The Pinochet Remix. Shirin Barghi, in Thursday's Souciant.
I'm really getting sick of the extreme simplifications of the crisis in Egypt, with articles being written quickly and throwing potential ends to it, to the point where I haven't seen any in depth looks into what's going on, who's said what and why, and where the military and people are trying to take this. I'm aware that's endemic of the current news media and is something that needs to be addressed, but the point is that this is an extremely complex issue, even for a layman looking at it with basic knowledge of the situation. Clearly Mubarak had to be ousted. The far right's insistence that they're better off with a bloody dictator is laughable. Morsi was democratically elected, and then made constant moves very much against the will of the people to increase his own power that were in a pattern or recreating dictatorship. He constantly went against the people and refused to listen to what they said before, during, or after the election. The hand of the Muslim Brotherhood further complicated things.
So, what the fuck is there to do? Toppling a democratically elected government admits failure in their first chance, and makes racists say things about the violence of Arabs or something similar. You also have the fear of it becoming a coup, or military control, or free for all. Allowing him to stay is potentially more dangerous, because if the Arab Spring has taught us anything, toppling a dictator is incredibly difficult, and if he has power behind him from the Brotherhood? That's worse.
There's no clean answer. Personally I feel the military truly made the best choice by telling him that they would not tolerate another violent revolution and that they were asking him to step down with an ultimatum. His refusal was justifiable because in what way one can differentiate between the military telling him and the people telling him. What if it was a coup? It's far too muddy to make out as "democracy has failed in Egypt" or "The military is seizing control" or "the Brotherhood supporters want totalitarianism" or any other simple soundbite. This is a whole country, and there are complexities to creating a new government and there a ton of differing opinions within the country. Creating these narratives and saying it will lead to a regime similar to another without the necessary intermediate steps that constitute 80% of the process is a disservice to the people of Egypt.
I don't know the solution. I don't know what's right, but the media at least attempting to understand it and presenting all the facets to the debate would be a massive step towards learning what's happening and trying to make good out of it, instead of this useless cynical "it's going to all fail."
And a massive fuck you to whoever started the violence again. After all that's occurred and all that was fought for, there should be a respect for the process. And shame on all the news outlets for not giving me the information on that, instead just feeding me death tolls and narratives.