What next, Ahmed?

There is a proverb about patience, “All things come to he who waits”. There are a variety of endings to the proverb, Ranging from “Provided he knows what he is waiting for” (an exercise in applied patience) to “They come but often too late” (a refutation of patience). The phrase is a cornerstone of democracy, If you’re not happy with this administration, work on a new one. When Condoleezza Rice said “We’ll be fine under Obama” she was commenting on the fact that another election wold still take place, he is not President for life.

Democracy is the answer to dictatorships, free elections are the basis of democracy. As Americans, we try to free people from oppressive dictatorships, sometimes by replacing one dictator with a less oppressive dictator (long term strategy), sometimes by introducing democracy directly (medium term strategy). The problem has become that we live in a world seeking an instant strategy, and that just isn’t possible.

There are many reasons I’m not comfortable in crowds. One is the incendiary logic of panic. Perhaps you remember the nightclub fire in Brazil earlier this year, or at least the Cocoanut Grove fire back in 1942. That kind of thing happens all the time. There was the Who concert in Cincinnati back in 1979, and just my personal experience at the California Jam II, when I found myself carried by the crowd, and felt a chain link fence passing under my feet. Crowds can take you places you don’t want to go.

Mob rule is a scary concept, because in a second you can become the object of the mob’s ire. Things can turn and change quickly, with no more of a trigger than an angry shout.

I have suggested in earlier articles that soldiers are not policemen. They do not have the less than lethal avenues to deal with civil unrest, and are likely to respond to violence with violence. When a mob believes that their violence will not be responded to in kind, a tragedy is the only outcome.

Most people have not dealt with death directly. You may know someone who died, attended a funeral, or even stayed in the hospital with someone who was dying. But until you have blood spatter on you, watch people standing beside you fall for the last time, or actually put an end to another person while looking in their face, you have not dealt directly with death. It is humbling, and affects different people in different ways.

Today in Egypt, we are hearing the cries of “I didn’t want it to come to this!” from the same people who were shouting “Death to (name your scapegoat)!”. Two thousand years ago a great teacher said “They that take the sword shall perish with the sword” not too many miles from Cairo. The lesson has yet to be accepted.

Hosni Mubarak assumed the presidency of Egypt upon the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Thirty years later it was fairly obvious he was a dictator, and the people of Egypt demanded his removal. Seeing his country being overrun by mobs, he stepped down, accepting arrest and a life sentence (at 83 that sentence shouldn’t be very long). Elections were held, and Mohamed Morsi was elected president.  Democracy in action. As might be expected, Morsi wasn’t the best choice, it’s hard to live in a dictatorship and undersatnd the workings of an open democracy. It is not unusual for a first elected president to be a failure, and with the political and economic climate Morsi stepped into he didn’t have much of a chance.

A year later, when Morsi had failed to solve all the problems of Egypt, the people took to the street again. Imagine if American politicians faced that kind of deadline, and the protestors had easy access to fully automatic weapons? After hundreds of injuries and dozens of deaths, the military stepped in, arrested Morsi, placed him in secret confinement, and appointed an interim president.

I do not believe this fits the classic definition of “Military Coup”, but there are not many other things you can call it. The Obama administration refuses to call it a coup, because doing so would force an end to aid to Egypt. Thinking they can buy their way into a diplomatic solution, they’ve left that door open, but the fact is, the military, which is an autonomous force within Egypt, doesn’t need the money, and they have all the tanks and aircraft they can use.

The military had hoped to put an end to civil unrest, so they could get back to running their factories. Unfortunately, the population had just been taught that violent protests result in change, so the pro Morsi groups (with the justification of democracy denied) and the anti Morsi groups (with claims ranging from “Morsi was an Islamist” to “Morsi was an American puppet”) shut down Egypt with escalating violent protests and fighting. With the situation spiraling towards chaos, the military stepped in again, and the mobs didn’t pick up on the subtle difference between the police and soldiers. The military returned fire in a manner designed to suppress the protestors, killing hundreds.

Absolute chaos has ensued. Order no longer exists, and looting is rampant. Totally uninvolved parties, like the small Christian community, find themselves under siege as ancient grudges are addressed. Without a standing political system (as in Syria, where precisely the same thing is happening), there is no future other than military rule. Not that I hold out any hope for Syria.

The other night I watched as Egyptians tore open their shirts daring the soldiers to shoot them. On camera, of course, not in front of soldiers. The soldiers have tried everything else, if you give them no other choice, they will shoot you. Do not stand in front of a man challenging the authorities to use force, let him lead the charge.

I do not want my message to be missed, so I wish to make my point clearly. Egypt was more interested in “Change” than “Progress”. Now they have neither. Protests grow into mobs and become violent. DO NOT let this happen in your country. Be patient.

Unified change

I believe in leadership. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point “leadership” was replaced by “management”. This has been a gradual change, I remember in the eighties hearing complaints that the two styles were not interchangeable. From a military standpoint, you do not manage a man into battle. But as we faded away, a new generation has attempted to do just that, with foreseeable results. The same change of styles can be attributed to other failures in society, the most obvious being the banking and healthcare industries.

When Einstein said “Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results”, he could not have anticipated an elite that would try the same thing, but call it something different, and expect different results. As words became more powerful than actions, our leaders became our managers, and their concept of the responsibility of leadership became the responsibility of management.

Realizing that this doesn’t work comes from the bottom and works its way up. That a change is necessary is not the object of the debate, but an efficient manager can unify his minions for the purpose of managing them. Yes, everyone wants a change. If we argue about what changes we want we will get nothing done, and if we unite and stand together for change in and of itself…nothing gets done. My desired change and your desired change are not capable of coexisting, but everyone voted for the candidate who promised change. Well, not everyone. Fifty two percent of the fifty seven percent of voting age people who voted. Which would mean that somewhere in the area of one out of five inhabitants of the United States voted for that change in 2008. Not exactly a mandate, but you get what you pay for.

Despite the lack of any positive changes, a slightly smaller percentage of a slightly smaller percentage elected the same person in 2012. In a recent survey, exactly the same amount of people believe that the weather affects cloud computing. Just sayin…

Approximately the same percentage of the population in Egypt voted in a new president last year. Muhammad Morsi was the change the people wanted after thirty years of Hosni Mubarak (who had brought historically unique stability to Egypt). They wanted the change so much they could not wait for the scheduled elections just two months away. Last week, after a mere twelve months in office, he was displaced in a military coup. You can call it a revolution if you wish, I believe the Chinese are still using that term to describe their system, although the Wuchang uprising was over one hundred years ago. The fact is a minority of the Egyptian people decided to protest in Tahrir square and break things until their country changed again. The military, a largely autonomous organization, wasn’t terribly happy with the new leader, so they placed Mr. Morsi under arrest, suspended his new constitution, and appointed the leader of the constitutional court acting president. Yeah, it didn’t make any sense to me either. “Democracy”, “Constitution”, “and “Elections”, are not quite the same there as they are here.

So they went from dictatorship to democracy to military junta in just over a year. And the “people” are calling it a revolution. The people who chose Morsi to replace “the tool of the USA and Israel” wanted Morsi out because he was “a tool of the USA and Israel”. Maybe they should have watched a news report from the states, where Morsi was seen as an enemy of the USA and Israel due to his bonds with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Which reminds me of what some people would call a joke. A guy on his first op (FNG) is told if things go south, to say he’s with the CIA. “But why? Won’t they deny I’m with them?” So you explain, “Of course they will, they deny their own people, so that builds your credibility. They will assume you’re with the CIA, they’ve never heard of us.”

The other day I was reading through my favorite anarchist site, and one young man made the statement “Each and every Egyptian is against Morsi”. I suggested to him that if that was true, why are there protests? With that kind of consensus they should all be getting along wonderfully. I applauded the fifty one percent of voters who had changed their minds. His English was not strong enough to appreciate my sarcasm. I’m finding the anarchists less fun lately, rather than the individualists I grew up with, they want to put forward the idea that everyone agrees.

The over three billion genes we each carry allows for differences that can for all practical reasons be called “infinite”. No two of us are precisely the same, nor do we have precisely the same desires. We build consensuses, we agree to majority rule, but we know that even within the majority there are subtle differences of opinion. A crowd of a million protestors calling for change is looking for a million different changes for a million different reasons. They may take comfort or find strength in their unity, but that unity is often simply in the desire to protest, to express dissatisfaction.