strongmen for 6,000 years.
The best outcome for Egypt would be early elections, leading to the Brotherhood’s defeat at the hands of a reformist, technocratic government with military support. The second-best outcome would be a bloodless military coup, followed by the installment of a reformist government. The chances for either outcome are slight. But the Brotherhood will not go quietly. Get ready for a bloody road ahead.
Write to bstephens@wsj.com
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