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- iHaveNet.com: Middle East
by Joel Brinkley
Mohammed Morsi holds a singular distinction.
While president of Egypt, he was the world's only democratically elected leader to motivate more than 20 million of his people, one-quarter of the population, to sign a petition calling for his ouster.
Millions of these people began showing up at angry, sometimes violent demonstrations in Cairo and other cities on Sunday, the one-year anniversary of his rule. They're irate about Morsi's blatant leadership failures. Egypt is riven with enervating economic, political and social problems of the sort it has never experienced before. That prompted military leaders to warn Morsi on Monday that if he didn't find a solution within 48 hours, they would.
Morsi's office called that an attempted coup d'etat and said he wouldn't give in. But since the demonstrations began, six government ministers have resigned -- including the foreign minister on Tuesday. Then finally on Wednesday, the military sent troops and tanks into downtown Cairo. Late that night, the army actually deposed him and announced plans for establishing a new government.
So why has the United States been so doggedly supporting Morsi? U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson spent last week trying to convince several groups to stay out of the demonstrations.
For example, Egyptian papers reported that she asked the Coptic Christian pope to urge his flock not to participate -- even though Morsi stood by watching as Islamic fundamentalists injured and killed hundreds of Copts. The pope politely told her he couldn't do that.
Washington has been standing up for Morsi because it's a knee-jerk
This time, word of Patterson's foolish and pointless effort got out, and some protestors waved banners lambasting the
Mubarak was a ruthless dictator, but in some ways Morsi was even worse. Last month, for example, he appointed a former member of a terrorist group as governor of Luxor -- even though that same group once massacred scores of tourists in the same city. The outrage over the appointment was so loud that the tourism minister quit, and a few days later the new governor was forced to resign.
That's a PR fiasco. But the problems run much deeper. Morsi's policies (or lack of them) have so ravaged the economy that inflation is running at about 8.5 percent. Unemployment is nearly 15 percent -- the highest in memory. Gas shortages have led to many-hour lines at gas stations. Daily electricity shortages are widespread, and the country is facing bread shortages everywhere. At the same time, Morsi was prosecuting many of his critics.
For all this and more, Morsi and his aides repeatedly blamed the news media and, as he recently put it, "remnants of the old regime."
All of that has driven pubic approval so low that it's comparable to Richard Nixon's at the height of the Watergate scandal. Morsi lost virtually everyone in the country except Muslim Brotherhood followers. Even Salafists, the state's Islamic extremists, gave up on him.
A new
Given that, it's especially confounding that the U.S. has been standing up for him.
I wonder if the
In a
My advice to Ambassador Patterson: Just stay out of it. Egyptians have every right to protest, just like anyone else. Criticizing them is hypocritical. You're in your early 60s, so you certainly remember the massive demonstrations in Washington against Nixon and the Vietnam War.
Don't Egyptians have the same right?
Joel Brinkley is the Hearst professional in residence at
WORLD | AFRICA | ASIA | EUROPE | LATIN AMERICA | MIDDLE EAST | UNITED STATES | ECONOMICS | EDUCATION | ENVIRONMENT | FOREIGN POLICY | POLITICS
Article: Copyright ©, Tribune Media Services.
"United States Shouldn't Have Gone to Bat for Egypt's Morsi"