Morsi supporters killed in Egypt: finding the truth-tellers* on that island
Many Morsi supporters have been killed by the military in Egypt—but why, and who attacked first?
I don’t profess to have a clue. But when I read this I began to wonder (and by the way, the number dead has been reported differently by various news outlets, but it seems to have been somewhere between the low 40s and the low 50s):
At least 51 people were killed on Monday when the Egyptian army opened fire on supporters of ousted president Mohamed Mursi, in the deadliest incident since the elected Islamist leader was toppled by the military five days ago.
Protesters said shooting started as they performed morning prayers outside the Cairo barracks where Mursi is believed to be held.
But military spokesman Ahmed Ali said that at 4 a.m. (10.00 p.m. EDT) armed men attacked troops in the area around the Republican Guard compound in the northeast of the city.
“The armed forces always deal with issues very wisely, but there is certainly also a limit to patience,” the uniformed Ali told a news conference, at which he presented what he said was video evidence, some of it apparently taken from a helicopter.
In this case we don’t know who the “good guys” are, or whether there are any “good guys.” It’s all relative anyway. So did the army suddenly fire on a crowd of Morsi supporters at prayer, as the Morsi forces claim? Or were they provoked by stone throwing and the like? For example, did this occur, and at what point?:
Young men, some carrying sticks, crouched behind a building, emerging to throw petrol bombs before retreating again.
Footage posted on YouTube on Monday showed a man in army fatigues on a rooftop opening fire with a rifle five times, apparently in the direction of a crowd in the street below…
State-run television showed soldiers carrying a wounded comrade along a rock-strewn road, and news footage zoomed in on a handful of protesters firing crude handguns during clashes.
Here’s another conflicting account:
The pro-Morsi protesters said the troops attacked their encampment without provocation just after they had performed dawn prayers. The military said it came under a heavy assault first by gunmen who killed an army officer and two policemen…
Truth is very very hard to come by in these matters. I have come to deeply distrust both sides. It is hardly beyond belief that Morsi forces would deliberately provoke the army to violence against the protestors by attacking the military and/or police, in order to cause a backlash of outrage against the army and/or police, and rally sympathy and support for their own side. It’s happened countless times around the world, and even at times in this country.
One thing seems somewhat clear, however: the military reaction in Egypt Monday morning was probably an overreaction, even if they were under some sort of attack from the protestors at the time. That’s a lot of civilians dead.
It’s interesting, too, that quite a bit of the coverage I’ve seen so far (and I don’t pretend to have read it all, just a sample of it) seems to accept at face value that these people were attacked and killed while innocently at prayer. I find it a bit hard to believe that’s true, although there’s no question it could indeed be true. But if so, it would be a departure for the military at this point, and it’s hard to see why the military would choose to escalate matters right now in that way—although I suppose it might be to discourage Morsi support and demonstrations in general.
* [NOTE: The asterisk beside the word “truth-tellers” in the title of this post refers to this old riddle:
You’re on an island and desperately need to get off alive. There are 2 caves in front of you. One cave tunnels under the ocean somehow and leads to safety, and the other cave leads to certain death. There are 2 people standing in front of you. You know that one always tells the truth, and one always lies, but you can’t tell which person is which. Both people know which way leads to safety and which one to certain death. You have one question to ask one of them in order to figure out how to get off the island alive. What is the question?
On this “island”—Egypt—I don’t think there are any “truth-tellers” in the official stories from either side. Of course, Egypt is hardly unique in that regard. We don’t have too many of them in public life or the media here, either.]
Would that it were just two caves. Egypt and that whole section of the world now is more like the old text game, Collossal Cave, in which, “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.”
When you speak of dead civilians, the picture is a shopkeeper and his family shot as soldiers go by, just in case or just for grins or by accident.
What is a guy who is emotionally and socially “with” the MB, if not a dues-paying member, who is throwing rocks at a military position? And is killing him the same morally and ethically as killing the shopkeeper?
And do we know what the MB means when they refer to “prayers”?
Richard Aubrey:
The “civilians” reference is to the way it plays out in terms of the MSM reports, not whether they actually are armed or what their purposes were, or who fired first.
And I’m talking in this case about civilians versus the military. The military clearly had more arms, and the military are the anti-Morsi forces.
“In this case we don’t know who the “good guys” are, or whether there are any “good guys.” It’s all relative anyway. So did the army suddenly fire on a crowd of Morsi supporters at prayer, as the Morsi forces claim?”
Well, it all is relative but within that relativity, we do know who, from the perspective of our national interests are the good and bad guys. Morsi and the Brotherhood and the Nour party of salafists are the bad guys because they support fundamentalist, radical Islam. We all know where they stand and of what their goals consist.
The Army are the ‘good’ guys not because they act ethically in agreement with our values but because they stand for a form of regional stability that does not overtly threaten Western interests. The top commander within the Army is reportedly a devout Muslim but evidently he’s not a jihadist, a critical difference. Clearly, the Army is aligned with that view.
As for firing upon Morsi supporters at prayer, I suspect it did happen and was ordered as a message to the Islamist side that the Army is prepared to act ruthlessly, if the Islamists push too hard.
Geoffrey Britain:
Did you see this post? It addresses the question of whether there are even relative good guys there. I’m not so sure.
How can the Egyptian military have more small arms when ex-Libyan weapons are ten-a-penny from the Ikwan?
And what are we to make of the MB-Tehran-Hamas-Hez axis?
Geoffrey Britain…
The Egyptian Army has repressed the MB for DECADES — up to and including hangings.
They don’t lack for street cred. They’ve got nothing to prove on that front.
As for the Islamists pushing too hard — they have only two gears — FORWARD and PUSHING BACK TWICE AS HARD.
Fifty years ago this coming October one of the greatest spy movies of all time was released. In one of its earliest scenes the strategy that the USA should be following throughout the Middle East (and in Egypt in particular) was vividly and unforgettably illustrated ( at least to one 12 year old boy in the audience at a Saturday afternoon matinee at the Lenox Square Theater in Atlanta, circa early November 1963).
It involved a diabolically simple prop: One fish tank containing three Siamese fighting fish.
My fellow Neo-geezers will immediately recall this scene and its important lesson. [To the others, try Google]
Who knew we could learn such sound foreign policy from an organization like SMERSH?
Collossal Cave
I never knew that game had a proper name. I always knew it as “adventure”.
It involved a diabolically simple prop: One fish tank containing three Siamese fighting fish.
That’s the strategy I’ve advocated for dealing with Syria. Rather harsh on actual non-combatants, sadly, but can be an effective way of keeping bad guys occupied with each other.
For those, like me, who are not film buffs, here’s the reference to carl in atlanta’s film scene:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPECTRE
Seemingly it was SPECTRE’s (not SMERSH) Ernest Stavro Blofeld, who kept the Siamese fighting fish as an illustration of his strategy.
It is important to remember that Islam may be the only world religion that explicitly permits lying as a tactic to be employed against enemies. Reports from Muslims have little value.
Recall Neo-geezers, the riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968. The great debate was over who started the riots, the police or the Weathermen. What one saw that night was a direct function of one’s political views held before the riots. You see what you believe.
Some other observations:
1) No one predicted the fall of Morsi so soon. Everyone knew the Moslem Brotherhood would be elected to run Egypt and that they would make a mess of it, but no one predicted the “outs” would act like they were in a free country and demonstrate for Morsi’s ouster. That was unexpectedly good news.
2) Jihadis are entering the Sinai thru tunnels from Gaza. In other words Hamas is now waging war against Egypt as well as Israel. This supports the contention that the Palestinians are dumber than moss.
BTW the answer to the question of what single should be asked of the two people guarding the cave is:
If I asked the other person whether this cave is safe what would he answer?
The consistent liar would answer if the cave was the fatal one: He, the other guy, would say it safe.
If it were the safe one: He would say it is the fatal cave.
The consistently honest person would answer if the cave were the fatal one:
He, the other guy, would say that the cave was safe.
The consistently honest person would answer if the cave were the safe one:
He, the other guy, would say that the cave was the fatal one.
Therefore no matter who answers the question, if either person says that the other person would say that a particular cave is safe then you know it is the fatal cave. Likewise if either says that the other person would say that a particular cave is the fatal one you know that it is the safe one.
Ms Glick, whom I greatly admire is entirely correct, in that there are no good options in Egypt. Nor did I mean to imply that there were good options, only bad and terrible. But there is no doubt what jihadists will in time do, which makes them the terrible option.
In the ME there are two possibilities; a jihadist nation state led by fanatics or a brutal strong man regime. A strong man who uses ruthlessness to achieve power and then uses the minimum amount of repression needed to keep the ‘pressure cooker’ from exploding is the best that can be achieved.
Generally, strong men avoid fanaticism, which leads to short reigns. Occasionally, an overly ambitious strong man, like Saddam, will lead to them becoming more than a regional threat, in which case the proper response is to facilitate the rise of another strong man who is more amenable to international boundaries…
These conditions will continue to apply as long as Islam is the majority religious/ideology of the region. That is so because of Islam’s irreformable foundational tenets.
blert,
I imagine most of us are well aware of the Egyptian Army’s prior activities. The ‘message’ I referred to was intended I suspect, to serve as both a reminder and confirmation that they retain their ruthlessness. Fanatics need to have the ‘choke chain’ regularly applied as, “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” W. Churchill or as the American humorist and writer Finley Peter Dunne stated, “A fanatic is a man who does, what he knows God would do . . . if only God had all the facts of the matter” 🙂
JJ at 4:56PM:
I stand corrected. Of course it was SPECTRE.
SMERSH was one of the dead fish….