Community Policing -Egyptian Style
The Muslim brotherhood has always had a rocky relationship with the Egyptian military. And since the Brothers won the last election, it has gotten worse... much worse.
Our current government loves to deal with terrorists by giving them what they want.
The Egyptian military isn't buying it.
CAIRO (AP) - Egyptian authorities are considering disbanding the Muslim Brotherhood group, a government spokesman said Saturday, once again outlawing a group that held the pinnacle of government power just more than a month earlier.Since the Brotherhood came to prominence after the last election, Egypt has been embroiled in social upheaval. Since the so called Arab Spring, the world has witnessed the same violence propagated by Islamic terrorists in Libya, Syria and Tunisia. They murdered our ambassador in Benghazi and we still have yet to hear the full story behind it.
The announcement comes after security forces broke up two sit-in protests this week by those calling for the reinstatement of President Mohammed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader deposed in a July 3 coup. The clashes killed more than 600 people that day and sparked protests and violence that killed 173 people Friday alone.
Cabinet spokesman Sherif Shawki said that Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi, who leads the military-backed government, assigned the Ministry of Social Solidarity to study the legal possibilities of dissolving the group. He didn't elaborate.
[...]The fundamentalist group has been banned for most of its 80-year history and repeatedly subjected to crackdowns under Mubarak's rule. While sometimes tolerated and its leaders part of the political process, members regularly faced long bouts of imprisonment and arbitrary detentions.
The Obama administration has turned a blind eye to this. Egyptian generals have not, and they have good reason to intervene.
From USA Today:
One in five Egyptians live in poverty in a country where the estimated per-capita income was $6,200 last year, according to the CIA's The World Factbook.
And tourism, which provides jobs to 2 million Egyptians, represents 11% of the nation's economic output. In 2009, it brought in $10.8 billion, according to Egyptian Tourism Ministry figures.
In 2010, 15 million tourists traveled to Egypt, 362,000 of them from the U.S., according to the Egyptian Tourist Authority.
The unemployment rate for Egyptians aged 15 to 24 is almost 25%. Almost 50% of their GDP is based on services and much of that is dependent upon maintaining a healthy tourism traffic.
Last year the Egyptian government spent over $27 billion more than it took in. It's deficit is 11% of its GDP and inflation is more than three times that of the US. Their largest trading partner is China. Tourism is their major source of foreign currency.
IMHO, the Egyptian military is very concerned about the Muslim Brotherhood doing more than just expressing their insane hatred of Israel. As a neighbor of Israel, I believe that the generals are thinking that their peaceful relationship with their powerful neighbor is about to end. And that would be disastrous for a nation that is already on very shaky economic grounds. They respect the prowess of the IDF and obviously have no respect for American leadership nor for our leader.
Tourism is absolutely vital to Egypt and radical Islam is antithetical to tourism. Plus they have no desire to get their asses handed to them when Israel responds to Islamofacist provocations that are sure to come.
Do the math. Historically, killing a few thousand Muslims never seemed to bother Muslims. They do it all the time.