The overthrow of Egypt's Morsi - a deep political tapestry

[Peter Lemkin]

CHRIS TOENSING: Yes, I agree with the premise of that question, which is that the leverage of the United States is very limited. That's, I think, been the case for a long time. The Egyptian army is going to do what it wants to do, by and large. Certainly with regard to domestic Egyptian politics, the U.S. voice in those affairs is very limited.
It's important to note, in connection with that question, that the U.S. does not give $1.3 billion a year to the Egyptian military in order to prop up the Egyptian military or for the good of Egypt. This is to secure what have been viewed as U.S. interests in the regionnamely, the sanctity of the Camp David treaty with Israel; the prevention of another multi-front war, Arab-Israeli war, in the Middle East; keeping the Suez Canal open to commercial andtraffic and U.S. warships, not coincidentally. These are the U.S. interests that the U.S. believes will only be protected by the Egyptian army for the foreseeable future.
We need to remember American policymakers have a remarkable capacity for self-deception. I think that Secretary Kerry and his predecessors half-believe the pieties that come out of their mouths at moments like these. They would like, ideally, Egypt to be a free and democratic country, but only if the government that is produced from that process agrees with our concept of what our strategic interests are in the region. And so, the dilemma for the U.S. is that they can either have autocrats who rule in accordance with U.S. strategic vision, or they can have a democratic system thatwhere the outcome is uncertain. And, sadly, to this point, not just in Egypt, but across the region, the U.S. has shown that it prefers the first option: autocrats who will toe the U.S. line.

Well, I think that if you look at the events of the last two years, capped by yesterday's massacre, I think what we're seeing is a counterrevolution that's occurring, more quickly than many people thought it might. The powers behind the throne in Egypt, who have been the powers behind the throne for some 50 yearsthe army, the secret police, their allied civilian politicians, their civilian faces, if you will, the so-called Egyptian deep stateis afraid of the Egyptian people. They don't want civilian oversight over their prerogatives. They want to maintain their impunity, their ability to operate above the law. And we've seen what lengths they will go to to preserve those privileges.
What they're doing is seizing the opportunity presented by political turmoil and chaos in the wake of the ouster of Mubarak and in the wake of the misrule of the Muslim Brothers and the arrogance that Morsi and his compatriots displayed when they were given a taste of power. They're using that opportunity to sort of consolidate their grip on the country, at the same time presenting themselves as the sort of horsesorry, the knight riding in on a white horse to save the country from disaster.
And, you know, Sharif can confirm this, but my impression from afar is that many, many Egyptians, perhaps a majority, agree with the army's version of events. That's partly because they're not being provided with enough information to judge for themselves, because the military has shut down any media outletsmost of the media outlets in Egypt that would actually report independently. But it's also because there is a deep yearning among Egyptian citizens for a return to normalcy, a return to stability, and they see the army as the only force in national politics that can credibly promise such a scenario. It's a veryit's a very sad situation...