Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Friday, July 5, 2013

Cultural Myopia

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-egypt-morsi-democracy-20130704,0,6277689.story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/us-must-suspend-aid-after-egypts-coup/2013/07/04/cd53f248-e4a8-11e2-a11e-c2ea876a8f30_story.html

Both op-eds suggest that what the military did was horribly wrong and an affront to "democracy".  But this assumes that there is only one model for democracy.  This assumes that every country can handle domestic crises as a mature and stable democracy.  This assumes that everyone must do it just like us.

Turkey for decades has used the military as a way of insuring stability within a democratic framework.

But Nigeria may be a better example.  Nigeria after independence was racked by civil war and proceeded to vacillate between democratic governments that couldn't do anything and military caretaker regimes.  But by the '80s, the military had lost patience and by the '90s you were left with the debaucheries of the Abacha regime.

What the Post and LA Times have done is taken a fluid situation and demanded an immediate response.  That's stupid.  Egypt is not France.  Hell, it's not Poland, or Italy.  It's democracy is weakly institutionalized and fragile.

It's not a good thing the military stepped in, but it was also not a good thing that Egypt was on the tip of anarchy and civil conflict either.

The significance of this event won't be known yet for months and years.

But everyone wants a solution yesterday.

History doesn't work that way.

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