Recent violence in Egypt has left nearly a thousand people dead, as the Egyptian military clashes with supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, protesting against the ousting of former president Mohammed Morsi.
Most of the casualties have been on the side of the protestors. “The Muslim Brotherhood,” writes Nick Cohen in The Guardian, “may be a foul religious right movement, but it did not abolish democracy or drive the opposition underground”. And relying on the military to remove it “is naïve in the extreme”. While it may be tough, European governments and the US should “call a coup a coup. Aid and normal diplomatic relations must depend on the release of political prisoners, the restoration of civil liberties and a return to democracy.”
“There is no such thing as a good coup, only bad coups and worse coups,” agrees Daniel Hannan in The Daily Telegraph. Even if army officers have good intentions, “they end up as petty tyrants”. This is because “governments succeed by devolving power and allowing decisions to be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect”. Armies “obviously cannot function on this basis and find it hard to adapt their mentality to the complexity of modern administration”. There is also the lack of political competition, since “without active opposition, even a saintly ruler will become complacent”.
It seems that the only two options are “Islamism on the one hand, and brutal secular dictatorship on the other”, writes Alexander Lucie-Smith in the Catholic Herald. Religious minorities – especially Christians – have suffered badly in the recent unrest. Far from protecting religious freedom, the military may be deliberately “letting the Muslim Brotherhood run riot and burn down churches and attack other buildings”. In doing so, the generals “send out a clear message: back us, accept us, for the alternative is chaos”.
In any case, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, a coherent response from Washington is unlikely, worries John O’Sullivan in The Times. The problem is that American foreign policy is “muddled”. Anyway, “even if the US had a clear idea of what to do, its reputation and power to intervene are clearly diminished”. His solution? America, Britain and the rest of Europe need to unite and show some of the vision and united front they displayed when they established Nato in the late 1940s.