Posted on 11/23/2011 1:13:50 PM PST by mojito
The United States is encouraging Egypt’s military rulers to stick to a schedule of elections set to kick off next week, despite continuing violence – and despite the likelihood that the electoral timetable favors the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist movements.
The Obama administration is in essence caught between two unpalatable options: pressing ahead for elections that the Islamists are likely to win, and thereby sounding like a force for Egypt’s democratic transition; or recommending a postponement that a growing number of liberal Egyptians prefer, but which risks coming across as anti-democratic.
Egypt’s transitional military rulers announced Wednesday that parliamentary elections set to begin Monday will go ahead, despite five days of violence that has left more than 35 Egyptians dead and scores wounded.
The plan to proceed with voting was worked out at a meeting Tuesday between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood, the two most powerful institutions in post-Hosni-Mubarak Egypt. The new plan also calls for presidential elections to be held before July, an apparent acceleration of a previously announced transition plan.
Other political parties were invited to Tuesday’s meeting, but most liberal secular movements boycotted it.
Still, many Egyptians – in particular those who spearheaded the February movement that toppled a regime – fear that the military, composed in large part of recruits from the country’s more conservative rural areas, favors a Brotherhood electoral triumph. They worry that a parliamentary triumph for the Brotherhood, combined with the military staying in power at least until mid-summer, would allow the two to write a constitution – and to delineate civil and political rights to their liking.
Despite those concerns, the US is sticking to its support for the established electoral calendar.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
I’m not saying become isolationist. I’m saying that people around the world are going to make decisions on whom they want to be in power. It’s none of our business. We have no say in the matter who gets elected dog catcher in Moscow. The people that have to live under the rule of the president get to decide.
They didn’t elect anyone over here. We don’t get to take that decision from them.
It would be great if a guy friendly to the US was in there. But that’s not always possible. The people that live there do NOT want the military in charge. They want elections. They spent weeks fighting and dying to get Mubarak out of there. They are fighting and dying right now to protest what they see as the military going back on their word by trying to delay the election.
And, no. Despite the debt and everything, I’m sure you would rather not live under a military dictatorship than deal with Obama. We can make sure he loses his job in 2012. With the military, we wouldn’t have that luxury. Democracy has worked in this country for 222 years. Why not let other countries have that as well? They aren’t children. And the more that we treat them as children, the more they are going to resent us as a country, and hate Americans.
What would you think about Castro or Chavez saying “We don’t like Herman Cain at all. We don’t think he should campaign for President. We think that the election should be cancelled and Obama should be your glorious leader for the indefinite future. He shares our beliefs and he is someone that we can work with.”
You’d tell them to mind their own business.
What would you do if they elected someone that you don’t like? Sanctions? Bombing? Having the military keep delaying the elections?
Freedom is great. Democracy is good. It’s just not ok for everyone to have, right?
Or will he find a way to delay the elections... For Peace and Public Security, of course?
I’m not saying at all that we should stick our heads in the sand. Where did I say that? Of COURSE we’re going to look out for our interests overseas. That’s pretty much a given. What I’m saying that the people that live in that country have a right to pick their own leaders. If they want friggin’ Santa Clause, then Santa is going to be their President, and there’s not a damn thing that we can, or should, do about it.
We need to work with whomever they choose. Just like they work with whomever we choose.
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