Struggling For Normal

"Al-Shater spoke for 45 minutes, vowing terrorist attacks, violence, killings by the Islamic groups. Al-Shater pointed with his finger as if he is shooting a gun.
"His talk irritated me in an unprecedented way ... because it showed arrogance and tyranny. I exploded and said ... 'What do you want? You either want to rule us or kill us?"
"Watch out while dealing with Egyptians. You have dealt with Egyptians as if you are right and they are wrong ... [as if] you are the believer and they are the infidels. This is arrogance through faith."
"Our assessment was that if we reached the stage of communal infighting and civil war, the military will not be able to stand in front of it, or prevent its repercussions."
General Abdel-Fattah Al Sisi -- Al-Masry Al-Youm interview

Civil unrest led eventually to the end of a Middle East experiment. Former President Hosni Mubarak famously held presidential elections, and he infamously gathered over 80% of the popular vote. When he was deposed as a somewhat indulgent tyrant by ongoing demonstrations in Tahrir Square, he was prevailed upon to step down for the greater good of the Egypt that he loved. During the process of wild demonstrations a prison break rumoured to have been enabled with the assistance of Hamas, freed Mohammad Morsi and other ranking members of the Muslim Brotherhood from jail.

The Muslim Brotherhood, patient for almost a century as an Islamist underdog -- one of whose arms was responsible for the death of Mr. Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat, who signed a peace agreement with Israel -- stepped into the breach, although the protests that brought Mr. Mubarak down were largely representative of labour, liberal, secular-invested Egyptians, with the Brotherhood discreetly bringing up the rear. Their advantage was their organization as a party, capable of exerting their authority over their followers and their incipient political party.

The election that brought Mohammad Morsi and the Brotherhood to power was vaunted as legally and authentically democratic, a celebrated 'first' for Egypt. An exercise in democracy that brought the approval of the United States of America, prepared to accept Morsi just as they casually dropped their former ally Mubarak, giving legitimacy to the Muslim Brotherhood through high-level secret negotiations taking place in Washington. Anointed, in a manner of speaking when Egypt acted on the message delivered by President Obama in Cairo years earlier.

The democratic order of Egypt, so newly instituted didn't take too long to become what General al-Sisi described; "arrogant and tyrannical", earning the disrespect and rancour of a great proportion of the non-Islamist Egyptian population, fed up with food shortages, expensive energy, unemployment, poverty, and a lack of security or inclusiveness. They turned on their new president and by extension the Brotherhood, just as they had turned on their long-time president Hosni Mubarak, demanding he too retire from government.

Since then, the Brotherhood has instigated one mass protest after another across the country. Sacrificing in the process the lives of a number of its supporters. Supporters who vented their frustration and rage against Egyptian Christian Copts, fire-bombing churches and attacking parishioners. In Gaza, with the sponsoring assistance of the Brotherhood evaporated, Hamas was bereft of funding, having lost that of Iran in opposing the Syrian regime. Common cause with the Salafist Bedouin, Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad brigades brought violent chaos to the Sinai.

The Egyptian military has found itself stretched thin, from its peace-preservation presence in its major cities and towns, alongside the Egyptian police and security agents, and in responding to violent attacks by Islamist terrorists against police stations and military installations in the Sinai. General Al-Sisi pointed out that the turmoil and violence of the last three months could have been avoided if Mohammad Morsi had heeded his warnings that the Brotherhood had to be more inclusive and stopped moving toward totalitarianism.

Days after the protests began on June 30, he said, he met with senior Brotherhood figures, and the strongman of the group, Khairat al-Shater who warned him the Brotherhood foresaw retaliation by Islamic groups in Sinai and other parts of Egypt which they would be incapable of controlling. He described how he had informed Mr. Morsi back in February, after the December protests had initiated the process of Egyptian unrest, "your project has ended and the amount of antipathy in Egyptians' souls has exceeded any other regime."

The military's move under General al-Sisi's direction was driven by fears of civil war, he said. Fears that were well realized. The crackdown ongoing by the military against the Brotherhood has been portrayed as a battle by Egypt against terrorism. And it surely is not too far off the mark. Escalation of violence on the part of the Islamic militants representing groups allied with the Brotherhood have helped to guide the military's response when dealing with protests like the one that occurred last Sunday when up to 59 people lost their lives.