Reporting this morning about Egypt to the Today Show, Richard Engels referred repeatedly to

[No Elephants]

what the "Egyptian government" was doing lately.

What Egyptian government? The alleged Acting President? (Who appointed the Acting President is unclear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adly_Mansour)

At the outset, let's remember that, by law, the U.S. may not give foreign aid to a government resulting from a military coup. However, the Egyptian military has been getting most of the $1.3 billion a year that the US gives Egypt in military aid. Until recently, anyway, the military was known to control Egypt, regardless of who was President or prime minister. (Except as noted below, Egypt has been under martial law since 1981.) Also, many members of the Egyptian military leadership train at West Point and are in communication with members of the U.S. military, as U.S. generals were quick to jump into talk shows and news shows to tell us when they praised the actions of the military during the Egyptian segment of the Arab Spring.



The Arab Spring was in 2011. That year, the Egyptian military dissolved the Egyptian Parliament and suspended the Egyptian Constitution. In 2012, the the Egyptian people got to vote for their President for the first time. Before that election, all we heard was how the US feared that the Muslim Brotherhood would win the election, but supported democracy in Egypt.

Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, did win. Morsi declared Parliament restored in 2012. Only the upper house of the Egyptian Parliament legislates and members of the Muslim brotherhood dominated the upper house.

As you no doubt recall, though, anti-Morsi demonstrations supposedly began held in Egypt on June 30, 2013 to oust Morsi. Three days later, he was toast.

In June, we were told that "15 million Egyptians, by some estimates" (whatever that means) were demonstrating to demand Morsi's ouster. However, all the photos and videos of the alleged 15 million "by some estimates" we saw were from Tahrir Square in Cairo no other location. And, guess what, military helicopters were raining down Egyptian flags on the demonstrations, something I learned only this morning, in the course of googling to write this post. (How very conveeenyent uplifting.)

http://blogs.cfr.org/cook/2013/07/01/egypt-ruling-but-not-governing/

FYI, I've been to Tahrir Square. Nothing remotely like 15 million people can fit into Tahrir Square. I know of no other place in Cairo where the people demonstrate and much of it is too congested to allow crowds.



At 7.5 million people, Cairo is the most populous city in Egypt, the seaside town of Alexandria being the second most populous at less than four million. A lot of the population stretches, north to south, along the banks of the Nile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Egypt (I put this link here for readers, but my original description was based on my own obsrvagtions when I flew over Egypt, from Cairo to Abu Simbel, north to south, and back, as a tourist).

I cannot imagine how there could be 15 million demonstrators or who would count/estimate them. (I will begin explaining why a few sentences after this one.) On the other hand, I can easily imagine hiring demonstrators to fill Tahrir Square.

As you may recall, near the end of the Mubarak era, people who were supposedly Mubarak supporters rode on horseback through the ranks of the Egyptian Spring demonstrators for a day or two. And, in describing that scene, the US media said they might have been hired to do that. So many Egyptians are poor, it would not take a lot of U.S. dollars to fill Tahrir Square, not even that many Egyptian pounds.


Anyway, when Engels was on Morning Joe during the June 2013 demonstrations--after I read about the allegedly estimated 15 million demonstrators and was already suspicious, Engels said there were "not hundreds of thousands, but thousands of Egyptians" below him in Tahrir Square. (He was broadcasting from a hotel balcony.)

So, if there were only thousands in Tahrir Square--the only place for which we were being given any visuals of crowds of demonstrators--where in the hell were the other 14.9999 million anti-Morsi demonstrators?

Egyptians who put up with Pharaohs and kings for millennia, then with military leaders, and then with Mubarak for 30 years, began demonstrating against the only President they'd ever elected in under a year, to the tune of 15 million strong?

BTW, the total population of Egypt is something under 83 million, man, woman, child, toddler and newborn. To make it uber easy on myself, let's say that 15 million is 18% of the total population of Egypt. The total population of the US is about 317,000,000. Unlike Egypt, a lot of our population is centered around cities, in "urban sprawl." 18% of the US population is about 57 million people. Even with social media, can you conceive of 57 million USians showing up spontaneously for a demonstration?


Anyway, however many Egyptians did or did not demonstrate, Morsi, the first popularly-elected President of Egypt in the entire, long history of Egypt was ousted.

Who removed him? Well, according to the military, which has ruled Egypt behind the scenes for a very long time, the military did not remove him. The official story, which is highly implausible, IMO, is in wiki:

On 30 June 2013, mass protests erupted across Egypt calling for the President's resignation, following severe fuel shortages and electricity outages. <12> This was followed by the army's threat that if the protesters' demands were not met by 3 July it would step in and build a road map for the country, while insisting that it did not want to rule the country.<13> Some took this to mean a military coup, but the next day the army denied that they were referring to a possible military coup.<14> The plan set up by the military includes suspending the constitution, dissolving the parliament, and establishing a new administration headed by the chief justice.<15>

Morsi was declared unseated on 3 July 2013 by a council consisting of defence minister Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar Ahmed el-Tayeb, and Coptic Pope Tawadros II.<16><17>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morsi

So, Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was removed by his own defense minister, an important Egyptian imam and the Coptic Pope? (Copts represent about 5% of the Egyptian population. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/number-coptic-christians-egypt-far-less-media-estimates-report-says)

They managed that coalition within four days of the start of the demonstrations? And four individuals removed a President from his palace, with no help from the military? Am I the only one who is incredulous?


A day or two after Morsi's ouster, the Acting President again dissolved the Egyptian Parliament. The military or the military-designated Acting President also suspended the Egyptian Constitution.

So, who or what was Engels referring to this morning when he referred to "the Egyptian government?"

Any nation in this hemisphere south of Texas has a revolution and for several decades, U.S. media refers to its head as "leader of the military junta." The Egyptian military Someone ousts the first and only President ever elected by the Egyptian people and no one can bring themselves to call it a coup?

Moreover, less than two months later, the reigning expert on the Middle East among U.S. mass media is referring to only God knows what as "the Egyptian government?"

BTW, shortly after his appointment, Secretary Kerry claimed that millions of Egyptians had demanded Morsi's ouster. How the hell would Kerry know how many?

Sorry, none of the above rings true to me.

[rpannier]

1. Agreed

This dancing around the whole situation is rather pathetic. It pains me to have McCain and Graham agree with me. But, it is what they said, "A Coup."

on edit:
Forgot to include my appreciation for your well organized post. Thanks

[No Elephants]

2. Thank you. You and Enthusiast are much too nice to me.

Yes, it was a coup, but was it done with any US involvement/

That is the question

When I wrote this post, I was sure the US had wanted Morsi out. After all, we did not want the
Muslim Brotherhood to win the election to begin with.

But now, we just cancelled our joint military exercises with the Egyptian Army. Is that because we had nothing to do with the ouster? Or because we did?

Anyway, I am less sure.