Who else?
There is a fair amount of cynicism going around about the fact that the Egyptian military have been handed the reins of the country. True, it could turn out that this results in the downfall of the revolution. Months from now, when it comes time to give control of the country back to the people, the military may well refuse. However, we should not be too quick to jump to postures of cynicism. It could be, when all is said and done, this move did not kill, but saved the movement.
First, there is the practical question of, if you don’t hand the country over to the military, to whom do you give it? “The People?” The people of Egypt have proven their strength, but from a logistical perspective governing is harder than dissenting. Political parties have been banned for decades; they need time to re-convene. The mere mechanisms of free and fair elections, far different than those of sham elections, take time to set up. All that needs to happen in an ordered environment. If chaos takes hold, it will be easy for another strongman to come along and impose totalitarian rule in the name of “security.” Come September, Egypt will see free and fair elections. In the mean time, the water needs to keep running and the lights need to be kept on. That cannot happen without orchestration.
Second, for what it is worth, the military had an opportunity to impose their will by force during the revolution and they didn’t take it. They didn’t protect the protesters from Mubarrak’s thugs, but they also didn’t protect the regime. Fareed Zakaria claims, in his article in the most recent edition of Time, that the current generation of top military brass were all trained in the US, unlike the previous generation of leaders who all trained in the USSR. One of the messages that was instilled in the current US-trained cohort was the importance of civilian control of the military and keeping them out of domestic politics.
Although success is not assured and the country could still very well slide back into autocracy, there is still reason to hope that things will continue to improve.
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The situation is now escalating in Algeria and Bahrain. What an incredible time to be alive……
