Rattlesnake Ridge 
BFF
“The scene in Egypt looks grim. More than eight months have passed since Jan. 25, when the sparks of revolution finally brought Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule to an end. Yet we have witnessed no real policy changes from the provisional Military Council. The postrevolution era is marked by as much—if not more—brutality as faced the Egyptians during Mubarak’s reign as witnessed by the dozens of Copts killed in recent clashes. The censorship of journalists, bloggers, newspapers, and other publications continues. It seems that the confiscation of journalistic work has become a defining characteristic of the postrevolution era. Worse, nothing suggests that the Military Council will surrender its authority to an elected civilian president in the near future, despite their statements to the contrary. An addiciton to power has taken hold, especially in the mind of Marshal Tantawi………..”
Just as I wrote here: the military will be the supreme power, with some elected politicians suffocating underneath it. Just like in Iran where elected politicians are subservient to an unelected leader. Ayatollah Tantawi, meet Marshal Khamenei.
What went wrong in Egypt is simple. The people did not finish up the ‘revolution’. They kept the old regime intact except for the top two or three men. Lenin had it right in 1917, at the beginning, by insisting on a complete overthrow of the old order, as did the Iranian Ayatollah in 1979, as did Castro in 1959. Unfortunately those three old revolutionaries failed to create free societies: they got rid of their ‘democratic’ partners and replaced the bad old orders with bad new dictatorships.
Now the military junta is set to share power in Egypt: it is the Egyptian version of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). They will share power, but they will be first among ‘equals’, at best. This suits the Arab oligarchs fine, they are sighing with relief: the SCAF is now using the same divisive sectarian tactics (vis-a-vis the Christian Copts) that are used by the Saudi and Bahraini regimes in the Gulf. But the brave Egyptian people need to make another final push to be rid of the military junta.
Cheers
mhg
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