Egypt Erupts In Massive Anti-Government Protests

For the past three days (remember these things always start after Friday prayers when the mullahs and imams whip up the faithful)protesters and Egyptian security forces have been fighting what amounts to a street war in Cairo and elsewhere that has killed at least 10 people.

The police and the army responded to barrages of rocks and molotov cocktails with extreme force, shooting teargas, real bullets and rubber bullets, beating protesters severely with metal batons and dragging them away to waiting police vans.

This comes as Egypt had its second round of post-Mubarak elections. Like the first round, held in the relatively sophisticated cities of Cairo and Alexandria, the vote in the second round appears to have been decisively won by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the even more radical Salafi al-Nour Party.

The Brotherhood claims they got around 40% of the votes, while the Salifists are claiming 35%, an even larger slice than they got before. This round of elections took place in nine provinces, in Islamiyya, Suez and Giza, mainly in the outskirts of the big cities.

The protests are being directed against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and its head Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the de facto transitional rulers of the country. And as I pointed out previously, the ongoing protests are the result of some pretty clever tactics by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The army was formerly seen as heroes by the Egyptian masses because they had pointedly refused to fire on protesters in places like Tahrir Square during the riots against ex-President Mubarak. They're not anymore, because the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups have been a major force in gradually fomenting discontent against the army's rule once it became obvious that the army was not quite ready to completely cave in to Islamist rule.

Now, the army is seen as oppressors and the chief obstacle to 'democracy' and it's the Brotherhood and the Salafists who are seen as the heroes, and are gathering in the votes.

There's no question in my mind but that Egypt is going the way of Iran. In fact, back months ago when the usual suspects were babbling away about the wonders of the Arab Spring, I predicted it.

The Egyptian military will be faced with the choice of either standing aside and going along with the Islamists in order to try and preserve their perks or making war on their own people.

This is exactly the same choice the Iranian military was forced to make with Khomeini, an dthey made the devil's bargain to stay out of the way and let him and his followers take over.

In later years, historians will be looking at President Obama's encouragement of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists in the same way way they now see Jimmy Carter's encouragement of the same thing in Iran.

As horrible as the above picture looks, just wait until the Brotherhood and the Salafists are running Egypt.

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