We now have to ask ourselves: Are coups always bad? Because of our bad experience with coups, we tend to permanently associate their engineers with suppression, lack of freedoms, arbitrary arrests, flamboyant generals, and decades-long rule.
We have played a role in bringing democracy to many nations, but we tend not to boast so much about the many instances in which the United States has overthrown democracies abroad when the citizens of other countries elected leaders we didn't like.
The Islamist identity of Morsy and his party seems to be the major reason for the reticence of the international community and media in defining this coup a coup.
People having faith in democracy, regardless of their views, ideologies or political tendencies must show their reaction to this step backward in Egypt and not remain silent to it. The contrary would be nothing but a worldwide betrayal of democracy.
And so, another government and another president are removed from office in a revolution, this time (again) in Egypt. In the book The Storm Before th...
Whilst the pivotal role of Egypt's military establishment can't possibly be disputed, describing what happened exclusively as a coup d'etat is both unfair to the Egyptian people and incredibly biased in favor of the ousted president.
There's no doubt that Morsi was a disaster. There's no doubt that Islamism is the most pernicious strain of politics to grace the global stage today. But I'm torn. To believe in democracy is to believe that people have the right to make their own mistakes, to elect their own pernicious fools, and to suffer the consequences of their own bad choices.
Those aren't fireworks. That's an AK-47. Probably more than one. So swam the thoughts in my head as I sat relaxing in my Cairo apartment the night of July 5.
After the downfall of Mubarak, and then the Brotherhood, whoever will hold the reins of power in Egypt, the military included, will have to realize that the new player in town, the Egyptian people, cannot and will not be taken for granted anymore.
Explicit. Pragmatic. Solution-oriented. In under three minutes, this young man articulates voids within the recently suspended Egyptian constitution and what is needed for a democratic experience he believes will allow Egypt to thrive.
You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't in Egypt. The BBC's Jeremy Bowen was hit in the head and leg by birdshot while covering a demonstrat...
From watching cable, you'd think the only news this week was the George Zimmerman trial. But as CNN spent Wednesday breathlessly team-covering every angle of some badly-Skyped-in testimony, a hint of other news appeared in a small box on-screen, captioned "coup under way." That was, of course, referring to the fact that Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi was being toppled. Is this monomaniacal coverage really the best way to honor Trayvon Martin's memory? It was enough to send me clicking over to the Golf Channel -- and I don't even play, though I did learn what a mulligan is. If the media took one, maybe next time, in addition to Egypt, they'd also cover yet another middling jobs report released on Friday, which showed the economy adding mostly low-wage jobs and still on pace to reach full-employment only by decade's end. But don't tell anybody.
Unless the Egyptian military is kept in check, it will likely go down the path it knows best and one that it has followed since 1952, which is to systematically crush dissent and marginalise and exclude the Muslim Brotherhood.
At this time the common Egyptian is happy with the Tamarud transitional plan, thankful for the Egyptian military's role in making it happen, and elated with own his power; the power of the people who ousted Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in a people's coup.
One variant of verbal pyrotechnics in evidence is the contention that there hasn't been a coup because the Egyptian army, while it did unseat the president, isn't running the country. This is nonsense.
The strife Egyptians have been living through for the past year and indeed since the 2011 revolution is certainly not over; in fact, more uncertainty will likely follow, but for millions the current situation is the best possible (or least worst) outcome of a disastrous transition.